Explain SMBC — the wiki for Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal

dork

2015-09-03 View on smbc-comics.com → 1 revision
dork
Votey panel for dork
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 bully takes a kid's lunch money, and the kid responds by threatening to 3D-bioprint a sentient copy of the bully, trap it in a sealed glass cage without food or water, and whisper to it as it suffocates on its own CO2 emissions that it's dying because the "real version" wouldn't return the lunch money. The comic ends with the tagline "Knowledge is Power!"

The Humor

The comedy works on multiple levels. First, there's the absurd escalation: the kid being bullied doesn't fight back physically but instead threatens a revenge so elaborate, so technologically sophisticated, and so psychologically sadistic that it far exceeds any reasonable response to having lunch money stolen. The phrase "I'll show you!" -- typically an impotent threat from a bullied child -- turns out to be terrifyingly literal.

Second, the comic satirizes the "knowledge is power" educational motto by taking it to a darkly logical extreme. The idea that nerdy kids who get bullied will eventually triumph through intelligence is a common trope, but here the "triumph" involves creating a conscious being solely to torture it to death. The cheerful, colorful "Knowledge is Power!" banner at the bottom contrasts grotesquely with what was just described, parodying the upbeat tone of educational messaging.

Third, there's a philosophical undercurrent about the ethics of creating sentient copies -- a topic in bioethics and philosophy of mind -- played entirely for dark comedy.

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