hell
Original: hell on Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal
Transcript
Panel 1:
Dead man (bald, in a fiery red hellscape): What the -- hell is REAL?! Like, medieval style, with pitchforks and goat-men?
Devil (red, horned, holding a pitchfork): Sorta!
Panel 2:
Devil: This is a simulation. You're dead, but you left so much information online during your lifetime that we were able to reconstitute your brain in digital form.
Panel 3:
Dead man: Who's "we"?
Devil: I'm part of a startup called E-fterlife.
Panel 4:
Devil: Our users take dead people on social media who they thought should get judged in the afterlife. We then simulate their brains and put them in a digital afterlife based on the religious viewpoint of the user.
Panel 5:
Devil (reading from a large book): According to our records, you were cool with gay people, abortion, and you use the Lord's name in vain on 4,720,989,851 occasions.
Panel 6:
Dead man: So this is it. Eternal torment.
Devil: Hopefully! It'll depend on how our next funding round goes.
Votey:
A devil's face speaks: We will spare you 12 seconds of torment if you watch an ad for Tide(R) Detergent.
Dead man (bald, in a fiery red hellscape): What the -- hell is REAL?! Like, medieval style, with pitchforks and goat-men?
Devil (red, horned, holding a pitchfork): Sorta!
Panel 2:
Devil: This is a simulation. You're dead, but you left so much information online during your lifetime that we were able to reconstitute your brain in digital form.
Panel 3:
Dead man: Who's "we"?
Devil: I'm part of a startup called E-fterlife.
Panel 4:
Devil: Our users take dead people on social media who they thought should get judged in the afterlife. We then simulate their brains and put them in a digital afterlife based on the religious viewpoint of the user.
Panel 5:
Devil (reading from a large book): According to our records, you were cool with gay people, abortion, and you use the Lord's name in vain on 4,720,989,851 occasions.
Panel 6:
Dead man: So this is it. Eternal torment.
Devil: Hopefully! It'll depend on how our next funding round goes.
Votey:
A devil's face speaks: We will spare you 12 seconds of torment if you watch an ad for Tide(R) Detergent.
Alt text
A six-panel SMBC comic set in a cartoon hell of red flames. A bald dead man, naked from the waist up, talks with a horned red devil holding a pitchfork. The man asks, "What the -- hell is REAL?! Like, medieval style, with pitchforks and goat-men?" The devil replies, "Sorta!" The devil explains: "This is a simulation. You're dead, but you left so much information online during your lifetime that we were able to reconstitute your brain in digital form." The man asks who "we" is; the devil says, "I'm part of a startup called E-fterlife." The devil continues: their users pick dead people from social media they thought should be judged in the afterlife, and the startup simulates those people's brains in a digital afterlife matching the user's religious viewpoint. Reading from a big book, the devil says, "According to our records, you were cool with gay people, abortion, and you use the Lord's name in vain on 4,720,989,851 occasions." The man flatly asks, "So this is it. Eternal torment." The devil cheerfully answers, "Hopefully! It'll depend on how our next funding round goes." In the votey aftercomic, a simply drawn devil face offers, "We will spare you 12 seconds of torment if you watch an ad for Tide(R) Detergent." The joke skewers startup culture and ad-supported business models by reimagining hell as a venture-funded, ad-monetized digital afterlife.
Transcribed by Claude Opus 4.8.