Explain SMBC — the wiki for Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal

pop

2023-12-08 View on smbc-comics.com → 1 revision
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pop
Votey panel for pop
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 depicts the afterlife processing system. A person dies (shown with a "pop" as they arrive) and an angel or afterlife bureaucrat is frustrated: "Dammit! Another human neither destined for heaven or hell! Another ghost!" The complaint is that everyone these days arrives with "unfinished business."

The final panel reveals the punchline: the ghost's "unfinished business" is an email inbox with 13,065,428 unread messages. The joke is that in the modern world, no one ever achieves "inbox zero" or clears all their obligations, so everyone dies with unfinished business by default -- meaning everyone becomes a ghost.

The humor plays on the traditional ghost mythology that spirits remain on Earth because of unresolved matters, and updates it for the digital age. The absurdly large number of unread emails is both exaggerated and relatable -- most people feel perpetually behind on email. The comic suggests that modern digital life has made it literally impossible to die without unfinished business, breaking the afterlife's sorting system. It is also a commentary on how digital communication has created an infinite, ever-growing to-do list that can never truly be completed.

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