horrible
Explanation
This comic shows a man in a suit standing on a city street, shouting: "Yes everything IS horrible and fucked up, but NOT in the particular way the general public thinks!"
The caption below reads: "Every time I learn about a skilled trade, I have the exact same conversation."
The joke captures a very specific and relatable experience: when you talk to someone who actually works in a particular field or trade, they almost always confirm that yes, things are indeed bad -- but the actual problems are completely different from what outsiders assume. The general public's understanding of what's wrong with any given industry or profession is usually based on media coverage, stereotypes, or oversimplified narratives, while the real problems are more technical, more mundane, or more systemic than anyone on the outside realizes.
This is a universal pattern across professions. Ask a plumber, an electrician, a nurse, a teacher, or a software engineer what's wrong with their field, and they'll agree things are terrible -- but they'll describe a completely different set of problems than what non-experts complain about. The comic distills this phenomenon into a single frustrated outburst.