Explain SMBC — the wiki for Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal

Future

2021-08-03 View on smbc-comics.com → 1 revision
Future
Votey panel for Future
This explanation is incomplete or may contain errors. It was generated by AI and has not yet been reviewed by a human editor.

Explanation

This comic takes the classic time-travel premise -- someone arriving from the future with amazing news -- and deflates it with a joke about laziness and complacency.

In the first panel, a man from the future appears before another character, announcing dramatically: "Dude, I'm you from the future!" The present-day version responds, "What?!" The future self continues: "I've got to warn you about the future!" and says, "This is amazing! I invent a time machine! I am destined for tremendous glory!"

But then the future version reveals the disappointing truth: "It's on autopilot now. I don't really need to do a goddamn thing." The final panel shows the present-day version lying on the floor contentedly, having immediately embraced the idea that his future success is guaranteed and therefore he can stop trying.

The humor lies in the inversion of the time-travel warning trope. Normally, a visitor from the future brings urgent warnings about disasters to prevent. Here, the "warning" is actually the opposite -- the future is great, and the time machine runs itself. But instead of being motivated, the protagonist takes this as license to be completely lazy. The comic satirizes how people might react to guaranteed success: rather than being inspired to work harder, they'd immediately give up, interpreting destiny as a reason to do nothing. The phrase "not a goddamned thing" in the last panel confirms the future self is equally lazy, creating a paradox of sorts -- if he never does anything, how does he build the time machine?

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