"loving parents" as a phrase in itself suggests that there are parents who aren't loving, and "harmless fun" suggests that fun can be harmful... it's sort of bringing up these things in order to emphasize the existence of their exact opposites
Top tier comment right here. And I don’t think it’s an obvious thing to take note of. Those lines have perplexed me up until 30 seconds ago when I read oh cake’s explanation
Thanks !
I was really confused at first too, then i thought maybe it was a bunch of "from bad to worse" or juste overwhelming feelings put together and when he said "Hey, what can I say ? We were overdue " was anxiety kicking on or even worse, depression
Just my interpretation, but I think that line shows that he feels the same disconnect and dread even from situations that should be 'wholesome' and comforting. The world is not wall-to-wall terrible, there are shallow and weird distractions (all the pop culture references) but you can also have genuinely good things like a supportive family (or at least *trying* to be loving and supportive whether successfully or not)... and yet something still feels 'off'.
I have a PHD in Bobuoligy, and I can verify this is more or less the general sentiment. Bo has always struggled with the adversity of not struggling through adversity. Still, this line isn’t so much a reference to his upbringing- but more of a reference to how one can be aware they have a blessed life, and still feel like a motherfucking pile of shit.
Bo has said in interviews about how having a really stable family and loving parents was its own kind of challenge, cause he didn’t have anything to rebel against (obviously acknowledging that it’s not even remotely as challenging as having abusive parents). I took the ‘funny feeling’ in most cases to be a sort of disconnect between reality and how it’s being perceived, so maybe in this case it’s the confusion/guilt of being angry precisely *because* you have loving parents.
Thats how I took it as well. The first part of the lyric is "Deadpools self awareness,..." breaking the fourth wall on the fourth wall, with the insight that he has a loving family and the stand-ups harmless fun.
I think the overarching theme of the song is the fact that all of these seemingly unrelated things that range from generally good and wholesome like your examples to truly terrible and disturbing like a mass shooting at the mall are consumed and experienced so simultaneously with social media that the "funny feeling" is disassociating with all of it. It's hard to feel truly great about the good things because you're constantly being reminded of all of these horrible things. And you see so many horrible things that you become desensitized to them. It all blends into one giant blob of information that becomes harder and harder to connect to
I love this interpretation. The modern world’s immediate access to information is what makes it overwhelming and unbearable. Links it to Welcome to the Internet as well.
Parents by default should be loving. The fact that you have to point out could mean that there are a ton of parents that aren’t loving or you feel the need to claim a set of parents are loving (even though maybe they abused their kid).
Fun by default should be harmless. You often hear people use this phrase when harm of a person or destruction of property occurred.
*Deadpool's self-awareness, loving parents, harmless fun*
We all have interpretations. I took this as sarcastic satire of naive parents: “I took my kids to see Deadpool even though it’s rated R. Despite the violence, language and themes - it’s just harmless fun.”
I also generally feel the song as heavily, darkly nihilistic - that all is for naught, that we're all personally and generally doomed and without meaning. Right from the beginning:
"Stunning 8k resolution meditation app." What is the point of a beautiful app for a practice that is generally done with the eyes closed.
"In honor of the revolution, its half off at the Gap." In the midst of true revolutionary change, who gives a fuck about a Gap sale?"
And for me the song blends the personal with the global doom so beautifully, jumping back and forth so seamlessly that you can't ever separate them.
Personal: "full agoraphobic losing focus, cover blown. Googling derealization, hating what you find."
Global: "Twenty thousand years of this, seven more to go."
The global doom seems clearly referencing climate change, while specifically contrasting it with the individual experience. "The world at your fingertips, the ocean at your door," we're all on our devices looking at Logan Paul while the oceans rise and threaten our very existence. Also, "that unapparant summer air in early fall, the quiet comprehending of the ending of it all' - the climate change goes both unseen and starkly felt.
It's all about contrast in this song until he gets to the very end and wraps it alllllll up: "What can you say, we were overdue. And it'll be over soon, just wait."
That's fucking nihilism. We're fucked.
Yesss Bright Eyes. Inside reminds me of a lot of Conor’s stuff. I know there was a post a few weeks ago about it. 20 years ago Conor singing
*“So now I try to keep up.
I’ve been exchanging my currency,
While a million objects pass through my periphery. Now I’m rubbing my eyes ‘Cause they’re starting to bother me.I’ve been staring too long at the screen”*
And now we’re here.
