Twitchy
Explanation
The Joke
An alien is examining a human and notices that the human keeps making small involuntary movements. The human explains this is a "gross thing where humans' muscles twitch in various configurations." The alien, disturbed, asks the human to stop. The human tries to keep still but then says "Tell me how you feel without doing the twitchy-face-muscle thing." The final panel reveals the punchline: "Oh Jesus, the twitchy parts are most of it" — meaning that human facial expressions (the "twitchy muscles") are the primary way humans communicate emotion.
The Humor
The comic defamiliarizes something we take entirely for granted — facial expressions. By viewing human faces through an alien's eyes, the comic reframes our subtle, automatic muscle movements as grotesque involuntary twitching. The humor escalates when the human is asked to communicate feelings without moving their face and realizes they essentially cannot.
The joke highlights how dependent human communication is on nonverbal facial cues. We think of ourselves as rational beings who communicate through language, but an enormous amount of our emotional expression is conveyed through tiny, involuntary muscle contractions around the eyes, mouth, and forehead. Stripped of context and familiarity, these movements are objectively bizarre.
Broader Context
SMBC frequently uses aliens as a device to examine human behavior from an outside perspective. By making the familiar strange, Weinersmith highlights the oddities of human biology and social behavior that we normally overlook. This comic fits into a broader category of SMBC strips that explore how weird human bodies and social norms would look to an impartial observer.