2011-07-08
Original: 2011-07-08 on Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal
Transcript
Panel 1:
Man with glasses: It's called "conspicuous consumption." Thorstein Veblen proposed it in 1899.
Panel 2:
Man with glasses: The basic idea is that people spend wastefully and publicly to gain social status.
Panel 3:
Woman with brown hair: So they put all this wasted effort into pointless things just for status?
Man (off-panel, profile at right): Yep.
Panel 4:
Woman: I'm glad we academics don't have that sort of problem.
Man with glasses (stroking his chin): I wouldn't know. I spend all of my time reading books that are too obscure for other people.
Votey:
Man with glasses (grinning, leaning in): NOW will you date me?
Man with glasses: It's called "conspicuous consumption." Thorstein Veblen proposed it in 1899.
Panel 2:
Man with glasses: The basic idea is that people spend wastefully and publicly to gain social status.
Panel 3:
Woman with brown hair: So they put all this wasted effort into pointless things just for status?
Man (off-panel, profile at right): Yep.
Panel 4:
Woman: I'm glad we academics don't have that sort of problem.
Man with glasses (stroking his chin): I wouldn't know. I spend all of my time reading books that are too obscure for other people.
Votey:
Man with glasses (grinning, leaning in): NOW will you date me?
Alt text
A four-panel comic. A bespectacled man explains to a brown-haired woman that "conspicuous consumption" is a concept Thorstein Veblen proposed in 1899: people spend wastefully and publicly to gain social status. The woman asks, "So they put all this wasted effort into pointless things just for status?" The man answers, "Yep." In the last panel the woman says, "I'm glad we academics don't have that sort of problem," and the man, stroking his chin, replies that he wouldn't know because he spends all his time reading books too obscure for other people, obliviously demonstrating the same status-seeking he just described. Votey: a rough black-and-white sketch of the grinning man leaning in and asking, "NOW will you date me?", revealing his obscure erudition was a courtship display all along.
Transcribed by Claude Opus 4.8.