convexity
Explanation
A man in Victorian-era clothing delivers an elaborate, Lovecraftian pickup line to a woman: "Wanna come back to my place and perceive the twisted fringes and gibbous surfaces lurking leeringly in the crazy elusive angles of the room, where a second glance shows convexity after the first shows concavity?"
The woman responds with an intrigued "Ooooh."
The caption reads: "The Lovecraft Pickup Line Technique: low success rate, unspeakably high reward."
The joke combines the concept of a pickup line with the distinctive literary style of H.P. Lovecraft, the early 20th-century horror writer known for his elaborate, adjective-laden descriptions of incomprehensible, sanity-destroying geometry and architecture. The line is actually paraphrased from Lovecraft's writing (particularly stories like "The Call of Cthulhu" and "The Dreams in the Witch House"), where he describes non-Euclidean geometry -- spaces where angles and surfaces seem to shift between concave and convex, defying normal spatial perception.
The humor works because the pickup line is simultaneously creepy, incomprehensible, and oddly specific -- all hallmarks of Lovecraft's prose. The phrase "unspeakably high reward" is itself a Lovecraftian joke, as Lovecraft constantly described horrors as "unspeakable," "indescribable," or "unnameable." The caption's phrasing mirrors how one might describe a high-risk investment strategy, treating romantic conquest in clinical terms.
The comic also plays on the idea that there exists a very niche audience who would find Lovecraftian cosmic horror genuinely attractive -- and the woman's intrigued reaction suggests she might be exactly that rare person. The "low success rate, unspeakably high reward" framing suggests that while 99% of people would be baffled or disturbed by this approach, the 1% who respond positively would be an ideal match.