the-past

A five-part SMBC comic delivering a deadpan pseudo-academic argument. The narration opens by mocking nostalgia: "Things were better back when men were more macho and women more womanly," devolving into a tangled clause about who marries whom (men marrying women, women marrying ladies, ladies and men are men). It then stacks two real-sounding 'facts': that fertility rates increased going back through history because "women were... women," and that male homosexuality is correlated with having more older brothers from the same mother. A bald man in glasses flatly replies "Okay." The narration then draws its absurd conclusion: "Thus, the further back in time we go, the gayer it gets." The man, looking unsettled, says "My god." A final caption sums up the joke: "The past is a foreign and slightly gayer country" (a riff on the line "the past is a foreign country"). In the votey aftercomic, a bearded man rests his chin on his hand and concedes, "It's not the MOST stupid theory of history."