Explain SMBC — the wiki for Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal

The Joke

A man calls a phone sex line and is immediately mocked by the operator for still using a landline telephone. The operator asks if he has heard of the internet, implying that phone sex is an outdated service. The caller defends himself by saying he does not like to be "too connected" and that the phone is "more personal." The operator mocks his reasoning, calling it an "arbitrary distinction" and finding it amazing he is alone on a Saturday night.

The caller, exasperated, just wants five minutes of sexy talk. The operator finally obliges -- but the dirty talk is entirely about how old-fashioned the caller is: "I can tell from your voice that you'd like to use your fingers on me... because the last time your finger was in a hole, it was on a rotary dial!" The caller is satisfied ("There we go"), while the operator is annoyed that even insults count as acceptable dirty talk for this customer.

The Humor

The comic plays with the absurdity of phone sex as a concept in the modern internet age. The phone sex operator breaks character to become a tech-savvy critic who cannot believe anyone still calls for this service. The humor escalates as every attempt at conversation turns into roasting the caller for being technologically behind the times. The final punchline works on two levels: the operator's "dirty talk" is really just another insult about the caller's age and outdated technology (referencing rotary dial phones), but the caller finds it satisfying anyway, suggesting he is so starved for any kind of intimate conversation that even mockery will do. The operator's final "Damn you!" shows frustration that she cannot even properly insult him without inadvertently giving him what he wants.