jimmy
Explanation
The Joke
A TV news anchor announces: "And today, Jimmy Gerril celebrates his sixty-eighth birthday, thanks to science!" The scene shows an elderly man (Jimmy) sitting alone at a table with a small birthday cake, watching the broadcast. The caption reads: "The worst part about the discovery of immortality was saving your money for it while watching deathless celebrity Instagram pets."
The Humor
The comic imagines a future where immortality has been discovered but is presumably expensive — so expensive that ordinary people like Jimmy have to save up for it while watching celebrities (who can already afford it) use the technology on their pets. The absurdity is multilayered: immortality exists, but the first widespread use is on celebrity Instagram pets rather than curing death for regular people. Jimmy is 68 and aging normally, spending his birthday alone watching immortal celebrity animals live their best lives online, while he scrimps and saves to eventually afford the treatment himself. The humor comes from the painfully plausible scenario that even the most transformative technology in human history would be distributed according to wealth and social media clout, with pets of influencers getting priority over ordinary humans.
Context
The comic satirizes wealth inequality in access to medical technology, the cultural obsession with celebrity pets on social media, and the broader theme of how revolutionary technologies get commercialized in unexpected and inequitable ways. SMBC frequently explores futuristic scenarios where human nature and capitalism undermine the promise of transformative technologies.