poll
Explanation
This comic is a single-panel logic puzzle joke. A pollster calls someone and says: "Hi. I'm with the MC Escher Polling Agency. Are you going to immediately say no in response to this survey question?"
The joke is a self-referential paradox, similar to the liar's paradox ("This statement is false"). If the respondent says "No" (meaning they are not going to immediately say no), then they have just said no, contradicting their answer. If they say "Yes" (meaning they will say no), then they have not said no -- they said yes -- which also contradicts their answer. There is no consistent way to respond.
The polling agency is named after M.C. Escher, the Dutch artist famous for his "impossible" drawings -- staircases that loop back on themselves, hands drawing each other, waterfalls that flow uphill. Escher's work visualizes logical and spatial paradoxes, making his name the perfect brand for a polling agency that asks unanswerable questions.
The humor works because it takes the familiar, mundane experience of being interrupted by a phone pollster and transforms it into a philosophical trap. There is also a layer of satire about real polling: survey questions are often poorly worded or subtly designed to produce predetermined results, and this comic takes that concept to its logical extreme -- a question literally designed to be impossible to answer correctly. The baffled expression on the respondent's face perfectly captures the feeling of being confronted with an impossible question.