identity
Original: identity on Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal
Transcript
Panel 1:
Floating drone/robot (speaking from above): Corporations have ever-fancier ways to track your status. Are you happy? Sad? Cold? Lonely? Hot? Happy? They use this knowledge to sell you things and use them to manipulate your desires.
Panel 2:
Floating drone: I mean, I agree it's annoying. But look! I'm a little tired and dehydrated and a flying robot drone is spritzing caffeinated water directly into my mouth.
(A drone sprays liquid into the upturned mouth of a person below.)
Panel 3:
Woman: When I need my teeth cleaned, there's an instantaneous drone war between my mandibot companions to see who can do the best job in the lowest price.
Drone: Has a lovely day, eh?
Panel 4:
Woman: It's like techno-fascism, only instead of grinding all powerful states it just strives and supplies coupons for free ice cream.
Man: Another agency knows my desires better than I do! It makes the final selection on my behalf.
Panel 5:
Man: Having offloaded memory to books, then thought to computers, now we're offloading our desires to the network.
Woman: What about your identity?
Man: Most of it's already gone, anyway.
Panel 6:
Man: All that remains are brick people functions, which seems to demand a nightmare conurbation of this. At that point, well, just merge into one undivided entity, so it all works out.
Panel 7:
Woman: That's an unorthodox view of the nature of corporate data usage.
Man: That added agglutination, also brought to you by McDonald's, commercially.
Panel 8:
Woman: I mean, it's pretty clear that's been the goal all along.
Panel 9:
Woman: Murdocks are just an option.
Man: No, move ever closer to a single corpsoul.
Votey:
Handwritten text: I'm mergin' with it.
Floating drone/robot (speaking from above): Corporations have ever-fancier ways to track your status. Are you happy? Sad? Cold? Lonely? Hot? Happy? They use this knowledge to sell you things and use them to manipulate your desires.
Panel 2:
Floating drone: I mean, I agree it's annoying. But look! I'm a little tired and dehydrated and a flying robot drone is spritzing caffeinated water directly into my mouth.
(A drone sprays liquid into the upturned mouth of a person below.)
Panel 3:
Woman: When I need my teeth cleaned, there's an instantaneous drone war between my mandibot companions to see who can do the best job in the lowest price.
Drone: Has a lovely day, eh?
Panel 4:
Woman: It's like techno-fascism, only instead of grinding all powerful states it just strives and supplies coupons for free ice cream.
Man: Another agency knows my desires better than I do! It makes the final selection on my behalf.
Panel 5:
Man: Having offloaded memory to books, then thought to computers, now we're offloading our desires to the network.
Woman: What about your identity?
Man: Most of it's already gone, anyway.
Panel 6:
Man: All that remains are brick people functions, which seems to demand a nightmare conurbation of this. At that point, well, just merge into one undivided entity, so it all works out.
Panel 7:
Woman: That's an unorthodox view of the nature of corporate data usage.
Man: That added agglutination, also brought to you by McDonald's, commercially.
Panel 8:
Woman: I mean, it's pretty clear that's been the goal all along.
Panel 9:
Woman: Murdocks are just an option.
Man: No, move ever closer to a single corpsoul.
Votey:
Handwritten text: I'm mergin' with it.
Alt text
A nine-panel SMBC comic. A person lies or sits below small flying robot drones throughout. In the opening panels, a drone narrates that corporations have ever-fancier ways to track your status (happy, sad, cold, lonely) and use it to sell you things and manipulate your desires; the speaker admits it's annoying but is delighted that a flying robot drone is spritzing caffeinated water directly into their mouth. A woman and a man discuss how this corporate omniscience works: mandibot companions wage instant drone wars to clean teeth at the best price, and the system is described as a kind of soft 'techno-fascism' that, instead of grinding states, just hands out coupons for free ice cream. They riff on how humans have offloaded memory to books, thought to computers, and now offload their very desires to the network -- a network that knows your wants better than you do and even makes choices on your behalf. The man muses that identity is mostly gone already and that everything is merging into one undivided entity, all brought to you by McDonald's. The woman notes this is an unorthodox view of corporate data use but agrees that total merger has been the goal all along. The votey (a single bonus panel) shows only handwritten text reading 'I'm mergin' with it' -- a play on McDonald's 'I'm Lovin' It' slogan, the punchline being a person happily merging into the corporate hivemind.
Transcribed by Claude Opus 4.8.