Explain SMBC — the wiki for Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal

pocket

2019-09-09 View on smbc-comics.com → 1 revision
pocket
Votey panel for pocket
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 presents a 2x2 grid of conspiracy theories, each following the same format: "[Type] conspiracy theory: You're in the pocket of Big Pharma!" The four variants are: Regular Conspiracy Theory, Nanotechnology Conspiracy Theory, Dragon Conspiracy Theory, and Women's Fashion Conspiracy Theory. The first three all say "You're in the pocket of Big Pharma!" But the Women's Fashion version has its own twist: "You're in the pocket of Big Pharma!" -- with the added joke that women's clothing is notorious for having tiny or nonexistent pockets.

Actually, all four panels use the same accusation -- "You're in the pocket of Big Pharma!" -- but the humor comes from the visual presentation. The Nanotechnology version shows a tiny person yelling, the Dragon version shows a dragon yelling, and the Women's Fashion version shows a person yelling while apparently dealing with the frustration of inadequate pockets. The running gag is that every type of conspiracy theorist, regardless of their specific domain, defaults to the same accusation.

The Humor

The comic satirizes how conspiracy theories across wildly different domains all tend to converge on the same basic structure -- someone is secretly controlled by a powerful interest ("in the pocket of Big Pharma"). Whether you are a regular conspiracy theorist, a nanotechnology conspiracy theorist, a dragon conspiracy theorist, or a women's fashion conspiracy theorist, the accusation is identical. The absurdity of applying the same paranoid framework to dragons and women's fashion as to actual pharmaceutical companies highlights how formulaic conspiracy thinking can be. The women's fashion panel adds a secondary joke about the well-known complaint that women's clothing has impractically small pockets.

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