Explain SMBC — the wiki for Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal

Clean

2020-10-28 View on smbc-comics.com → 1 revision
Clean
Votey panel for Clean
This explanation is incomplete or may contain errors. It was generated by AI and has not yet been reviewed by a human editor.

Explanation

The Joke

A man announces he is "achieving perpetual cleanliness." His plan: he has attached an elastic band to everything in his home so that when he is done using an item, it will snap back to its proper place. His wife suggests he could just clean up after himself like a normal person. He dismisses this as too simple.

In the final panels, we see the catastrophic result: the elastic bands have turned his house into a chaotic web of snapping, flying objects. A large piece of furniture appears to be launched across the room. The wife says "Wait--" and then simply "Wait the..." as disaster unfolds.

The Humor

This is a classic "Rube Goldberg" style joke where someone invents an absurdly overcomplicated solution to a simple problem. The man could just put things away when he is done with them, but instead he engineers an elaborate elastic-band system that is far more destructive than the original mess. The humor is in the predictable catastrophe -- the reader can immediately see that attaching elastic bands to furniture and household objects is going to result in things violently snapping around the room. It satirizes a certain type of person (often stereotyped as an engineer or inventor) who would rather build an elaborate system than perform a simple, boring task.

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