Explain SMBC — the wiki for Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal

classified

2022-02-09 View on smbc-comics.com → 1 revision
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classified
Votey panel for classified
This explanation is incomplete or may contain errors. It was generated by AI and has not yet been reviewed by a human editor.

Explanation

This comic plays with the concept of statements that are "technically true" but deeply misleading.

The header reads: "Dating Tip: Make statements that are impressive but only technically true."

In the panel, a man tells a woman: "I have a sex technique that, as of recently, has been unclassified by the CIA." The woman responds: "Whoaaaaaaa."

The joke hinges on the ambiguity of "unclassified." The statement is designed to sound like the CIA had a secret file on this man's extraordinary sexual prowess that was so sensitive it required classification, and has only now been released to the public. The impressed "Whoaaaaaaa" suggests the woman is interpreting it this way.

However, the phrase "has been unclassified" more likely means the CIA never classified it in the first place -- it was always unclassified, meaning the CIA has no file on it at all, because why would they? Nearly everything in the world is "unclassified by the CIA." Your grocery list is unclassified by the CIA. The statement is technically true but conveys zero actual information.

The comic satirizes both the art of impressive-sounding nonsense in dating and the broader phenomenon of statements that exploit ambiguity to sound meaningful. It also plays on the cultural fascination with government secrecy and classification, where anything associated with the CIA sounds inherently exciting and mysterious, even when the association is vacuous.

View History (1) Original Comic