meeting
Explanation
This is a single-panel comic with a caption below.
A man in a suit is shown speaking to someone (seen from behind), saying: "I really feel this meeting could have been an email."
The caption reads: "It was the harshest way possible to end a first date."
The joke operates on two levels. First, "this meeting could have been an email" is a ubiquitous workplace complaint about unnecessary meetings. Second, by recontextualizing this phrase as something said at the end of a first date, the comic turns it into a devastating romantic rejection. The man is essentially telling his date that the entire in-person encounter was a waste of time and could have been handled with a brief, impersonal message.
The humor comes from the collision of corporate jargon with romantic social situations, and the brutally efficient cruelty of dismissing a date as an unproductive meeting. It also comments on how thoroughly corporate language has infiltrated everyday life.