Explain SMBC — the wiki for Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal

Volcano

2021-08-31 View on smbc-comics.com → 1 revision
Volcano
Votey panel for Volcano
This explanation is incomplete or may contain errors. It was generated by AI and has not yet been reviewed by a human editor.

Explanation

The Joke

A volcano demands a sacrifice, threatening to erupt. When offered "a virgin sacrifice," the volcano protests: it's not into that. It explains that as a "young volcano god," it doesn't want a virgin — it wants "someone confident, maybe experienced, someone sexually experienced." Someone volunteers, "I could do that!" The volcano's final response undercuts everything: "You know the silly thing is I still prefer young attractive people."

The Humor

The comic plays on the well-known mythological trope of sacrificing virgins to appease gods or volcanoes. The volcano subverts the trope by having modern, relatable dating preferences — it doesn't want an inexperienced virgin but rather someone confident and experienced, much like a person on a dating app might describe their ideal partner.

The final panel delivers a second twist: despite the volcano's seemingly progressive rejection of the virgin-sacrifice tradition, it still defaults to preferring "young attractive people," revealing the same shallow superficiality that underlies most human romantic preferences. The joke is that even an ancient geological deity can't escape the basic, somewhat crass realities of attraction. Weinersmith often uses supernatural or fantastical setups to highlight mundane human tendencies.

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