Does anyone feel that Fitter Happier is kinda dumb in what its attempting to critique...

Does anyone feel that Fitter Happier is kinda dumb in what its attempting to critique, and ends up sounding like edgy teenager garbage or something someone that took the surface themes of Fight Club seriously would write?

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What are the surface themes of Fight Club? Don't talk about fight club?

I recommend looking up how the track was created. Might add some valuable context to your thoughts.

Why single that song out? You just described the banal reddit-friendly commentary of the whole album.

In an interview with Guitar World magazine, Yorke described the song as a checklist of slogans for the '90s, which he called "the most upsetting thing I've ever written."

What you aren't realizing is that this sort of critique wasn't really present in popular culture or music at the time. It sounds dumb now, but it didn't when it came out

Not trying to grill you but this board has a serious problem with presentism when it comes to this album

Thom literally just wrote a check list of slogans and ideals of the 90's society, then fed it into a mac, and had it repeated back.

I used to always skip that song listening to this album as an edgy teenager so probably.

You just don't get it. It's not trying to critique anything, it's describing someone going through the motions living a modern lifestyle. It's a depressive disconnect from all aspects of modern life that aren't exactly one size fits all.

If you're depressed and work a job and have some friends and try to just overcome it and nothing ever works, you'll understand the song perfectly.

It's just miserable in spite of everything
>everything I don't like is reddit

>concerned but helpless
>pragmatism not idealism


NeoLiberalism BTFO

These aren't 90s slogans though. Being healthy, polite, and employed have nothing specifically to do with the 90s.

I was a suicidal alcoholic at one point, and being a happy productive member of society who is nice to everyone is much better than being a self-loathing deadbeat who would drink like a fish then proceed to be a absolute jackass to those who stil loved him enough to try to help.

Bump

I actually like it musically

What does your life experience have anything to do with anons interpretation of the album?

Song*

His posted

>If you're depressed and work a job and have some friends and try to just overcome it and nothing ever works, you'll understand the song perfectly.
To which I responded. Not to mention that the idea that it's disconnected to all aspects of modern life, when ideas like "different types of people get along to better achieve a greater goal", "being healthy and taking better care of oneself allows for a less miserable/longer life", and "getting our shit together in life" are all aspects of life regardless of where/how you live that are all very important. To criticize them all as something disingenuous is a viewpoint of someone who hasn't actually been through much in life, thus often held by teenagers.

i love it personally, people always misinterpret it though. the fucking video that pitchfork did on OK Computer said it was something like
>instructions from our future robot overlords
how the fuck can you miss the point that hard?

It's a pretty decent piano solo

Again, this has been mentioned already. It implies that there's a lack of freedom for being a healthy, polite, and productive member of society. That one becomes a sheep for everything going well in there life. Which is again, childish and implies misunderstanding why those things are valued in life in the first place.

do NOT fucking talk about fight club WHAT IS YOUR PROBLEM

it's about how humans are programmed like computers, the "OK" in the album's title is a sideways stick figure person. the reason Fitter Happier is so depressing is because it's true, everything listed in that song is both incredibly dull and conformist but also important for human existence. people think that OK Computer is saying "rebel against the system", but it's actually saying "it's literally impossible to survive while rebelling against the system". that's why the album is so fucking depressing. it's acceptance that you will never be able to be something more than what humans already are. trying to imagine life outside of this is like trying to imagine a different colour, it can't be done

And that's still a ridiculous mindset. Again, if you legitimately think that GOOD things are dull, then you yourself are so disconnected from reality that you think reality itself is some kind of idk TV show or something. If looked at from this point of view, people who have shitty depressed lives are not dull at all, full of interesting little flaws that makes for watching entertaining train wrecks. But is that person actually happy in their lives? Hell no!

Also it's acting like it's easy to somehow be able to be nice to everyone (even those people who you might not personally like), be fit, and being productive is somehow the easiest thing in the world. Hell, Thom has had to deal with depression in his life, he of all people should know how it's not the easiest thing to achieve what's written for the track.

