intelligence
Explanation
The Joke
This is a long-form comic exploring the concept of intelligence. It begins with people discussing what intelligence means, with various characters offering different perspectives. The comic cycles through increasingly absurd and contradictory definitions and applications of "intelligence" -- from academic smarts to emotional intelligence to street smarts to various forms of specialized knowledge.
As the comic progresses, each new character or group claims their particular form of intelligence is the real or most important one, while dismissing others. The comic escalates through various scenarios where different kinds of "intelligence" are pitted against each other, with each group convinced of their own superiority. The visual style shifts as it moves through different contexts -- academic settings, everyday life, and fantastical scenarios -- to illustrate how the concept of intelligence is stretched, distorted, and weaponized depending on who is defining it.
The Humor
The comic satirizes humanity's obsession with ranking and categorizing intelligence. Everyone wants to believe that the particular thing they are good at is the "real" intelligence, while the things they are bad at are trivial or meaningless. Weinersmith uses the long-form format to show how the concept of intelligence has become so broad and contested that it has essentially lost all meaning -- it has become a word people use to flatter themselves and dismiss others. The escalating absurdity mirrors real debates in psychology, education, and popular culture about IQ, multiple intelligences, emotional intelligence, and whether intelligence can even be meaningfully defined or measured. The comic's length itself is part of the joke -- it takes an absurdly thorough approach to demonstrate how absurdly thorough people get when defending their own brand of smartness.