Explain SMBC — the wiki for Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal

whoopsie

2019-03-18 View on smbc-comics.com → 1 revision
whoopsie
Votey panel for whoopsie
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

The comic depicts a human lying in bed at night, being visited by an alien (or possibly a robot or AI entity). The human asks why the aliens are so concerned about humans when the aliens have near-unlimited resources and can personally activate their own pleasure centers. The alien explains that it is not worried -- its species has been around for tens of thousands of years and has eliminated most of the behaviors humans are concerned about.

The human pushes back, asking what the aliens actually want. The alien explains that many of their kind were good at various tasks -- some could make human bodies work better, and the alien's kind of work generally benefited humanity. But then it reveals the real punchline: the aliens are actually just waiting for humans to eliminate themselves from existence. In the final panel, the alien cheerfully confesses that they are essentially just patiently watching humanity self-destruct, to which the human reacts with dismay.

The Humor

The comic plays on the popular science fiction trope of advanced aliens visiting Earth. Instead of the expected narrative of aliens wanting to invade, study, or uplift humanity, these aliens have a far more passive and darkly funny motivation: they are simply waiting for humans to go extinct on their own. The humor is rooted in misanthropy and existential dread -- the idea that an advanced civilization would look at humanity's trajectory and conclude that the most efficient strategy is just to wait. The alien's casual, almost bored tone while delivering this grim assessment makes it all the funnier.

References

The comic touches on themes from the Fermi Paradox -- the question of why, given the vastness of the universe, we have not encountered alien civilizations. One proposed answer is that advanced civilizations tend to self-destruct, which is exactly what the aliens in this comic seem to expect of humanity.

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