Starstuff
Explanation
This comic is a quick, sharp parody of popular science communication, particularly the Carl Sagan tradition of describing humans in poetic cosmic terms.
The header text reads: "Science Communication Pro Tip: Any aspect of humans can be dramatically attributed to beautiful aspects of the cosmos."
Below, a woman who resembles a science communicator or professor (with round glasses and a blazer) dramatically declares: "We alone are the way that starstuff wanks itself."
The joke is a riff on the famous Carl Sagan quote, "We are a way for the cosmos to know itself," which reframes human consciousness as the universe becoming self-aware. Sagan's original quote is meant to inspire awe and wonder. Weinersmith takes the same rhetorical formula -- "we are a way for [cosmic thing] to [verb] itself" -- and replaces the lofty verb with a crude one, pointing out that the same poetic framework can make literally any human activity sound cosmically significant, including decidedly un-majestic ones.
The comic satirizes the tendency in science popularization to overuse this kind of grandiose framing, where mundane or even embarrassing human behaviors get elevated to cosmic significance just by invoking our origins in stellar nucleosynthesis. It's a reminder that while "we are made of starstuff" is genuinely true and beautiful, the rhetorical trick of connecting humans to the cosmos can be applied indiscriminately -- and absurdly.