Tautology Memes

Nothing quite captures the existential despair of mathematics like solving an equation only to end up with x = x. You've just wasted 30 minutes of your life proving that a thing equals itself—congratulations on discovering the reflexive property that's been known since ancient Greece! It's like climbing Mount Everest only to realize you're still on the ground. The mathematical equivalent of running on a treadmill—lots of effort, zero progress. And the worst part? Your professor will still expect you to "show your work" even though the universe is clearly mocking your entire existence.

The mathematical journey from "Doing Algebra" to "x = x" perfectly captures that special moment when you spend 45 minutes on a complex equation, cancel out multiple variables, and arrive at the mathematical equivalent of "water is wet." That face in the final panel is every mathematician silently contemplating their life choices after deriving the most useless tautology in existence. The real breakthrough isn't proving 1=1, it's realizing you've just wasted half your chalkboard to confirm what was already painfully obvious.

When you're desperately trying to prove a theorem but end up stating the blindingly obvious instead. That's essentially what's happening here—Neil deGrasse Tyson dropping the earth-shattering revelation that "people fight because they disagree." Revolutionary stuff! This is like spending three hours deriving a complex equation only to realize you've proven that 1+1=2. Every math student who's ever written "therefore, by inspection..." when completely stuck feels this in their soul. Next up: water is wet, and the sky appears blue under certain atmospheric conditions.