Explain SMBC — the wiki for Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal

oh-yes

2024-04-27 View on smbc-comics.com → 1 revision
oh-yes
Votey panel for oh-yes
This explanation is incomplete or may contain errors. It was generated by AI and has not yet been reviewed by a human editor.

Explanation

In this comic, a couple is in bed together. The woman is shouting "STOP IT! NO! STOP DOING THAT!" while the man beside her is saying in an exaggeratedly theatrical voice: "What is the matter, lover? That is so good. Yes oh oh. Oh. Yes." The caption at the bottom reads: '"Uncanny Valleying" is my new favorite sex-prank.'

The joke is built on the concept of the "uncanny valley," a well-known phenomenon from robotics and animation where a human likeness that is almost -- but not quite -- realistic becomes deeply unsettling rather than endearing. The man is applying this concept to dirty talk: he is saying things that are technically the right kind of words one might say during intimacy, but delivering them in a way that is just slightly off -- too stilted, too formally phrased, with awkward cadence ("Yes oh oh. Oh. Yes."). The result is speech that sits in an "uncanny valley" of pillow talk: close enough to be recognizable but wrong enough to be deeply disturbing to his partner.

The humor comes from the creative application of a concept from computer science and psychology to an entirely unrelated domain (bedroom behavior), and from the very relatable idea of a partner deliberately being annoying in an inventive and nerdy way. It also plays on the inherent awkwardness that already exists in how people talk during intimate moments -- the man's prank works precisely because that kind of language is already somewhat awkward and formulaic, making it easy to push into uncanny territory.

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