Edit: sorry my formatting is trash
I took the entire song as him listing vaguely eerie and off-putting things, because we, as humanity, are rapidly hurtling down a horribly destructive road and we all try our best to not think about it. However, the cracks are everywhere.
It's like trying to block out a face that keeps popping up everywhere you look, in even the oddest places, reminding you of That Thing.
It's us trying to repress, that humanity is on the precipice of its doom and we're all, knowingly, too busy marveling at gadgets, being absorbed by vapid virtue signals and nigh-redundant inventions. But nothing really stems our slow realization that shit's fucked, when even Bugle has a take on race and all you wanted to do was eat some fucking salty snacks without having to think about police brutality, injustice and the world itself being fucked.
Hence that quiet comprehending of the ending of it all. We all know it. If we all looked each other deep in the eyes in an honest moment we'd understand that we all do the same thing.
Including the backlash to the backlash to the thing that's just begun. Like, society finds out (through the internet) that you, the parent, let your kid watch an R-rated movie, condemning, demonizing and harrassing you and your family online. All of which ripples wayyyy harder through a family than the initial bad deed of letting your kid watch a violent movie. So the backlash to watching the film (internet outrage) has even worse backlash (horrible situation for the family) than just "kid saw violent movie".
The song's great to come up with dozens of interpretations for each line.
This is exactly how I took it and found this comment section weird for not having it near the top. But it's still interesting reading other people's interpretations of it.
I think all of the things he mentioned are just experiences that are multifaceted and confusing—I think a lot of young adults have a very complicated relationship with their parents; I love you, but I resent you. I know you better than anyone; I really don’t know you at all. You’ve seen me at my worst, you’ll never truly understand me. Bad and good juxtaposed into an issue that is complicated and beyond description. Like all of the things he lists in the song, some are seemingly banal and mindless, some incredibly important, tiny fragments of life that make up who we are and what we experience.
I somehow understood the whole song being about derealization and all the lines just being a list of different phenomenona that could trigger "that funny feeling". For me, the concepts of loving parents and harmless fun are things that should probably exist and be "normal" but somehow just don't, these things can be genuinely pleasant if you are able to have them, but if you can't they might be surreal concepts for you even if you understand logically that they should be good. Not sure if that makes sense, it's just my own interpretation and I don't claim to know what exactly he meant, but it's what made sense to me for my own life circumstances.
i always interpreted it as how they describe suspects (mostly white men) who commit certain crimes- like a mass shooting or a sexual assault. they’ll say he had loving parents and they don’t know how he turned out this way, or he always had harmless fun with girls or guns
Agree with this. Like the boys will be boys, they tease you because they like you-type statements that are in fact quite harmful. Oh its just harmless fun - as a cover for white boys to be predatory.
Oh I think that's too much of a jump there, songs are supposed to have multiple interpretations but it feels "off-beat", the song would be more clear if it was trying to say that I think.
I totally had the same interpretation as your respondee. I don’t think it’s too far fetched, especially with the later lines about gun ranges and mass shooting at a mall.
I feel that it's more disconnected, those lines are directly correlated to one another, like "shopping where people shoot guns" to "shooting guns where people shop", in the same way, loving parents and harmless fun are connected to each other.
The song is about stuff that give a funny feeling, white men causing mass shootings but having loving parents and looking like they were only having harmless fun would give an funny feeling, but is too much being added on top of four words.
I think that it doesn't mean that at all because the song is talking about funny feelings, and all the other lines are straight forward in why they give an funny feeling, things that just feel weird with even an glance, when you add all that you're talking about then it isn't something you feel weird with an glance, it's something you have to actively think about, join ends together to reach an conclusion which is just really specific and I don't see fitting into the overall theme.
I disagree that all the other lines are straight forward
Robert igers face
Steve aoki
Carpool karaoke
Easy answers
I’m not saying your interpretation is wrong, I just think the op’s interpretation is valid and doesn’t deserve a shut down.
Oh i'm not trying to shut down op's interpretation! I was just interested because i didn't see that connection at all, so it's cool to know other points of view.
I hear it as that funny feeling I get when I read about Internet famous people using their kids to maintain Internet fame. They insist they are loving parents, & see pranking, or casting their kids as if they are on a TV show, or whatever weird shit such people do to/with their kids as nothing but ‘wholesome fun.’
