absurd
Original: absurd on Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal
Transcript
Panel 1 (Narration): We believe in the afterlife because we find the alternative absurd.
[A red rocket stands on a launch pad next to a gantry tower.]
Panel 2 (Narration): Within an ordered cosmos, so many unlikely events have conspired to make an impossibly complex machine called "you," only to have it live out a bewildered instant before disappearing forever.
Panel 3 (Narration): Cats don't invent after-lives, because they aren't smart enough seekers of pattern. They have no sense of the absurd.
Panel 4 (Narration): It stands to reason that if we ever meet alien life, it will have at one time believed in an afterlife, only to later discover that it was wrong.
[The red rocket lifts off, flames beneath it.]
Panel 5 (Narration): Conventional warfare is probably useless against any beings who've navigated across the galaxy to our little blue pond of a planet.
[The rocket flies through space.]
Panel 6 (Narration): Psychological warfare is our only chance of safety.
[A field of yellow dots/stars in dark space.]
Panel 7 (Narration): Let us spread truth, for it is more powerful than any atomic weapon.
Large scrawled text: IT'S POINTLESS HERE TOO
Panel 8:
Man: I'm not sure congress is prepared to fund your "astroexistentialism" program.
Woman: Well, the good news is that nothing matters anywhere anyway.
Votey:
Caption (the rocket/sender speaking): I hope the aliens speak English...
[A sad-eyed dog face fills the panel.]
[A red rocket stands on a launch pad next to a gantry tower.]
Panel 2 (Narration): Within an ordered cosmos, so many unlikely events have conspired to make an impossibly complex machine called "you," only to have it live out a bewildered instant before disappearing forever.
Panel 3 (Narration): Cats don't invent after-lives, because they aren't smart enough seekers of pattern. They have no sense of the absurd.
Panel 4 (Narration): It stands to reason that if we ever meet alien life, it will have at one time believed in an afterlife, only to later discover that it was wrong.
[The red rocket lifts off, flames beneath it.]
Panel 5 (Narration): Conventional warfare is probably useless against any beings who've navigated across the galaxy to our little blue pond of a planet.
[The rocket flies through space.]
Panel 6 (Narration): Psychological warfare is our only chance of safety.
[A field of yellow dots/stars in dark space.]
Panel 7 (Narration): Let us spread truth, for it is more powerful than any atomic weapon.
Large scrawled text: IT'S POINTLESS HERE TOO
Panel 8:
Man: I'm not sure congress is prepared to fund your "astroexistentialism" program.
Woman: Well, the good news is that nothing matters anywhere anyway.
Votey:
Caption (the rocket/sender speaking): I hope the aliens speak English...
[A sad-eyed dog face fills the panel.]
Alt text
An eight-panel SMBC comic narrated in caption boxes, proposing that humans believe in the afterlife because the alternative feels absurd, and that any alien capable of crossing the galaxy must once have believed in an afterlife only to discover it was wrong. The plan: instead of conventional or even psychological warfare, defend Earth by broadcasting the existential truth that nothing matters. Panels show a red rocket launching from a gantry, flying through space, and a starfield. A large hand-scrawled message reads "IT'S POINTLESS HERE TOO." In the final panel a man tells a woman, "I'm not sure congress is prepared to fund your 'astroexistentialism' program," and she replies smiling, "Well, the good news is that nothing matters anywhere anyway." Votey: a caption reads "I hope the aliens speak English..." over a large, sad-eyed cartoon dog face.
Transcribed by Claude Opus 4.8.