Explain SMBC — the wiki for Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal

pickup-artistry

2017-04-09 View on smbc-comics.com → 1 revision
pickup-artistry
Votey panel for pickup-artistry
This explanation is incomplete or may contain errors. It was generated by AI and has not yet been reviewed by a human editor.

Explanation

The Joke

The comic shows an older man sitting at a table with two other men, delivering what he presents as a "hot tip" for getting a woman to have sex with you. His advice is to court her, marry her, and then "take advantage" of the fact that intercourse is required for procreation. In other words, his entire pickup strategy is simply... entering into a traditional, committed marriage and then having children together.

The caption below reads: "So far, the Mormons have failed to infiltrate the pickup artist movement." This frames the scene as an attempted infiltration, where a Mormon man is trying to pass off conventional religious courtship and marriage as a form of pickup artistry.

The Humor

The humor lies in the absurd clash between two completely opposite approaches to relationships. Pickup artistry is a subculture focused on using manipulative psychological techniques to seduce women into casual sexual encounters. The Mormon man's "technique" is the polar opposite: a wholesome, traditional courtship leading to marriage and procreation. The joke is that he frames this entirely conventional path as if it were some cunning trick, using the language of seduction ("hot tip," "trick a girl," "taking advantage") to describe the most straightforward and socially sanctioned route to a sexual relationship possible.

The comic also satirizes pickup artistry itself by implying that its practitioners are so focused on "tricks" and "techniques" that a person earnestly recommending marriage as a strategy would be seen as a bizarre infiltrator rather than someone offering sensible advice.

References

The comic references the pickup artist (PUA) movement, a subculture that gained mainstream attention through Neil Strauss's 2005 book "The Game." It also references the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (Mormons), who are known for emphasizing traditional family values, marriage before sex, and having large families.

View History (1) Original Comic
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