downhill
Original: downhill on Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal
Transcript
Panel 1:
A man with short dark hair and an orange shirt speaks to another man (seen from behind, with grayish hair).
Dark-haired man: "YES, I TOO HAVE NOTICED THAT THINGS HAVE BEEN GOING DOWNHILL EVER SINCE [FIRST YEAR I WAS RESPONSIBLE FOR MY OWN WELFARE]."
Caption (below panel): Android attempts to relate to us proved surprisingly insulting.
Votey:
The same dark-haired man, drawn in black-and-white, speaks.
Man: "I TOO BELIEVE OTHER PEOPLE'S PROBLEMS ARE THEIR FAULT BUT MY PROBLEMS ARE OUT OF MY CONTROL."
A man with short dark hair and an orange shirt speaks to another man (seen from behind, with grayish hair).
Dark-haired man: "YES, I TOO HAVE NOTICED THAT THINGS HAVE BEEN GOING DOWNHILL EVER SINCE [FIRST YEAR I WAS RESPONSIBLE FOR MY OWN WELFARE]."
Caption (below panel): Android attempts to relate to us proved surprisingly insulting.
Votey:
The same dark-haired man, drawn in black-and-white, speaks.
Man: "I TOO BELIEVE OTHER PEOPLE'S PROBLEMS ARE THEIR FAULT BUT MY PROBLEMS ARE OUT OF MY CONTROL."
Alt text
A two-person conversation in one panel. A man with short dark hair in an orange shirt talks to another man shown from behind with grayish hair. The dark-haired man says: "Yes, I too have noticed that things have been going downhill ever since [FIRST YEAR I WAS RESPONSIBLE FOR MY OWN WELFARE]." The bracketed phrase is a literal placeholder, revealing he is reading from a script. A caption below reads: "Android attempts to relate to us proved surprisingly insulting." The joke is that an android is mimicking a common human complaint about things declining since a nostalgic past, but its placeholder text exposes that it doesn't actually understand the sentiment. Votey (a black-and-white bonus panel): the same man says, "I too believe other people's problems are their fault but my problems are out of my control," parroting another self-serving human bias.
Transcribed by Claude Opus 4.8.