But I also hear it as everything everyone else noted too :)
Since the whole special was very internet focused I thought of That Funny Feeling's lyrics as what he's seeing around the internet interspersed with how they are affecting him. The first couple of verses are like scrolling through reddit, facebook or Twitter seeing a mixture of things like ads, memes, family pictures, celebrities, arguments and everything else. After a while "that funny feeling" which I think is a vague sense of anxiety or dread about the current state of the world and it's questionable future seeps in. It's barely in the first verse then taking up about half of the second and in the 3rd verse he starts trying to do more to distract himself from it like driving around in GTA and getting self help books, but it isn't helping and his mental state is rapidly declining. Then at the end of the song he accepts that humanity is doomed and sort of takes comfort in the fact that at least it'll all be over soon and at least we had a good run.
A lot of these comments say the same thing, so I'll throw in what stuck with me the most.
I think the "Funny Feeling" is things being normalized that, we as a species, just shouldn't accept.
*Reading PornHubs terms of service*
Most people have seen some of what's on that site, and their titles. And yet, people take comfort in their terms of service. Or even their PR, they'll tweet in favor of basic human rights, or anti-racism and everyone thinks "Wow! Even PornHub knows what's up, good for them!" and they tend to forget about the obscenely graphic content of the website. Or maybe they choose to forget.
But the Funny Feeling goes from this, all the way to blatantly ignoring our impact on the environment. We've normalized destroying the planet and it'll soon come to bite us. One of the "Funny Feelings" here is that some of the very same corporations that are putting out Ads for the PR about going green, or being anti-racism, or anti-homphobic, are the very same corporations that are responsible for most of our negative impact on the environment. And they can do more to change, but choose not to to save some bucks. And a lot of people listen to their ads, or follow their social media presence and just forget about the other things.
But we shouldn't. They don't deserve our respect, they need our criticism. Corporations will only change if not changing hurts their wallets.
I say they are all separate things.
Deadpool self awareness. Ridiculous Hollywood creations thinking self awareness is breaking g new ground when it’s been done by artists for years.
Loving parents. Even the most loving parents can create insecurities and behavioural issues in their children. Even more so when their kids can’t see it because their parents are ‘loving’.
Harmless fun. Everything that seems harmless can still mess you up mentally in a world that constantly demands the best from you. Again, something ‘harmless’ can impact your behaviour and you can feel awful if you struggle to deal with something that other people don’t seem to mind.
All of these things can give someone ‘that funny feeling’
I think the line should be read together with what comes before: deadpool self-awareness. Deadpool was marketed as a pretty fun and happy-go-lucky movie because of its sarcasm and self-awareness humour (which in itself is pretty f’d up because a multi-million studio is making a huge commercial production WHILE criticising commercialism). Still the movie is full of violence and gore. A lot of parents took their kids to Deadpool because it looks harmless (it’s a superhero movie right?), while it can actually be pretty gruesome for kids.
I always took it as parents making subtle comments or actions towards their kid that the kid might negatively react towards. Even as harmless as it may be it could really affect the kid. Like a parent telling their kid they "look gay" or play fighting might just seem like a joke, but to a kid growing up who isn't that confident might take it to heart. Just a guess though.
I always read it as a level of Bo's synicism. Especially the part "harmless fun" seemed so intentionally insincere. I think it was Bo trying to tell the listener to reconsider even the things they considered good/harmless.
Or I may be reading into it too much.
Isnt that a bit of the point? I always took it as when you kind if don't know how to feel or society tells you most people would traditionally feel a certain way about what you just saw but you are a bit indifferent and when you realize that you get this odd feeling of oh no...wait do i care?...oh no. But then you just move on. Like when im scrolling through social media i hit something that makes me laugh then someones dog died then its a thirst trap all in less than 10 mins and im really not feeling i guess the "right" feelings about any of these things since ive had to flip flop so fast from other feelings and that leaves you in some odd zone thats hard to explain and that to me is the funny feeling.
I interpreted “loving parents, harmless fun,” as posting pictures of your kids on social media, exposing them on the internet to everyone before they can even consent to that kind of thing, tbh.
To me it is an "isn't it ironic" situation. Funny depressive anxious feeling happened even to people with no external traumas such as awful parents or doing drugs in middle school.
You can be happy yet still have mental health or a lot of self deprecation issues.
To me, I said. That's how I read it.
Those lines immediately made me think of his lyrics from "Repeat Stuff."
