Explain SMBC — the wiki for Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal

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2024-04-05 View on smbc-comics.com → 1 revision
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Votey panel for perhaps
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 features a man delivering a monologue about how, ever since God "packed away" and society became secular, people's speech has become a kind of veil. Not a "veiled face" exactly, but rather that modern people's words are always slightly turning away from what they really mean. He talks about how couples especially engage in this dance of indirectness -- never saying what they want from their partner exactly, but relying on the "lightness of intimacy" and the way "subtext operates in love." He suggests that if an alien species observed our tired, loveless marriages, they would find it odd that we go on for so long indirectly.

After this lengthy, philosophical, and somewhat pretentious monologue, his partner simply says "I have to go now. You aim." He then responds with crude, direct language (offering to have sex with the listener's mother), which is the exact opposite of the veiled, indirect speech he was just rhapsodizing about.

The humor lies in the extreme contrast between the character's lofty theorizing about the subtlety of human communication and his immediate pivot to the crudest possible directness. The comic satirizes intellectuals who romanticize indirect communication while being perfectly capable of (and perhaps preferring) blunt vulgarity. It also pokes fun at pseudo-philosophical ramblings that sound deep but ultimately say very little.

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