Baldo by Hector D. Cantú and Carlos Castellanos for March 04, 2024

WTH?!?!

Wondering that myself. Did I miss something?

What the FRICK!?

Gracie’s experimenting with being “bad”. She’s not very good at it, and that’s a good thing.

Why?

Are the first three panels a comparison to what Gracie is actually doing in the last panel?

Sigh, cancer sticks. She will develop lung cancer in 30 years if she keeps that thing up.

Both are addictions and have serious health implications.

Phones are addicting, like nicotine.

The Cigarette is an allegory for social media.

How old is Gracie? I was 10 when I learned to blow smoke rings. I was 43 when I discovered I had fluid building up in my lungs and quit smoking.

Looks like the same “afterglow” when smoking (as the nicotine hits you) and when on the phone.

I honestly don’t get the joke

Hard to see book-loving Gracie as a cell phone addict.

?

?????????

Kind of surpised so many people are not getting the meaning of this strip. For lack of a better word, let’s call it the Tick-Tock affect where so many people are doing things, pulling pranks, doing extremely stupid stunts like “train surfing” and putting it online and challenging other people to do the same. It seems to affect the younger crowd, not unlike Gracie, the most.

disgusting

Oops, missed the wall posters in panel 3

Not cool

Why didn’t she cough hack etc? she must have smoked before.

Today’s strip went right over a lot of reader’s heads. I think that’s actually the funniest part.

Who’s this kid and what happened to Gracie?

Or perhaps showing that our phones are addictive?

Gracie! What are you doing!?

Excellent strip misters Cantu and Castellanos. Cell phones are the new crack, and children should have their screen time limited.

I vote for the phone addiction hypothesis.

Yep, time on devices are as addicting as cigs.

This is disturbing.

I have a smart phone and I use a computer. I am not addicted to either one. I find it hard to believe most people are addicted to their devices. Sure, some people are, but not the majority.

Yes because phones = evil. No joy allowed. A phone is not like cigarettes (which killed close family members of mine). Simply bring on a phone perhaps playing a game (oh, but it’s not a board game) or watching a show (no, it should be on TV, that’s much better) should not be equated to what caused a lot of pain and premature death in my family. This is ridiculous and a slap in the face

I think the intent here is to say, why would you be shocked by her smoking, but not by her being allowed unsupervised device time?

You know, given the fact that kids are much more likely to have friends who ALSO use their phones to communicate over non-telephone media, I think that only people old enough to be considered for AARP membership try to make “phone addiction” a thing when it really isn’t a thing.

In other words, the people who spent their childhoods tying up their parents’ land line talking to their friends are telling the next generation that they should get off the phone and stop talking to their friends.

The problem is the kids reading this strip who will think this just gave them permission.

And again we see that Gracie is not smart.

I’m guessing the cartoonist is saying social media/ internet bad habit and trying to seem cool like smoking? Umm. Ok?

Spectacular way to make understand how dangerous is being addicted to smartphone. It’s really scary to see Gracie with a cigarette, but now we should see her having a crisis for being without her smartphone for too long.

After reading the comments, I understood what was happening but the first part is very misleading and quite disturbing to portray an underage child in this manner. After the ones recently showing an extremely angry Baldo I may have to drop this from my list.

Are we missing the words today, or is this movie silent?

Great comic strip for kids….it will go right over their heads and promote early smoking in youth

I’m glad the comments made me realize Gracie isn’t smoking. But I thought she was too smart for TikToc.

Perhaps she has the same problem I do. 95% or more of my cell phone use is text messages from what I refer to as “the other political party” (don’t mention which one it is to avoid rubbing anyone the wrong way). This started WAY back in 1992 when I had a “candy bar” phone with something like 2G – if that. I would get text messages – one here and there – from the candidate running in the Congressional district next to ours. At that point in cell phones, politics and life I presumed that they were intended for someone else with a similar number.

During the last election I was getting upwards of 40 texts again asking to me to donate and vote for someone who was about 20 states away from me – plus also from just about everyone else in “the other political party” Currently receiving a minimum of 5 per day.

Now this might not sound like a lot, but the next highest number of text messages I get is from my husband – perhaps once a week or so – to come upstairs, to the garage, to the basement to help him with something.

Add into this I have a 95 year old mother and whenever any of our telephone rings for any reason I freeze in fear that there might be a problem with her. (If I get a phone call a month it is a lot.)

So maybe she is just dealing with all the spam calls/texts that come to her phone.