Language
Explanation
The Joke
The comic begins with a tech company announcement: thanks to artificial intelligence, people around the world can now communicate regardless of what language they speak. However, the presenter immediately identifies this as "a terrible mistake." She shows a graph of "network size versus absolute brainfarts" -- as more people are connected in a network, the total amount of nonsensical or stupid content grows dramatically. She explains that once a group exceeds about 100 people, each additional member is more likely to create "strife than cause pleasure."
The proposed solution is wonderfully dystopian: a consortium of tech companies will implement "anti-translation." When you communicate online, your words will be scrambled into an artificial language that can only be deciphered by a random set of other people. To spread thoughts beyond a small cell of 100 humans, you'll be forced to stand up, walk to another person, look them in the eye, and say something -- an act that apparently filters out most of the terrible opinions that seem "very insightful when typed onto a keyboard." The presenter concludes she hopes never to hear from the audience again. Someone in the crowd asks, "Isn't this like the Tower of Babel?" and the answer comes: "God's greatest miracle."
The Humor
The comic satirizes how the internet and social media have amplified humanity's worst tendencies. The humor comes from the escalating absurdity of the proposed solution -- rather than fixing online discourse, the tech companies decide to essentially un-invent universal communication. The callback to the Tower of Babel is the cherry on top, reframing God's punishment of humanity (confusing their languages so they could not cooperate) as actually a merciful act. The joke also takes a shot at the way people behave differently online versus in person -- suggesting that requiring face-to-face communication would naturally eliminate most toxic discourse.
References
The Tower of Babel is a story from Genesis 11:1-9 in which humanity, speaking a single language, attempts to build a tower to heaven. God confounds their speech so they can no longer understand each other, scattering them across the earth. The comic reinterprets this punishment as a blessing. The network-size graph alludes to real research on group dynamics, such as Dunbar's number (around 150), which suggests there's a cognitive limit to the number of stable social relationships a person can maintain.