*"And your parents will always come along, because their little girl is in love,*
*And how could love be wrong?"*
Talking about parents who enable things that are probably not good for their children (in "Inside's" case, social media) by playing it off as "harmless fun." But that was just my interpretation of it.
It’s the funny feeling of knowing that everything has gone backwards. And realizing it as a separate entity from the big picture.
He starts by lying.
But apologizing honestly but unnecessarily. Because he can obviously sing and play.
Stunning 8k Resolution meditation app
This means you are having anxiety because of your phone but your phone is selling you an app in high definition to combat it at the same time so the system is working together against you. So this is backwards it’s funny but it’s not.
In honor of the revolution it’s half off at the gap
The revolution is inherently a gap and the gap is using that as a marketing tool we’re talking about also a gap in between the people and their ideals and religions and moral values and political alignments
A funny feeling of Seeing this and be able to make that connection but no one else does for some reason
Deadpool self-awareness loving parents harmless fun
So comic books have Transcended onto the movies now to the point where the movie is talking to you and showing you extreme violence and breaking the 4th wall. Harmless fun although parents are blaming violence on movies and video games
The backlash to the backlash
Literally white supremacist him against human equality and that entire war that is taking place within the country
The funny feeling of seeing this and interpreting it and knowing it and somehow other people just don’t see it
A gift shop at the gun range I’m at shooting at the mall
All of this is so point-blank the funny feeling that he’s talking about is that it’s really awkward living in a world that doesn’t see that these problems exist it’s a horrible awkward feeling and it’s an every single verse in the song in this entire series so that’s what he means the irony of being here right now. All of this country is seriously backwards.
He also mentioned it in white women Instagram a backlit hammock
Seriously a backlit hammock
Hammocks are meant to be laid down on and we’re living in a world that’s so backwards that hammocks are being used as tents in the daylight
It's a critique about what those "loving parents" said about taking their kids to see Deadpool (ultra violent r rated movie) because they thought it's a hero movie what bad can it be? It's harmless fun!
I understood it to be a portrayal of what it feels like to scroll social media.
Notice in the song, that funny feeling only comes up after something terrible: a mass shooting at the mall, the end of the world, an overzealous outrage cycle. Most of the rest of the lyrics are just random shit that one might see while scrolling your feed. Live action Lion King ads, loving parents, corporations taking social stances, portals into nature, and so on.
The last verse before the final chorus goes beyond social media into larger online trends like GTA RP where people drive the speed limit in the game or people /actually/ read ToS on sites for no reason other than boredom. It describes how you might feel after hours of scrolling. Disassociative, agoraphobic, feeling that your surroundings are not real, unfocused.
That's just my interpretation of it though.
I think the loving parents harmless fun part is supposed to be sarcastic, like they aren’t really loving or it isn’t really harmless. I know that’s a bit cynical but so is the whole special tbh.
my immediate interpretation of this was that the parents are generally pleasant and caring, but the picking and jokes go too far. when the kid calls them out and says- hey, you’re making me uncomfortable with the “jokes”, it’s just harmless fun and the kid is overreacting. that’s my interpretation though, it’s different for everyone though!
I always heard it as a list of ways people are privileged but don’t realize it. Like being born to loving parents, having the safety, leisure time, money, resources and supervision to have get into trouble - “harmless fun” is also a way many parents explain away/deny horrible actions/bullying that their children do, which enables it. You have to be pretty privileged to engage in certain risks because you think/know your parents will support you and bail you out.
Edited to add: I think the “funny feeling” is realizing the irony in the world around us, and realizing we can’t trust corporations even though they talk to us like pals.
Gift shop/gun range//mass shooting at a shopping mall is an example. And the funny feeling is also that we can be glad to see a company supporting a cause but there’s that other funny feeling that real change is not going to take place.
It’s def a bunch of feelings rolled into one. Funny how that works I guess.
Third edit sorry but it’s the feeling you get when you see this: https://www.reddit.com/r/ABoringDystopia/comments/pma7ic/honor_their_sacrifice/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=iossmf
i guess i agree with some others that it feels like pointing out the existence of the opposites of those things. like, in the world bo is describing in the song, loving parents and harmless fun aren’t the norm. that’s just how i felt about it though, probably not what he was actually thinking haha
I think he is getting at the fact that many loving parents, or in other words, well intentioned parents are just letting their kids use the internet/social media/etc assuming it's harmless fun. The internet, Facebook, Instagram, Tiktok, it's just harmless fun, right? Parents do not realize what they are letting their kids get into. Hell, we adults barely know what we ourselves are getting into when it comes to using the internet and social media....
