Explain SMBC — the wiki for Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal

The Joke

The comic features a group of friends discussing the multiverse. One character shares some bad news: they have just conducted a study on the cosmic microwave background and their data strongly suggests that their relationship is anomalous. Specifically, there is only a tiny percentage chance that they would end up as friends in most possible universes. Most of the time, they never meet, or one of them dies in an accident first.

The conversation then takes a turn. One character points out that if they are among trillions of possible universes, and they happen to be in the one lucky universe where they are all friends, perhaps they should not let the others know -- because if the universe discovered just how statistically anomalous they are, it might somehow "correct" the error. The final panel has a character remarking, "How very anomalous we are," in a tone that is simultaneously touching and unsettling.

The Humor

The humor lies in applying the cold logic of multiverse theory and statistical analysis to something as warm and personal as friendship. The idea that your friend group is a cosmic statistical outlier -- and that you might need to hide this fact from the universe itself to avoid a "correction" -- blends scientific concepts with a kind of superstitious anxiety. It is both a celebration of the improbability of human connection and a parody of how physicists can turn anything, even their own friendships, into a data analysis problem. The joke also plays on the concept of the anthropic principle and observer selection effects, suggesting that perhaps we only notice our friendships because we are in the rare universe where they exist.

References

The comic references the multiverse hypothesis, the cosmic microwave background (CMB) radiation which is a key piece of evidence in cosmology, and the general concept of statistical anomalies. It also touches on ideas related to the anthropic principle -- the philosophical observation that we can only observe a universe compatible with our own existence.