Explain SMBC — the wiki for Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal

The Joke

A man addresses the viewer directly, announcing his plans for a generic, wholesome suburban day: he has just woken up in his "generic suburban home" and plans to "feed metal shavings to pigeons, then write racist slurs on balloons and release them in the park." He cheerfully asks people to "please unfollow."

The caption below reads: "Tragically, the antiprosociality movement soon developed a vast following."

The Humor

The joke operates through a bait-and-switch structure. The character begins with what sounds like it will be a wholesome social media post about everyday life — the kind of bland, relatable content that populates lifestyle feeds. The pivot to deliberately antisocial behavior (feeding harmful material to pigeons, releasing racist balloons) is delivered in the same casual, cheerful tone as the initial setup, creating a jarring contrast.

The deeper humor is in the paradox described by the caption. The character explicitly asks people to unfollow — he is trying to be antisocial, to repel an audience. But the "antiprosociality movement" attracts a vast following precisely because of its transgressive appeal. This satirizes how online contrarianism and deliberate edginess, no matter how sincerely antisocial, inevitably attracts an audience of people who find it entertaining or relatable. The very act of publicly rejecting social norms becomes a social performance that builds community.

This is a commentary on the internet's paradox of anti-establishment movements: the more aggressively you reject mainstream engagement, the more you become a brand. Telling people to unfollow is itself a form of engagement bait.

Context

The comic satirizes social media culture, particularly the phenomenon of performative antisociality — people who build large followings by positioning themselves as outsiders or misanthropes. The "please unfollow" request parodies the common social media tactic of telling audiences to leave, which paradoxically increases engagement and loyalty among remaining followers.