'The Chair Company' Is a Show About How Fun It Is to Use the Computer | Hacker News Reader

'The Chair Company' Is a Show About How Fun It Is to Use the Computer

defector.com

29 pointsApocryphon15 comments

This didn't occur to me until reading this, but what if the next generation doesn't understand what a web page is in the same way that mobile devices keep the younger generations from understanding how to interact with a filesystem?

What if there's a generation that doesn't know how to get information from a primary source because all they know is asking one of three tech giants a question and getting an answer they don't even realize is opaque and editorialized?

I hate to break it to you, but almost no one knows how to get information from a primary source. The only difference is that between an ML model making the video and an ML model deciding which of thousands of existing videos on the topic to show them. The same editorial influence has existed for a decade already.

We can excuse anything getting worse by citing an exaggerated framing of it being bad already. But should we?

Who said it was getting worse? Being able to get information from an LLM trained on an ungodly amount of information instead of having to ask an old fart holding a bible, is real progress in my eyes.

I lasted maybe 5 minute into this one before I realised it was just another stupid show inventing stupid problems and having stupid people react to them in stupid ways.

You realize it’s supposed to be comedic, right?

I don't really think it's funny when people are presented with choices, they always pick the wrong one. Maybe it's an American thing.

It's an absurdist deconstruction of the genres it touches. It takes either prior familiarity with Robinson or else more than five minutes to get that.

I respect that. I can't claim I know anything about the series, not having watched it really. It was just my gut reaction to the restaurant scene at the start. Maybe I should give it another shot.

Cool. In this case, it's a show that's very conscioisly about that.

It uses Tim Robinson's uniquely appropriate clownwork to bring a comedic hyperbole to the self-destructive obsessions that come to beguile vaguely dissatisfied middle-aged suburbanties.

It's a smart satire with kinship to Falling Down or a Mike Judge project, but with the audience-engaging emotionality and physicality of Rowan Atkinson or Sasha Baron cohen.

The audience can be tickled by the absurd scenes and overwrought performance without needing to think too much about it, but those that do think about it can uncover a very deliberate and communicative piece of art.

You're not obliged to invest your time into it, but you may not have really picked up on what it's actually doing in the time you did spend so far.

I appreciate you taking the time to explain it to me. I think I'm just a little fed up about the whole concept since a lot of series are just like this. Making fun of stupid people is an honest thing I guess, but mostly it just seems kind of forced.

Me having just seen 5 minutes of it, could be wrong, but the impression I got was that the satire wasn't social criticism or directed towards the powers at be, as I think satire should be, but towards the little guy. Which I just don't think is that funny.

You mention the movie Falling Down, but at no time during this, did I feel anything but sympathy for the main character. In contrast to The Chair Company, which made me develop a real antipathy for the main character in just the first 5 minutes.

I want to push back - "a lot of series are just like this" is to me like saying "a lot of series are science fiction."

It's certainly okay to be frustrated by the behavior in the show. But if you let that frustration drive your experience, you miss the broader message. GP brilliantly summarized.

I have never really thought about having people making stupid choices, as a genre in itself. I have mostly just viewed it as an annoying artefact of lazy writing.

But if that is the case, I guess I was correct in my first assumption; that this show is just another one of those.

Five minutes is completely insubstantial to grok this show. It is way more surreal than you think. And the characters aren’t necessarily meant for sympathy, even if aspects of them can be relatable. Plenty of works have an unlikable protagonist yet is still compelling.

> It's a smart satire with kinship to Falling Down or a Mike Judge project, but with the audience-engaging emotionality and physicality of Rowan Atkinson or Sasha Baron cohen.

I'm a fan of the projects and people you mentioned, and quirky/smart/satirical comedy in the style of Monty Python and The Whitest Kids U Know is my kind of humor.

And yet, the work of Tim Robinson does nothing for me. I found I Think You Should Leave unamusing to the point of boredom. It tries really hard to do what you mentioned, yet comes off as the opposite: not smart, poorly satirical, and plain unfunny. I saw the trailer for The Chair Company and I get very similar vibes, so I'll avoid it, just like all Tim Robinson projects.

Tim Robinson is clearly successful and has a following, but I think his work is nowhere near the quality of the projects he tries to emulate.

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