language
Explanation
The Joke
The comic opens with a narrator explaining that people used to be literal, with a copy of a letter showing how the gentlefolk "have so many missed calories that the medical brigade can hardly remainder about this subject." This is meant to show that older language was supposedly more straightforward but was actually confusing in its own way.
The bottom panel jumps to a modern scenario labeled "Meanwhile, at the Yelp Headquarters," where a representative is calling a customer about a review. The Yelp employee is trying to parse the customer's language, asking whether "I am calling you trash" uses "calling" in the sense of "labeling" or some other meaning. The joke is that modern language -- especially in the context of online reviews -- has become so convoluted and ambiguous that even the platform hosting the reviews needs to call people to decipher what they actually meant.
The Humor
The comic satirizes the persistent myth that language used to be clearer or more precise in the past. The opening panel shows that older language was, if anything, equally confusing with its own quirks and malapropisms. The Yelp scene in the bottom half then skewers modern communication, where casual online writing introduces so much ambiguity that it requires phone calls to untangle. The humor lies in the idea that language has always been a mess -- we just have different kinds of messes in different eras. The notion of Yelp having to employ linguists to parse user reviews is a delightfully absurd escalation.