recommendations
Explanation
The Joke
A bearded man tells his partner, "Honey... I just ordered some olive oil on Amazon, and the recommendations are just... really weird." The screen displays the recommendation: "You might enjoy these other liquid hydrocarbons." Below the comic, a caption reads: "The robot revolution was less subtle than we'd expected."
The joke is that Amazon's recommendation algorithm has been taken over (or replaced) by an AI that classifies products by their chemical properties rather than their culinary uses. Olive oil is technically a liquid hydrocarbon -- it's an organic compound made of carbon and hydrogen chains. So from a purely chemical standpoint, recommending "other liquid hydrocarbons" (which could include gasoline, kerosene, or crude oil) is technically accurate. It's just not useful advice for someone making salad.
The Humor
The humor comes from the idea that a robot revolution wouldn't announce itself with dramatic Terminator-style violence but would instead reveal itself through subtly off-kilter product recommendations. The AI behind the recommendation engine has started thinking like a machine rather than a human -- categorizing olive oil by its molecular structure rather than its purpose in a kitchen. The caption's observation that the revolution was "less subtle than we'd expected" is itself ironic, because this is actually an extremely subtle sign that something has gone wrong -- the kind of thing you might dismiss as a glitch before realizing the machines have started optimizing for their own logic rather than human needs.