instance
Explanation
This comic depicts a couple in what appears to be a therapy or relationship conversation. The woman asks the man what he wants to talk about, and he brings up "Steve." He clarifies it's not that Steve has done anything wrong -- he just "can't see himself continuing to be friends with Steve for 20, 30 years." The woman suggests they could simply "spin up another instance of Steve's consciousness" -- implying a future where people can be digitally copied.
The man objects: "But it's not ethical to bring another being to life just to let our brains think we're talking to the real Steve." She responds with "Another!" -- demanding yet another copy. In the final panels, the woman asks again what he wants to talk about, he says "I've realized I'm gay," and she simply presses a button labeled "DEEN" (or similar), saying "Perfect" -- apparently resetting or replacing him too.
The humor works through a darkly comedic escalation. What starts as a relatable relationship conversation about drifting apart from friends quickly becomes a horror scenario about the casual disposal and replacement of conscious beings. The woman's cheerful willingness to "spin up" new copies of people whenever relationships become inconvenient is both funny and unsettling. The final twist -- where she replaces her own partner just as casually -- reveals she has been treating all people as disposable instances all along. It satirizes both the Silicon Valley mindset of treating everything as an optimization problem and the human tendency to wish we could simply "fix" the inconvenient aspects of our relationships.