on-the-etiology-of-fuckers
Original: on-the-etiology-of-fuckers on Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal
Transcript
Panel 1 (lecturer at podium):
Lecturer: It is a sociological fact that if any group is made up of fuckers, the question is who?
Panel 2:
Lecturer: If 3 in 4 people are natural fuckers, this argument explains the universality of the 3/4 rule.
Panel 3:
Lecturer: By simple probability, fucker-free and fucker-laden communities should be easy to discover. And yet, they are almost never found.
Panel 4:
Lecturer: Do organizations attract fuckers, increasing these aggregate fuckery levels? Why have a fucker carrying capacity?
Panel 5:
Lecturer: Or does the existence of an organizational structure itself induce fuckery among a subset of members?
Panel 6 (caption over a diagram of a room with figures):
After careful analysis, my experiment has discovered that all humans have a fucker quorum-sensing mechanism.
Panel 7:
When at least ten humans are in a room and none are fuckers, they each experience an upregulation in fuckery-related hormones.
Panel 8:
The first person to reach critical fuckery emits a signal into the rest of the group. (Label near a figure: "first fucker")
Panel 9:
High fuckery-related hormone individuals are attracted to the signal source.
Panel 10:
Individuals too close to the alpha fucker will be repelled by average fuckery, while individuals who are too peripheral will lose interest.
Panel 11:
Individuals in the 'Goldilocks zone' will continue to upregulate until they become a full-blown bunch of fuckers.
Panel 12 (lecturer at podium again):
Lecturer: If the zone is too large, the group will splinter and disrupt. If it is too small, a new alpha fucker will emerge. The process continues until a stable threshold is achieved.
Panel 13:
Audience member (offscreen): Any questions?
Panel 14:
Lecturer: Do you realize mathematics has just made social science easy?
Panel 15 (silhouetted audience members):
Audience members: An alpha! An alpha!
Votey:
Handwritten note in a panel: "10 points to anyone proposing units of fuckery to me" — and below, smaller: "online"
Lecturer: It is a sociological fact that if any group is made up of fuckers, the question is who?
Panel 2:
Lecturer: If 3 in 4 people are natural fuckers, this argument explains the universality of the 3/4 rule.
Panel 3:
Lecturer: By simple probability, fucker-free and fucker-laden communities should be easy to discover. And yet, they are almost never found.
Panel 4:
Lecturer: Do organizations attract fuckers, increasing these aggregate fuckery levels? Why have a fucker carrying capacity?
Panel 5:
Lecturer: Or does the existence of an organizational structure itself induce fuckery among a subset of members?
Panel 6 (caption over a diagram of a room with figures):
After careful analysis, my experiment has discovered that all humans have a fucker quorum-sensing mechanism.
Panel 7:
When at least ten humans are in a room and none are fuckers, they each experience an upregulation in fuckery-related hormones.
Panel 8:
The first person to reach critical fuckery emits a signal into the rest of the group. (Label near a figure: "first fucker")
Panel 9:
High fuckery-related hormone individuals are attracted to the signal source.
Panel 10:
Individuals too close to the alpha fucker will be repelled by average fuckery, while individuals who are too peripheral will lose interest.
Panel 11:
Individuals in the 'Goldilocks zone' will continue to upregulate until they become a full-blown bunch of fuckers.
Panel 12 (lecturer at podium again):
Lecturer: If the zone is too large, the group will splinter and disrupt. If it is too small, a new alpha fucker will emerge. The process continues until a stable threshold is achieved.
Panel 13:
Audience member (offscreen): Any questions?
Panel 14:
Lecturer: Do you realize mathematics has just made social science easy?
Panel 15 (silhouetted audience members):
Audience members: An alpha! An alpha!
Votey:
Handwritten note in a panel: "10 points to anyone proposing units of fuckery to me" — and below, smaller: "online"
Alt text
A multi-panel SMBC comic delivering a mock academic lecture. A lecturer (a woman with short hair) stands at a podium and presents a pseudo-scientific theory of why organizations are full of "fuckers." She poses the question of whether organizations attract fuckers or whether organizational structure itself induces fuckery, then announces her experiment discovered that all humans have a 'fucker quorum-sensing mechanism.' A series of diagram panels show a room (with couches and figures as colored dots) illustrating the mechanism: when ten or more non-fuckers gather, fuckery-related hormones upregulate; the first to reach critical fuckery (labeled 'first fucker') emits a signal; high-hormone individuals are drawn toward it, but those too close are repelled and those too peripheral lose interest, leaving a 'Goldilocks zone' that upregulates into a full bunch of fuckers. Returning to the podium, she explains the process stabilizes at a threshold and declares mathematics has made social science easy. In the final panel, a silhouetted audience chants 'An alpha! An alpha!' The votey is a handwritten note reading '10 points to anyone proposing units of fuckery to me,' with the word 'online' added smaller below.
Transcribed by Claude Opus 4.8.