self-assessment
Original: self-assessment on Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal
Transcript
Panel 1: A young man with reddish-orange hair and a green shirt looks at the viewer. Thought bubble: "SHOULD I LOG ON TO SEE HOW MY HIGH-ACHIEVING FRIENDS ARE DOING?"
Panels 2-3 (a logic grid / truth table laid over a dark blue background): The grid cross-references the man's own state (left, as rows) against his friends' state (top, as columns).
Column headers: "THEY'RE DOING BADLY" and "THEY'RE DOING WELL"
Row labels: "I'M DOING BADLY" and "I'M DOING WELL"
Grid cells:
- I'm doing badly / They're doing badly: "I FEEL NO BETTER"
- I'm doing badly / They're doing well: "I FEEL LIKE A FAILURE"
- I'm doing well / They're doing badly: "I FEEL GUILTY FOR WANTING THIS"
- I'm doing well / They're doing well: "I COMPARE US UNTIL I FEEL LIKE A GUILTY FAILURE."
Panel 4: Close-up of the man, brow furrowed, hand on chin, thinking. Small speech bubble: "HMM..." Caption text below: "PROBABLY A BAD IDEA."
Panel 5: The man looks shocked/dismayed, eyes wide. Caption: "AND SO..." His exclamation (speech bubble): "HE HAS A YACHT NOW? A YACHT?"
Panel 6: View from behind of the man (green shirt, orange hair) sitting at a desk, hunched over a laptop, having logged on anyway. The 'A YACHT?' speech bubble points to him. SMBC-comics.com logo at bottom.
Votey: A loosely-drawn sketch of a person's face in profile with a thought/speech bubble reading: "I don't want more. I want other people to have less."
Panels 2-3 (a logic grid / truth table laid over a dark blue background): The grid cross-references the man's own state (left, as rows) against his friends' state (top, as columns).
Column headers: "THEY'RE DOING BADLY" and "THEY'RE DOING WELL"
Row labels: "I'M DOING BADLY" and "I'M DOING WELL"
Grid cells:
- I'm doing badly / They're doing badly: "I FEEL NO BETTER"
- I'm doing badly / They're doing well: "I FEEL LIKE A FAILURE"
- I'm doing well / They're doing badly: "I FEEL GUILTY FOR WANTING THIS"
- I'm doing well / They're doing well: "I COMPARE US UNTIL I FEEL LIKE A GUILTY FAILURE."
Panel 4: Close-up of the man, brow furrowed, hand on chin, thinking. Small speech bubble: "HMM..." Caption text below: "PROBABLY A BAD IDEA."
Panel 5: The man looks shocked/dismayed, eyes wide. Caption: "AND SO..." His exclamation (speech bubble): "HE HAS A YACHT NOW? A YACHT?"
Panel 6: View from behind of the man (green shirt, orange hair) sitting at a desk, hunched over a laptop, having logged on anyway. The 'A YACHT?' speech bubble points to him. SMBC-comics.com logo at bottom.
Votey: A loosely-drawn sketch of a person's face in profile with a thought/speech bubble reading: "I don't want more. I want other people to have less."
Alt text
A six-panel SMBC comic. Panel 1: a young man with orange hair and a green shirt thinks, "Should I log on to see how my high-achieving friends are doing?" Panels 2-3 show a two-by-two logic grid cross-referencing his own state against his friends'. The columns are "They're doing badly" and "They're doing well"; the rows are "I'm doing badly" and "I'm doing well." The four outcomes are all negative: "I feel no better," "I feel like a failure," "I feel guilty for wanting this," and "I compare us until I feel like a guilty failure." Panel 4: he frowns, hand on chin, and concludes, "Hmm... probably a bad idea." Panel 5: "And so..." he looks shocked and blurts, "He has a yacht now? A yacht?" Panel 6: from behind, we see he logged on anyway, hunched over his laptop. The joke: every possible outcome of social-media comparison makes him feel worse, and despite knowing this, he does it anyway. Votey aftercomic: a roughly sketched face says, "I don't want more. I want other people to have less."
Transcribed by Claude Opus 4.8.