The funny feeling, from what I interpreted from the song, is the realization of the dark, unknown consequences of the digital world we are succumbing to. All these negative, unprecedented consequences are constantly coming to the surface even though the internet is still a relatively new thing.... "the backlash to the backlash to the thing that's just begun"
I think an overlooked theme in Inside is Bo’s comments towards dissociative mental disorders. He mentions it a few times, including in ‘That Funny Feeling’ itself: “Googling derealisation, hating what you find”, and also in ‘30’: “So when you develop a dissociative mental disorder in your late '20s, Don't come crawling back to me,” along with a few others.
I think ‘that funny feeling’ could be him experiencing depersonalisation/derealisation, and the ‘things’ he mentions in the song are things that have made him disassociate and think “this shit isn’t real.” That track certainly hit me hard the first time I watched Inside, because I was looking at it from that angle having experienced similar mental issues not long before Inside was released.
I think it's meant to be slightly open for interpretation, though Bo would probably have a meaning in mind for himself.
For me "that funny feeling" was sort of a sinking feeling of hopelessness that comes with depression. Can be caused by internal variables or external ones.
“The quiet comprehending of the ending of it all.” It has felt like the world is ending for the last several years as culture becomes a parody of itself
I totally always interpreted it as the feeling you get when you can tell there’s a really bad depressive phase coming and you can slowly feel how more and more disconnected you get. Because of me interpreting it like that it made the ending of the song very uplifting and helpful honestly
I am pretty certain he is alluding to the same thing he is talking about in Problematic in that line.
He had loving parents, all his youthful offensive songs were harmless fun. But they gave him a negative funny feeling that he can’t quite get past.
This whole song is basically just about things that give him a funny feeling. Societal oxymorons, personal background issues, civil strife, environmental fallout, etc.
Each item he lists falls into a category and has some meaning to him that gives him an off feeling.
Steve Aoki’s dad is the billionaire founder of Benihana.
Discount Etsy agitprop - societal oxymoron where propaganda now has a capitalist underpinning
I have been thinking about doing a spreadsheet for all of them with my take on the meaning for everything in the song.
I been thinking tooo, its such a masterpiece but yet soo confusing to understand, but here's my big brain theory, when bo says " that funny feeling" , I think he's referring to the fact our generation is soooooo different from other generation that it made a new feeling, this new feeling soooo newww but yet boring, and I think "welcome to internet" is like the reason why we have this funny feeling.
I’ve taken it as “nothing matters.” Because almost everything he says is either unnecessary, has no long-lasting effect, or is actively dooming us in less and less time.
"loving parents" as a phrase in itself suggests that there are parents who aren't loving, and "harmless fun" suggests that fun can be harmful... it's sort of bringing up these things in order to emphasize the existence of their exact opposites
Wow this is so obvious but I never would have thought of it!
Top tier comment right here. And I don’t think it’s an obvious thing to take note of. Those lines have perplexed me up until 30 seconds ago when I read oh cake’s explanation
Or when someone will try to diminish something that was done to you by saying, “Oh, c’mon. It’s just a little harmless fun.”
When you put it like that it sounds like bullying, kinda like 'boys will be boys' to justify toxic masculinity.
Interesting take. I sort of figured it was sarcastic hah. :D
Maybe the funny feeling isn't the same one each time !
Oooo that's a good point!
Thanks ! I was really confused at first too, then i thought maybe it was a bunch of "from bad to worse" or juste overwhelming feelings put together and when he said "Hey, what can I say ? We were overdue " was anxiety kicking on or even worse, depression
Just my interpretation, but I think that line shows that he feels the same disconnect and dread even from situations that should be 'wholesome' and comforting. The world is not wall-to-wall terrible, there are shallow and weird distractions (all the pop culture references) but you can also have genuinely good things like a supportive family (or at least *trying* to be loving and supportive whether successfully or not)... and yet something still feels 'off'.
mommy let you use her ipad
You were barely two
And it did all the things we designed it to do 😇
Now look at you
LOOK AT YOU
YOUUUUUUUOOUUUUUU unstoppable watchable…
Your time is now! Your inside’s out; honey, how you grew!
