Explain SMBC — the wiki for Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal

herd

2023-02-14 View on smbc-comics.com → 1 revision
herd
Votey panel for herd
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 features a child asking their grandparent how they formed their identity and how they avoided being "part of the herd." The grandparent's answer is darkly honest: one day you wake up and you're unique because you have weirdly particular opinions on things like music, food, and politics that will profoundly irritate nearly everyone you meet. Your teenage body will change in ways not anticipated by any branch of medicine. You'll wish you could take comfort in shared experience with your contemporaries, but you're so riddled with peculiarities that relating to them is "like trying to describe color to a cuttlefish." The punchline adds that peer pressure actually goes away -- because peers want to "drink and do drugs and steal" and one look at you convinces them you're not worth recruiting. The comic subverts the inspirational "be yourself" narrative by showing that real individuality isn't glamorous or chosen -- it's the awkward, isolating result of being involuntarily weird.

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