Explain SMBC — the wiki for Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal

they-2

2024-10-20 View on smbc-comics.com → 1 revision
they-2
Votey panel for they-2
This explanation is incomplete or may contain errors. It was generated by AI and has not yet been reviewed by a human editor.

Explanation

This comic is a single-panel political satire about conspiracy theories and the concept of shadowy elites. The top panel shows a gathering of well-dressed people on what appears to be a yacht or balcony, with a speaker announcing: "Welcome to the first meeting of the Pyramidal Hidden Elite Bicycle Club! Membership perks include credit for the economy, the weather, all crime, and in general any system too large for an average person to fathom."

The bottom panel delivers the caption: "Now you know who's being referred to whenever someone mentions a non-specific 'THEY' in power."

The humor works by taking the vague conspiratorial "they" -- as in "they control everything" or "they don't want you to know" -- and imagining it as a literal, self-aware club that openly takes credit for everything. The absurdity of a formal organization cheerfully claiming responsibility for the weather and "all crime" satirizes how conspiracy thinking attributes intentional coordination to complex systems that are actually chaotic and uncontrolled. The "Bicycle Club" detail adds an extra layer of silliness, grounding the sinister cabal in something mundanely suburban. The comic mocks both conspiracy theorists (for imagining such a group exists) and actual elites (by suggesting that if such a group did exist, they'd be exactly this smug about it).

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