conserved
Explanation
This comic addresses the common claim that people become more conservative as they age. A father figure tells a child: "Kid, you think all the stuff now, but you'll get more conservative when you grow up." The other adult pushes back, saying "That's not supported by the data."
The middle panels present a nuanced take: while it's hard to measure precisely, a lot of findings suggest political views are fairly stable over time and established early. The unusual people who do shift conservative as they age tend to get more attention, creating a visibility bias — "but that's a tiny minority." The father's response to being offered free information is telling: "Wow, that's fascinating." But then the final panel delivers the punchline — an older man says "Pssh, academics just want everything handed to them" — which is an ironic conservative dismissal of expertise that proves the comic's broader point.
The comic satirizes the "you'll grow out of it" dismissal that older conservatives often level at younger people with progressive views. It takes what is essentially a folk belief and contrasts it with the actual research, which shows that political views are largely stable throughout life. The final panel's irony is multi-layered: the man dismisses the very academic research that contradicts his claim, using a stereotypically conservative anti-intellectual argument, thereby demonstrating that his own conservatism isn't the product of age-earned wisdom but rather a fixed disposition resistant to evidence.