Sheila
Explanation
The Joke
A woman exclaims "Oh my God! Sheila!" upon encountering someone. Another person explains their scheme: "I've created a neural network that finds attractive, recently-single people looking for long-term relationships who have recently died or been dumped, then matches them with someone extremely similar to me." When asked about their motives, they continue: "Then I swoop in on the new, very freshly disoriented, yet arousing, 'oh you remind me of someone I used to know' feeling, and I date them. Then you'll discover I'm great, feel that I'm Sheila." The other person responds: "You need a hobby." The schemer replies: "This IS my hobby."
The comic depicts someone who has built an elaborate AI-powered system not for any grand purpose, but as an incredibly overcomplicated and ethically questionable dating strategy. They use a neural network to identify emotionally vulnerable people on the rebound and then exploit their resemblance to the person's lost partner to manipulate them into a relationship.
The Humor
The humor comes from the extreme disproportion between the technological sophistication of the system and the pathetic, manipulative goal it serves. Building a neural network is impressive; using it to prey on emotionally vulnerable people by mimicking their exes is both creepy and sad. The punchline -- "You need a hobby" / "This IS my hobby" -- is the perfect capper, because it reframes this elaborate scheme not even as a serious romantic pursuit but as a casual pastime, making it simultaneously less threatening and more disturbing. The comic also satirizes the tech industry's tendency to apply sophisticated AI solutions to fundamentally human problems in ways that are tone-deaf at best and predatory at worst.