It's like the traveling salesman problem, but the endpoints are different and you can't ask your friends for help because they're sitting three seats down.
the problem here is technically not you knowing people but that the people you know can also know people that you don't know, expanding the graph beyond the first layer that you personally observe.
My biggest pet peeve was working in a restaurant and trying to seat a large group. That hatred has been with me for decades, that I actively refuse to involve myself in dinners larger than 6 people. It's noisy. It's too much management. There's multiple conversations. It's awful.
Even during family outings in public areas, I assemble little groups and pretend like we don't know each other.
And before anybody even asks, I absolutely segmented my wedding into different 6-person teams when we went out in public.
It is cringe because the XKCD guy does not know when to stop. The second part of the comic (the white on black part) makes it worse. The graph is the punchline. But then he keeps drawing, and ruins it.
What’s wrong about it? It makes it clearer why 1. The seating is ridiculous 2. Such frustration is ridiculous. How is the graph the punchline? The idea is the punchline.