when-you-grow-up
Original: when-you-grow-up on Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal
Transcript
Panel 1:
Woman (teacher/adult): Bobby, what do you want to be when you grow up?
Panel 2:
Bobby (boy): I want the highest status, the best-built mates, and the most offspring.
Panel 3:
Bobby: I can either achieve this through raising myself up or by lowering everyone else down.
Panel 4:
Bobby: As population expands, primacy through the first path becomes impossible.
Panel 5:
Bobby: Primacy through the second path -- the path of all death -- is merely improbable.
Panel 6:
Woman: That's nice Bobby, but what job do you want?
Bobby: Quantitative finance?
Votey:
Woman (close-up, horrified): No.
Woman (teacher/adult): Bobby, what do you want to be when you grow up?
Panel 2:
Bobby (boy): I want the highest status, the best-built mates, and the most offspring.
Panel 3:
Bobby: I can either achieve this through raising myself up or by lowering everyone else down.
Panel 4:
Bobby: As population expands, primacy through the first path becomes impossible.
Panel 5:
Bobby: Primacy through the second path -- the path of all death -- is merely improbable.
Panel 6:
Woman: That's nice Bobby, but what job do you want?
Bobby: Quantitative finance?
Votey:
Woman (close-up, horrified): No.
Alt text
A six-panel comic. An adult woman asks a boy, Bobby, what he wants to be when he grows up. Bobby answers with a chillingly calculated monologue: he wants the highest status, the best-built mates, and the most offspring, which he can achieve either by raising himself up or lowering everyone else down. He reasons that as the population expands, primacy through self-improvement becomes impossible, while primacy through 'the path of all death' is merely improbable. In the final panel the woman, unfazed, asks 'That's nice Bobby, but what job do you want?' and he replies 'Quantitative finance?' In the votey aftercomic, an extreme close-up shows the woman's face in stark black-and-white, looking horrified, as she flatly says 'NO.'
Transcribed by Claude Opus 4.8.