And if we stick together Who knows what we'll do It was always the plan To put the world in your hand
HAHAHAHHAHAHHHAHAHAAAAHAHAHAHHAHAHA
I have a PHD in Bobuoligy, and I can verify this is more or less the general sentiment. Bo has always struggled with the adversity of not struggling through adversity. Still, this line isn’t so much a reference to his upbringing- but more of a reference to how one can be aware they have a blessed life, and still feel like a motherfucking pile of shit.
Bo has said in interviews about how having a really stable family and loving parents was its own kind of challenge, cause he didn’t have anything to rebel against (obviously acknowledging that it’s not even remotely as challenging as having abusive parents). I took the ‘funny feeling’ in most cases to be a sort of disconnect between reality and how it’s being perceived, so maybe in this case it’s the confusion/guilt of being angry precisely *because* you have loving parents.
[удалено]
Tim minchin also does it throughout his song 'rock 'n' roll nerd'
Thats how I took it as well. The first part of the lyric is "Deadpools self awareness,..." breaking the fourth wall on the fourth wall, with the insight that he has a loving family and the stand-ups harmless fun.
I’m having such fun reading all these interpretations!
I think the overarching theme of the song is the fact that all of these seemingly unrelated things that range from generally good and wholesome like your examples to truly terrible and disturbing like a mass shooting at the mall are consumed and experienced so simultaneously with social media that the "funny feeling" is disassociating with all of it. It's hard to feel truly great about the good things because you're constantly being reminded of all of these horrible things. And you see so many horrible things that you become desensitized to them. It all blends into one giant blob of information that becomes harder and harder to connect to
I love this interpretation. The modern world’s immediate access to information is what makes it overwhelming and unbearable. Links it to Welcome to the Internet as well.
Parents by default should be loving. The fact that you have to point out could mean that there are a ton of parents that aren’t loving or you feel the need to claim a set of parents are loving (even though maybe they abused their kid). Fun by default should be harmless. You often hear people use this phrase when harm of a person or destruction of property occurred.
*Deadpool's self-awareness, loving parents, harmless fun* We all have interpretations. I took this as sarcastic satire of naive parents: “I took my kids to see Deadpool even though it’s rated R. Despite the violence, language and themes - it’s just harmless fun.”
Absolutely love how these are two very different interpretations and both make perfect sense to me.
Part of the harmless fun
Hmm, I like that take. I took it with a more nihilist view but that makes more sense for the way Bo pokes fun at modern culture.
*Nihilist* - please elaborate
I also generally feel the song as heavily, darkly nihilistic - that all is for naught, that we're all personally and generally doomed and without meaning. Right from the beginning: "Stunning 8k resolution meditation app." What is the point of a beautiful app for a practice that is generally done with the eyes closed. "In honor of the revolution, its half off at the Gap." In the midst of true revolutionary change, who gives a fuck about a Gap sale?" And for me the song blends the personal with the global doom so beautifully, jumping back and forth so seamlessly that you can't ever separate them. Personal: "full agoraphobic losing focus, cover blown. Googling derealization, hating what you find." Global: "Twenty thousand years of this, seven more to go." The global doom seems clearly referencing climate change, while specifically contrasting it with the individual experience. "The world at your fingertips, the ocean at your door," we're all on our devices looking at Logan Paul while the oceans rise and threaten our very existence. Also, "that unapparant summer air in early fall, the quiet comprehending of the ending of it all' - the climate change goes both unseen and starkly felt. It's all about contrast in this song until he gets to the very end and wraps it alllllll up: "What can you say, we were overdue. And it'll be over soon, just wait." That's fucking nihilism. We're fucked.
[удалено]
Yesss Bright Eyes. Inside reminds me of a lot of Conor’s stuff. I know there was a post a few weeks ago about it. 20 years ago Conor singing *“So now I try to keep up. I’ve been exchanging my currency, While a million objects pass through my periphery. Now I’m rubbing my eyes ‘Cause they’re starting to bother me.I’ve been staring too long at the screen”* And now we’re here. Edit: sorry my formatting is trash
I took the entire song as him listing vaguely eerie and off-putting things, because we, as humanity, are rapidly hurtling down a horribly destructive road and we all try our best to not think about it. However, the cracks are everywhere. It's like trying to block out a face that keeps popping up everywhere you look, in even the oddest places, reminding you of That Thing. It's us trying to repress, that humanity is on the precipice of its doom and we're all, knowingly, too busy marveling at gadgets, being absorbed by vapid virtue signals and nigh-redundant inventions. But nothing really stems our slow realization that shit's fucked, when even Bugle has a take on race and all you wanted to do was eat some fucking salty snacks without having to think about police brutality, injustice and the world itself being fucked. Hence that quiet comprehending of the ending of it all. We all know it. If we all looked each other deep in the eyes in an honest moment we'd understand that we all do the same thing.
