this-is-incredible
Explanation
The Joke
A child excitedly tells his father that his favorite band member left his favorite band and joined a different band, and it is the same band. "This is incredible!" he says. The father, determined to show he is not emotionally affected, escalates through increasingly absurd demonstrations of his emotional invulnerability: "I'm not non-sad. I'm anti-sad." He rubs a freshly-sliced onion into his eye while claiming he is not crying. He punches himself in the nose and says his tear ducts stay totally dry. He offers to drain the entire swimming pool with his face acting as a reversed water hose. The child, fed up, simply says "I hate you, Daddy." A caption reads "Later" and reveals the father attempting the "onion trick" that "wants real bad to work" -- suggesting he actually is deeply sad but is desperately trying to suppress it, and the comic ends with the observation that "parenting is about sacrifice."
The Humor
The comic satirizes a certain type of hyper-masculine emotional suppression, where a father refuses to show any vulnerability in front of his child, even about something as trivial as a band member switching groups. The escalating absurdity of his demonstrations (onion in the eye, punching his own nose, human water hose) makes the denial more and more obvious -- the harder he tries to prove he does not care, the clearer it becomes that he does. The final twist reveals that the father's entire performance was an elaborate coping mechanism, and he later tries the onion trick in private, hoping it will actually make him stop feeling sad. The punchline "parenting is about sacrifice" reframes his emotional suppression as a misguided form of parental devotion.