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Broke Frog – The Jenkins (thejenkinscomic.files.wordpress.com)
submitted 10 months ago by otter@lemmy.ca to c/comicstrips@lemmy.world
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[-] poszod@lemmy.world 37 points 10 months ago
[-] otter@lemmy.ca 20 points 10 months ago

This one got an audible laugh, it's so simple but so good

[-] NewNewAccount@lemmy.world 9 points 10 months ago

Can someone explain? I’m an idiot.

[-] Phoenix3875@lemmy.world 28 points 10 months ago

Opening a purse but only getting flies flying out usually means that the purse is empty in cartoons. Here the conversation suggested that frogs uses flies as currencies and thus subverts the convention.

Another layer on top is that two flies are required, but the customer only got one, so they're still broke, just like the conventional representation of being broke.

[-] palordrolap@kbin.social 9 points 10 months ago

Technically the insect in the original gag was a moth, not a fly.

Certain kinds of moth caterpillars eat cloth. Banknotes at the time and location of the original gag were made of cotton fibre paper, (and indeed some places still do this, or did so very recently) so were theoretically as delicious to those caterpillars as cotton clothes would be.

For clothing, mothballs can be used to deter them from laying eggs wherever the clothes are, but it's kind of hard to cram a mothball into a wallet. Also, the money probably already had the eggs on it, which is too late for a mothball anyway.

Thus, if a moth flies out of your wallet, it means that the paper money is long gone because that moth had time to get all the way from egg, through note-munching caterpillar to moth before you opened your wallet.

[-] otter@lemmy.ca 3 points 10 months ago

Oh a moth makes sense! I hadn't thought of that

[-] SatansMaggotyCumFart@lemmy.world 1 points 9 months ago

...or maybe it means you have a light in your wallet.

this post was submitted on 04 Dec 2023
460 points (97.7% liked)

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