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flesh-2

2025-04-19 View on smbc-comics.com → 2 revisions
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flesh-2
Votey panel for flesh-2
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Explanation

The Joke

The comic is a single panel showing a person in bed screaming in apparent ecstasy or frenzy: "FLESSHHHHHH! FLESHHHHHHHHHHHH! FLESH OF MANNNNNNNNNNNNN!" while lying on top of another person who appears to be either asleep or dead (with X's for eyes). The caption below reads: "In retrospect, it was clear how the ethical invasivore movement would wind up."

The Humor

The joke takes the real-world concept of "invasivore" eating — the practice of consuming invasive species as an ethical and ecological act (eating lionfish, Asian carp, kudzu, etc. to help control their populations) — and extrapolates it to its darkest logical conclusion. If the ethical framework is "it's good to eat organisms that are invasive and harmful to the ecosystem," then humans are arguably the most invasive and ecologically destructive species on Earth. The "ethical invasivore movement" would therefore logically conclude that eating human flesh is the most ethical dietary choice.

The horror-comedy works because it follows a genuinely reasonable-sounding ethical premise to an absurd and disturbing endpoint. The character screaming "FLESH OF MAN" in bed reads like a zombie movie scene, but the caption frames it as the inevitable outcome of a well-meaning ecological movement. This is classic Weinersmith: taking a trendy, virtuous-sounding idea and following its internal logic until it collapses into something monstrous. The comic also plays on the trope of ethical eating movements (veganism, locavorism, etc.) that can sometimes become zealous or cult-like in their devotion.

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