muffins
Explanation
The Joke
A woman asks a man "What are you doing?" He replies: "Scrolling. Scrolling to find the good... the... make the muffin." She points out "But it's been three days." The caption below reads: "Large language models finally made it possible for personal anecdotes on recipe websites to occupy infinite space."
The Humor
The comic satirizes two things simultaneously. First, the well-known frustration of recipe websites, which force readers to scroll through lengthy personal anecdotes, life stories, and SEO-optimized filler text before reaching the actual recipe. This is such a universal internet annoyance that it has become a meme in its own right.
Second, the comic adds a speculative twist: with large language models (LLMs) capable of generating unlimited text, these already-bloated recipe preambles can now be literally infinite. The man has been scrolling for three days and still hasn't reached the muffin recipe because the AI-generated personal anecdote never ends.
Broader Context
This comic sits at the intersection of two frequent SMBC themes: technology criticism and absurdist extrapolation. The joke about recipe websites padding their content is widely relatable, but the LLM angle elevates it from a simple observational joke to a commentary on how generative AI might make certain existing internet annoyances dramatically worse. The image of a man who has been scrolling for three days, still committed to reaching the recipe, captures both the stubbornness of internet users and the dystopian potential of AI-generated content bloat.