This "problem" that the track posits is like the most first world shit I have ever heard. It's literally the tumblr teenagers who self-diagnose themselves with illnesses/disorders they don't have, call themselves all sorts of invented genders, and support movements like the body acceptance ones so they can be "more interesting." Conformist = bad thinking is some of the most childish shit out there.

Its good

i'm not saying conformity is inherently a bad thing, it's necessary for human survival. but OK Computer is about how depressing it is that you can't strive for anything more than it because it's useless to try and pretend that art will save the world or that world peace can be sustained through rebelling against the system. OK Computer is a lament to naive optimism that leaves us as we grow up and realize that the only way that humanity can continue is by doing what it's always been doing, conforming

> that you can't strive for anything more than it because it's useless to try and pretend that art will save the world or that world peace can be sustained through rebelling against the system
Again, disingenuous in every way. Mainly in this case with its generalizations. For a record that's supposedly about the big change in culture, it really seems to then miss the point that different things can be strove for as a result. Also, I'll have to repeat that for some reason this is also implying that it's a simple one way straightforward road, when real life is MUCH more complex than that. Very disconnected from reality like I said.

>OK Computer is a lament to naive optimism that leaves us as we grow up and realize that the only way that humanity can continue is by doing what it's always been doing, conforming
Maybe there's something wrong with you if you continue to hope for magical superpowers spontaneously happening after the age of 6.

For a more serious response to this, to say that it's straight up confirming is again, disingenuous, as large innovations happen because people don't confirm. In the 1900s the rate of innovations skyrocketed (the hockey stick allusion that's always used), and thus that means people are achieving more through not confirming WHERE IT MATTERS instead of not confirming with basic shit like "imma be unhealthy instead!"

I wonder what it's like to be this retarded

>can't post any real points, just 'zomg so retarded!'
Lmao, the state of the Radiohead hipsters not being able to explain the shortest track on the so called "best album evar". Imagine being this embarrassing.

I feel like the album was revolutionary for its time but feels outdated now. They didn't do anything "new" but it was exceptional because every track was so good. But it sounds pretty tame by today's standards.

>These aren't 90s slogans though. Being healthy, polite, and employed have nothing specifically to do with the 90s.

But it does. The 90's were an interesting time. It was the dawn of the home computer, and the Internet was just breaking into the mainstream. People were getting computer desk jobs en masse for the first time. Productivity was skyrocketing, yet people were feeling less fulfilled. The western world was grappling with a real identity crisis. Being healthy, polite, gainfully employed, and essentially outwardly perfect was never easier, yet the jobs people were being driven to were more mind-numbing than ever.

I mean, just watch The Office or The Matrix again. Describe the decade perfectly.

Neoliberalism gave us theresay may and trump

This version is better

youtube.com/watch?v=E5Jja7jh9Ck

I always took Fitter Happier at face value - just a string of piecemeal word salad sloganeering over a somber instrumental. Never saw it as anything to take seriously, just a tone setting interlude and little else. It is one of my favorites on the album but it's more for the ambience than the message, of which I feel it more just throws the idea out there rather than making a hard stance on much of anything.

You nailed it

The album's lyrics, written by Yorke, are more abstract compared to his personal, emotional lyrics for The Bends. Critic Alex Ross said the lyrics "seemed a mixture of overheard conversations, techno-speak, and fragments of a harsh diary" with "images of riot police at political rallies, anguished lives in tidy suburbs, yuppies freaking out, sympathetic aliens gliding overhead."[41] Recurring themes include transport, technology, insanity, death, modern British life, globalisation and anti-capitalism.[42] Yorke said: "On this album, the outside world became all there was... I'm just taking Polaroids of things around me moving too fast."[43] He told Q: "It was like there's a secret camera in a room and it's watching the character who walks in—a different character for each song. The camera's not quite me. It's neutral, emotionless. But not emotionless at all. In fact, the very opposite."[44]

Yorke was inspired by books including Noam Chomsky's writings,[45] Eric Hobsbawm's The Age of Extremes, Will Hutton's The State We're In, Jonathan Coe's What a Carve Up! and Philip K. Dick's VALIS

This is just not true though; the 80s and 90s had a lot more happiness than 2000s. If the idea is that the track was trying to predict the drop in happiness of the 2000s, even then it would be ridiculous because those didn't happen because muh computer, in fact it happened because of things like 9/11 and a worldwide financial crisis causing the inequality discrepancy to get worst which are things that made it HARDER for people to be Fitter, Happier, and more Productive.

