Explain SMBC — the wiki for Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal

The Joke

A man sits across from a woman at what appears to be a table during a breakup conversation. He pleads: "Are you SURE you want to unsubscribe from my FAIRLY GOOD SEX and STRONG OPINIONS ON POLITICS?" The caption reads: "The Internet has ruined breakups."

The comic maps the language and UX patterns of internet subscription services onto a romantic breakup. When you try to unsubscribe from a newsletter or cancel a subscription service, you are often presented with a guilt-tripping retention screen that highlights what you will lose, typically using bold text to emphasize the supposed benefits. The man is doing exactly this -- framing the breakup as an unsubscription and desperately highlighting his "features" (sex and political opinions) as if they were selling points in a retention email.

The Humor

The humor works because the internet retention-page language maps so perfectly onto the desperation of someone being dumped. The bolded phrases "FAIRLY GOOD SEX" and "STRONG OPINIONS ON POLITICS" are hilariously mediocre value propositions -- "fairly good" is not exactly a ringing endorsement, and "strong opinions on politics" is more of a warning than a perk. The joke captures how internet interaction patterns have seeped into our offline behavior, and how the manipulative "are you SURE?" patterns of subscription services mirror the bargaining stage of a breakup. The caption ties it together by naming the phenomenon directly.