Explain SMBC — the wiki for Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal

nerd

2022-06-21 View on smbc-comics.com → 1 revision
nerd
Votey panel for nerd
This explanation is incomplete or may contain errors. It was generated by AI and has not yet been reviewed by a human editor.

Explanation

This comic jokes about quantum computing and encryption. A group of people gather around a computer screen to read a decrypted message that was designed to only be readable once quantum computers became powerful enough to break the encryption. After all that technological advancement, the revealed message simply says "NERRRRRRD" over and over.

The humor lies in the anticlimax: the comic imagines someone going through the elaborate effort of creating a quantum-encryption-resistant message -- something that would require decades of technological progress to decode -- only to use that monumental capability for a juvenile insult. It plays on the idea that nerds are exactly the kind of people who would both create such encryption and be the ones to finally crack it, making the insult a self-fulfilling prophecy. The caption below reinforces the joke by framing it as a real possibility, as if advertising a service for time-delayed trolling.

View History (1) Original Comic
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