Using The Matrix as an example implies the whole "we are being brainwashed" junk interpretation of this track, which again: happier when financially stable or when you're barely getting by? Happier when you're healthy or when you drink n drug so much you have a multitude of problems? Happier when your hard work gets rewarded or you just laze around? Like you don't need to get brainwashed to like these things, if you just go through life you'll see why it is people go towards these things; they are just better and make life much better as a whole.

I am sure there were people that were dissatisfied back then when they have everything going for them. That's not 90s exclusive, and these people are usually disconnected with reality, narrow minded, or just spoilt. Like Elliott Rodger types.

I don't mind most of the lyrics on the record though. It's typical dystopian affair, if a bit annoyingly New Agey at times. My main beef is with Fitter, Happier.

Just because you repeatedly miss the point no matter how explicitly it's been explained to you doesn't mean there is no point

The song was made in the 90s, and things were already declining during that era. How was he to predict the future that it would be worse in the 2000s, you goddammed fucking idiot?!

>miss the point
>never directly counter a thing I say
Hahahahahaha. Get this teenager level attempt at "discussion" outta here.

i feel like most people are missing the satirical side of the album because people take this album way too seriously. people forget that its also supposed to be funny too

Hey guys i came to argue about robotic voices too where do i start!

Nigga what are you talking about? Do you have a single fact to back this up? I used the fact that the 90s had one of the greatest economic booms that lasted well into the first couple years of the 2000s. GDP/PPP, crime rates, mortality rates, all decreasing. You think your shitty grunge bands and Radiohead were a real indication of the 90s? Look up the facts.

Jk the GDP/PPP were increasing the other two were decreasing

It's not all about happiness though. You're getting hung up on the happiness aspect. The onset of all that technology was confusing. Of course we are now "plugged in" more than ever but as computers began to invade the workspace in the 90's it was a lot more isolationist. People weren't chatting with their coworkers on Skype all day. It was a much more cold and sterile environment.

I grew up as a late teen in the 90s, and to see how things were getting bad already in the late 80s, watch Bill Hicks' first stand up show, he exposes exactly the bland popular culture and the malls invading and sucking humanity out of America and other western countries. You really have to be a dumb fucking millenial to be saying the things you are saying.

That's not what neoliberalism means.

And arguably, though tragic, 9/11 at least gave people something to rally around. Nowadays we are well aware of the NSA, Islamic terrorist groups, the cost of modern war, and the value of fighting these things. The 90's were quite directionless which only added to the sense of paranoia.

And what does this specifically have to do with Fitter, Happier? Yeah sure technology was weird and new, but how does that imply intense melancholy over having good things in life?

>It was a much more cold and sterile environment.
I can at least say that in the software industry it became the opposite. Thanks to initial introduction to Agile development which has since become the dominant methodology in software development/IT industry, multiple phases meaning multiple team types would work together at once. Hell, Fitter Happier's like third or forth line actually talks about getting along with others to be more productive rather than isolation.

>a TEENAGER in the 90s
Yeah...of course you would be an excellent example. I am sure you're now alive long enough to realize that muh *insert decade here* has been used for more than just the 90s and not very indicative of anything.

>9/11 at least gave people something to rally around
>NSA, Islamic terrorist groups
Paranoia on a level that makes the 90s look tame in comparison.

>the cost of modern war, and the value of fighting these things
Not unique to any decade, but it happens and repeats itself unfortunately.

If you still don't understand after the five or six paragraphs I've written, or all the other posts people have made in this topic, you will never understand.

Might be time for you to accept you're probably retarded.

Lmao these mental gymnastics right now.

>post a bunch of stuff
>all of it gets taken apart
>w-why don't you get it, you retard!

It was interesting the first time, but since then I've always skipped it. Really kills the vibe of what is otherwise a near-perfect record.

agree and have always thought this