Explain SMBC — the wiki for Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal

seeing

2022-06-30 View on smbc-comics.com → 1 revision
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seeing
Votey panel for seeing
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Explanation

This comic plays on the concept of aging and deteriorating eyesight, but takes it in an unexpected philosophical direction.

In the first panel, someone asks the long-haired character what their favorite thing about being a kid was. The answer is "seeing clearly" -- which initially seems like a straightforward comment about childhood vision. In the second panel, the character elaborates: as adults get older, their vision worsens, they start seeing floaters, edges get raggedy, they need reading glasses, and eventually things start looking grainy with lost contrast. The listener assumes this is building toward some kind of complaint about aging.

But in the third panel, the character pivots: they note that many people think nice drawings are "photorealistic" -- meaning people confuse artistic quality with visual fidelity to photographs. The final panel delivers the punchline: "The fuck are you talking about?" The listener is completely lost because the character has made an absurd logical leap -- connecting the biological decline of human vision to the idea that people's aesthetic standards are shaped by their degraded eyesight. The implication is that people think photorealism is the gold standard of art only because their own vision is so poor that mere photographic accuracy seems impressive.

The humor comes from the character presenting this bizarre, convoluted theory with total seriousness, and the other person's bewildered reaction.

View History (1) Original Comic