Explain SMBC — the wiki for Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal

iso

2022-07-01 View on smbc-comics.com → 1 revision
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iso
Votey panel for iso
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Explanation

This comic is a pun on "ISO" -- the abbreviation for "Initial Sex Offering," a play on "IPO" (Initial Public Offering), the financial term for when a company first offers its shares to the public on a stock exchange.

In the comic, a man with glasses pitches an "Initial Sex Offering" to another man at what appears to be a bar. The second man immediately responds with enthusiastic interest ("What? When? Who else is in?"), reacting to the word "sex" while completely ignoring that the phrasing is modeled on startup/finance jargon. The humor lies in the contrast between the cold, transactional language of Silicon Valley fundraising and the primal subject of sex -- and the fact that the target audience (a tech bro) responds to it exactly as they would to a real IPO pitch.

The caption below -- "Fun Fact: You can sleep with anyone in Silicon Valley" -- extends the joke by satirizing Silicon Valley culture, implying that tech industry people are so eager and socially awkward that they'd enthusiastically agree to anything framed in startup terminology, especially if it involves sex.

View History (1) Original Comic