Counting
Explanation
This comic traces the absurd origins of humanity's obsession with counting and quantification. A prehistoric warrior declares he is "tending this grass" by collecting grass seeds, then explains his strategy: "Keep watching for more grass, keep collecting grass seeds, then plant those to get more grass seeds." He then proclaims he'll "keep doing this for a thousand generations until I have a billion descendants" and will "keep counting, keep counting until we have conquered you all." The "later" panel jumps to the modern day, where someone asks "Why are these reality TV things and social media so addictive?" and another replies "Shh, I'm counting things." The joke is that the same neurological drive that enabled agriculture and civilization -- the compulsion to count, accumulate, and grow quantities -- is the same impulse that now keeps us addicted to tracking likes, followers, view counts, and other social media metrics. Humanity's greatest evolutionary advantage (quantitative thinking and accumulation) has been hijacked by trivial modern applications.