"Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal" as written by Zach Wienersmith often touches on the relevant and hard hitting topics that regular webcomics aren't brave enough (or silly enough) to cover.
Case in point.
Some of the reocurring topics are dysfunctional relationships
religion,
mathstuff,
or more relevant to the matter at hand, the emotional turmoil that the machines and the internet have caused the human species.
These comics usually start by identifying a problem that the internet or internet related byproducts have caused, and then attempt to solve it in a ridiculous fashion. And then show the humans to be bitten on the ass.
The most current comic is a response to the AI recently beating the world's best Go player which is another notch on the belt for artificial intelligence. The Wienersmith utilizes this golden occasion to write out the comic, a battle of wits: humans vs AI. The speaker as it usually is, a representation of the regular human as imagined by Zach, dim-witted and quick to anger. In the comic we see the problem: AI is better than humans. The solution: make a game that favours humans. And the ass-biting: the machine is still superior. Which is how it usually works out.
Sometimes the comics are simple
And sometimes they are this, a slightly more complicated loop of ass-biting than your run-of-the-mill garden variety breakfast cereal that still ends with the artificial intelligence we created to win out in the end, which I think will be an accurate prediction for what will happen in the real world.
The comic uses regular webcomic features, such as facial features, speech bubbles, humour and endangered condors blazened with sexist messages.
In terms of character design, one rarely sees deviance from the basic human design which seemingly incorporates all genders, race, age, hair colour, sexual orientation and optical ability. Only when the appearance of the character matters do we see additional features, for example in panel 5 of the above comic, the new celebrity can be seen as hairy, balding, wearing a loose fitting undershit, has thick eyebrows, a hairy stomach, red hair* and general disheveled unkemptness (*Zach himself is a ginger). In this instance the character appearance is used to amplify the idea that society has turned on its heels and started worshiping this dirty hobo-like man because he is so unsuccessful in life.
The intended effect of these comics aren't to promote intelligent conversation, or stimulate intelligent thought, they are intended to make you laugh. As such, the logic of what happens in most stories aren't so much grounded in reality as much as they are the deranged dreamings of a mad man.
"Information" or what passes for it is conveyed simply through the medium or the webcomic, the above comic differentiates the dream world and the real world using different colour schemes, the dream being in black and white and the real world having an actual colour palette.
The tone is shaped through the words and the pictures alike, an adrenaline induced facial expression in panel seven compared to more steadfast faces in other panels show the dreamer's need to check all his emails. That along with the punchline at the end of the comic satirizes one's psychological desire to check all emails that people have developed because they like not having a number next to their app.
It's not easy to stay sane while clicking through the seemingly infinite archives of SMBC, looking for whatever comic that I can find that involves social media or the internet, there aren't any tags on any of the comics so I have to go through them one by one until I find something that looks good. What am I doing with my life.
Hopefully you hovered over all the comics to read the alt-text.
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