Explain SMBC — the wiki for Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal

hatero

2024-02-22 View on smbc-comics.com → 1 revision
You are viewing an older revision of this explanation (2026-03-14 15:04:24). View current version →
hatero
Votey panel for hatero
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 riffs on sexual orientation terminology. In the first panel, a character rattles off a long list of orientations: "Holy gay, heterosexual, metrosexual, homosexual, hot-whatever, likes whatever, likes opposite sex, likes everything, likes nothing, likes huge..." Another character asks, "What are you doing?"

The first character explains: "Take any sexual orientation, add a random prefix, add '-sexual' and you get a new sexual orientation." They then list made-up examples: "Pansexual, omnisexual, pinkasexual, dankasexual, omnomnomsexual." The second character says "Oh my god."

In the next row, the first character continues: "Varoooosexual, heggsexual... what is happening?" The response: "Thanks, I think I don't understand what they mean, but there's obviously bad words." In the final panel, both characters just scream "AAAAAAAAA" at each other.

The comic is satirizing the proliferation of sexuality labels and the confusion that can arise from an ever-expanding taxonomy of orientations. Rather than taking a clear political side, the humor derives from the absurdity of the logical extreme -- if you can combine any prefix with "-sexual," you can generate infinite orientations, most of which are nonsensical. The escalating confusion on both sides (one character generating nonsense labels, the other unable to process them) culminates in mutual screaming, which captures the feeling of a cultural conversation that has become so convoluted that all parties involved are just overwhelmed.

The title "Hatero" is itself a portmanteau joke, blending "hate" with "hetero" to suggest the whole discourse generates more confusion and frustration than understanding.

View History (1) Original Comic