nerd-fight
Explanation
The comic is minimalist and elegant. It shows just a few punctuation marks arranged as a mathematical-style inequality:
" , " > " , "
That is, it displays a comma in double quotes being declared "greater than" a comma presented with a different style of quotation marks (or possibly a semicolon, or an Oxford comma versus a regular comma -- the exact punctuation may vary in interpretation).
The caption reads: "I discovered a way to start nerd-fights without using letters, numbers, or sound."
The joke is about how deeply passionate (and combative) nerds, programmers, writers, and academics can be about seemingly trivial punctuation and typographical conventions. Classic "nerd fight" topics include:
- The Oxford comma (serial comma) debate: whether to use a comma before "and" in a list
- Straight quotes versus curly ("smart") quotes
- Tabs versus spaces for indentation in programming
- Semicolons versus commas in various syntactic contexts
- Different quotation mark styles across national conventions (English double quotes vs. single quotes, French guillemets, German low-high quotes)
By presenting the inequality using only punctuation marks, the comic demonstrates that you do not even need words to provoke an argument among the pedantically inclined -- the mere assertion that one punctuation style is superior to another is sufficient to ignite passionate debate. The humor is self-aware: SMBC's audience skews heavily toward exactly the kind of nerds who would indeed have strong opinions about such matters, making the comic itself a potential catalyst for the very fights it describes.