formality
Explanation
The Joke
A man tells a woman that in Korean, the language has seven levels of formality, each with special verb endings. They both laugh and agree they are glad they are not products of such "outer cultures" with their "weird rituals." They dismiss the Korean formality system as needlessly complicated.
In the very next panel, the hypocrisy is revealed. The man says he needs to call Ted, describing Ted as "a 5-person multiple email chain acquaintance" — and asks whether he should text, since calling "would seem like you are angry." The woman advises that he should text but not mention that they saw Ted at a party, because "that would be weird."
The Humor
The comic exposes how English speakers (and Western culture generally) have their own elaborate, unwritten system of social formality — they just do not recognize it because it is not codified in grammar. Korean has explicit grammatical markers for formality levels, which seems bizarre to outsiders. But English speakers navigate an equally complex web of unspoken rules about when to text versus call, how to address acquaintances based on the context of the relationship, and what topics are "weird" to bring up.
The humor lies in the characters' complete lack of self-awareness. They mock Korean formality as a "weird ritual" while immediately demonstrating that their own social communication rules are just as arbitrary and complicated — perhaps even more so because they are implicit rather than explicit. It is a classic Weiner move of puncturing cultural smugness by showing that the thing you are laughing at is exactly the thing you do yourself.