alone

A six-panel SMBC comic. A young man with flame-like orange hair, named Todd, stands in a dim bedroom with a laptop on a small desk. He asks aloud, "God, why does being alone make me sad?" A booming voice from above, shown in yellow caption boxes, replies "Hahaha, oh that," then explains that evolution made it so that the longer you're isolated, the more you perceive your status to have declined; when you finally meet peers just as schlubby and bewildered as you, your status recalibrates to average and you feel happy. God adds gleefully that the funniest part is that social media — which was created BY humans — lowers self-esteem faster while reducing access to genuine friendship. Todd, looking small in the dark room, says, "That's not funny, it's just sad." In the final wide panel, God's voice booms from a glowing speech bubble, "Well, it KILLED up here, Todd. It absolutely killed," treating human misery as a successful comedy bit. Votey (aftercomic): a framed TV-screen panel showing God's voice declaring, "Everyone up here laughs at my jokes or they go to hell," revealing his heavenly audience laughs under threat of damnation.