Explain SMBC — the wiki for Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal

The Joke

The comic is titled "Know Your Minerals" and presents a four-panel educational-style guide comparing different types of gold-like substances. The panels show: "Gold" (a noble metal that is bright, yellow, and highly conductive), "Fool's Gold" (with sharper edges, duller color, and actually iron pyrite), "Moron's Gold" (which is gray, not conductive, and is actually a piece of slate -- "partially found in beer"), and "Frat-Boy-Running-For-Congress Gold" (which is "actually a lemon," and the caption says "for God's sake, it's just a lemon cut in half in a glass").

The Humor

The comic takes the familiar concept of "fool's gold" -- pyrite, which looks like gold to the untrained eye -- and extends it into a hierarchy of decreasing competence. Each step down the ladder represents a progressively more absurd misidentification. While confusing pyrite for gold is an understandable mistake, confusing a random piece of slate for gold is significantly dumber, and the final panel -- where someone mistakes a cut lemon for gold -- is so absurd that it can only be attributed to a specific type of person: a frat boy running for political office. The comic satirizes both scientific illiteracy and the idea that confidence and ambition often far exceed competence, especially in politics.

References

Fool's gold (iron pyrite, FeS2) has been mistaken for gold since antiquity due to its superficial resemblance. The educational poster format parodies field guides and classroom posters about mineral identification.