Explain SMBC — the wiki for Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal

The Joke

A nerdy-looking guy with glasses approaches a woman with a pickup line: "Hey, baby -- wanna ride on a motorcycle powered by a complex assemblage of bio-nanomachines?" The woman responds enthusiastically: "What?! Yes!" The caption below reveals his scheme: "By the time she realizes it's a bicycle, she'll be too embarrassed to say no."

The joke is that a bicycle is, in a technically accurate but wildly misleading sense, "a motorcycle powered by bio-nanomachines." A bicycle is literally a cycle powered by a motor (the human body), and the human body is indeed a complex assemblage of biological nano-scale machines (cells, proteins, molecular motors, etc.). The description is technically true but intentionally uses grandiose scientific language to disguise the deeply mundane reality.

The Humor

The comic plays on the gap between technically-correct-but-misleading descriptions and everyday reality. It is a satire of both pickup-artist culture and the way scientific or technical jargon can be used to make ordinary things sound extraordinary. The guy is essentially using the same trick as a misleading advertisement -- describing a product in the most impressive-sounding terms possible while being technically truthful. The woman's enthusiastic reaction shows that the jargon works as intended, and the caption reveals the cynical calculation behind it. There is also a layer of self-deprecating nerd humor: this is a guy whose idea of a smooth move involves the phrase "bio-nanomachines."

References

The term "nanomachines" comes from the field of nanotechnology and molecular biology, where biological structures like ribosomes, motor proteins (kinesin, myosin), and ATP synthase are sometimes described as nanoscale machines. The comic takes this legitimate scientific framing and weaponizes it for comedic deception.