turkin
Explanation
This is an extended multi-panel comic whose title "Turkin" is a portmanteau of "Turkey" and "Turing," referencing Alan Turing and the Turing Test. The full title pun visible on the comic's page is "Turkin hard or hardly turkin?" -- itself a play on the common workplace joke "Working hard or hardly working?"
The comic follows a narrative about politics and political discourse, structured as a commentary on how modern political conversation has become so formulaic and scripted that it is indistinguishable from an automated process. The comic appears to follow characters engaging in political discussions where their arguments are so predictable and template-driven that they essentially pass (or fail) a kind of "political Turing Test" -- you cannot tell whether the person making the argument is genuinely thinking or simply regurgitating pre-formed talking points.
The concept ties into the Mechanical Turk -- an 18th-century chess-playing automaton that was actually operated by a hidden human chess player. The "Turk" in the title may also reference this, suggesting that what appears to be genuine political reasoning is really just mechanical repetition, or conversely, that what seems mechanical might have a real person behind it after all.
The comic satirizes the state of political discourse by suggesting that the arguments people make in political debates have become so standardized and predictable that they could be generated by a simple algorithm. This connects to broader SMBC themes about artificial intelligence, the nature of consciousness, and whether human behavior is as sophisticated as we like to believe.
The pun in the title also works as a seasonal reference, with "turkey" evoking Thanksgiving and the holiday season (the comic was published on December 12), adding yet another layer to the wordplay.