requiem-for-a-blockbuster
Explanation
The Joke
An older person is nostalgically telling a younger person about the experience of going to Blockbuster Video. They describe walking around a store "absolutely brimming with all sorts of movies," picking copies off the shelf, and going to a counter "surrounded by posters and candy." The younger person responds with the harsh modern equivalent: "You walked around in a beautiful building with all sorts of movies in it and copies of movies you could touch from the shelves and go to the counter surrounded by posters? So you went to a store?" The older person acknowledges: "You went to a rental store."
The final panel has the older person admitting that if they were really lucky, "you could rent a copy of a movie from a store that also happened to be within walking distance, taking you to sections and everything at an apocalypse-proof pace." The younger person responds: "Just want to sit and never leave home, and Netflix and chill was better, and now the Earth has been forced to adapt to that."
The Humor
The comic satirizes Blockbuster nostalgia by pointing out that the experience people romanticize — browsing physical media in a retail location — was actually just... going to a store. The older person's loving, detailed description of the Blockbuster experience is systematically deflated by the younger person, who correctly identifies that none of these features were unique or special. The humor comes from the gap between the reverent nostalgia and the mundane reality.
The title "Requiem for a Blockbuster" elevates a defunct video rental chain to the level of a classical lament, which is itself part of the joke.
Broader Context
SMBC often examines how nostalgia distorts our perception of the past. This comic fits into a broader cultural conversation about whether convenience (streaming) has actually made life better or whether something intangible was lost. Weinersmith's answer here seems to be: what was "lost" was mostly just mild inconvenience, repackaged as charm through the lens of memory.