smell-this
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Explanation
The Joke
A father is presented with a series of sensory challenges by his family. First, a child asks "Dad? Is this yogurt spoiled?" and the dad says "Let me smell it." Then: "Dad? I think I have a sore throat" -- "Let me have a look." Then: "Honey, does the water taste funny?" -- "Let me taste it." And finally: "Dad, I have no idea what sardines normally smell like" -- once again, "Let me smell it."
In the bottom panels, the father has an existential crisis: "My God... I don't know ANYTHING about anything. The more I understand a thing, the more unfamiliar it becomes." His child asks "What does that make me?" and the dad says "How totally would you know?" The family erupts in screaming ("AAA AAA AAA"). The joke is about the dad who has become the designated sensory evaluator for the entire household -- the person everyone turns to for definitive judgments about whether food is spoiled, throats look infected, or water tastes off. The deeper punchline is that this role is absurd, because the dad doesn't actually have any special expertise; he's just the default authority figure everyone defers to.
The Humor
The comedy works on two levels. On the surface, it's a relatable domestic observation: in many families, one parent (often the dad) becomes the go-to person for sniffing, tasting, and inspecting questionable items, despite having no special qualifications. The escalation from yogurt to sore throats to sardines builds the absurdity. The deeper, more existential humor emerges when the dad realizes that his role as family sensory expert is built on nothing -- he doesn't actually know what anything is "supposed" to smell or taste like. This triggers an existential crisis that mirrors philosophical skepticism about whether anyone truly has baseline knowledge of anything. The blog post noted that an earlier version contained a typo where the dad offered to "taste" the kid's sore throat, which Weinersmith called "literally the creepiest typo in the history of typoes."