nouning
Explanation
This comic satirizes the human tendency to turn every concept into a concrete noun — to reify abstractions into things that either "exist" or don't.
In the first panel, a character asks an alien whether math exists and whether it is "real." The alien responds with exasperation: "Does everything have to be a noun with you?"
In the second panel, the human asks whether running exists and whether the alien has ever held "a piece of running." The alien pushes back, asking whether you can break off a piece of thinking and put it in a box — pointing out that not everything is a discrete object.
In the third panel, the alien asks whether a particular scientific discovery was important. The human replies with "Well, does 'running' exist? If so, does 'running' sit out there?" — applying the same nouning logic to increasingly absurd lengths.
The final panel shows the stars in the night sky spelling out "PLEASE BE MORE SPECIFIC, LOVE GOD," suggesting that even God is frustrated by humanity's obsessive need to categorize everything as a concrete, existing "thing."
The comic is a philosophical joke about reification — the cognitive tendency to treat abstract processes, relationships, and patterns as if they were physical objects. This is a recurring theme in philosophy of language and metaphysics. The alien serves as the straight man, pointing out that verbs, processes, and abstractions don't need to "exist" as nouns to be meaningful. The God punchline elevates the joke by implying that the universe itself is annoyed by imprecise ontological questions.