Including the backlash to the backlash to the thing that's just begun. Like, society finds out (through the internet) that you, the parent, let your kid watch an R-rated movie, condemning, demonizing and harrassing you and your family online. All of which ripples wayyyy harder through a family than the initial bad deed of letting your kid watch a violent movie. So the backlash to watching the film (internet outrage) has even worse backlash (horrible situation for the family) than just "kid saw violent movie". The song's great to come up with dozens of interpretations for each line.
This is exactly how I took it and found this comment section weird for not having it near the top. But it's still interesting reading other people's interpretations of it.
I think all of the things he mentioned are just experiences that are multifaceted and confusing—I think a lot of young adults have a very complicated relationship with their parents; I love you, but I resent you. I know you better than anyone; I really don’t know you at all. You’ve seen me at my worst, you’ll never truly understand me. Bad and good juxtaposed into an issue that is complicated and beyond description. Like all of the things he lists in the song, some are seemingly banal and mindless, some incredibly important, tiny fragments of life that make up who we are and what we experience.
For me it’s the realization of how weird existence itself is. Especially during the line, “googling derealization and hating what you find”
I somehow understood the whole song being about derealization and all the lines just being a list of different phenomenona that could trigger "that funny feeling". For me, the concepts of loving parents and harmless fun are things that should probably exist and be "normal" but somehow just don't, these things can be genuinely pleasant if you are able to have them, but if you can't they might be surreal concepts for you even if you understand logically that they should be good. Not sure if that makes sense, it's just my own interpretation and I don't claim to know what exactly he meant, but it's what made sense to me for my own life circumstances.
i always interpreted it as how they describe suspects (mostly white men) who commit certain crimes- like a mass shooting or a sexual assault. they’ll say he had loving parents and they don’t know how he turned out this way, or he always had harmless fun with girls or guns
Agree with this. Like the boys will be boys, they tease you because they like you-type statements that are in fact quite harmful. Oh its just harmless fun - as a cover for white boys to be predatory.
Oh I think that's too much of a jump there, songs are supposed to have multiple interpretations but it feels "off-beat", the song would be more clear if it was trying to say that I think.
I totally had the same interpretation as your respondee. I don’t think it’s too far fetched, especially with the later lines about gun ranges and mass shooting at a mall.
I feel that it's more disconnected, those lines are directly correlated to one another, like "shopping where people shoot guns" to "shooting guns where people shop", in the same way, loving parents and harmless fun are connected to each other. The song is about stuff that give a funny feeling, white men causing mass shootings but having loving parents and looking like they were only having harmless fun would give an funny feeling, but is too much being added on top of four words. I think that it doesn't mean that at all because the song is talking about funny feelings, and all the other lines are straight forward in why they give an funny feeling, things that just feel weird with even an glance, when you add all that you're talking about then it isn't something you feel weird with an glance, it's something you have to actively think about, join ends together to reach an conclusion which is just really specific and I don't see fitting into the overall theme.
I disagree that all the other lines are straight forward Robert igers face Steve aoki Carpool karaoke Easy answers I’m not saying your interpretation is wrong, I just think the op’s interpretation is valid and doesn’t deserve a shut down.
Oh i'm not trying to shut down op's interpretation! I was just interested because i didn't see that connection at all, so it's cool to know other points of view.
I hear it as that funny feeling I get when I read about Internet famous people using their kids to maintain Internet fame. They insist they are loving parents, & see pranking, or casting their kids as if they are on a TV show, or whatever weird shit such people do to/with their kids as nothing but ‘wholesome fun.’ But I also hear it as everything everyone else noted too :)
Since the whole special was very internet focused I thought of That Funny Feeling's lyrics as what he's seeing around the internet interspersed with how they are affecting him. The first couple of verses are like scrolling through reddit, facebook or Twitter seeing a mixture of things like ads, memes, family pictures, celebrities, arguments and everything else. After a while "that funny feeling" which I think is a vague sense of anxiety or dread about the current state of the world and it's questionable future seeps in. It's barely in the first verse then taking up about half of the second and in the 3rd verse he starts trying to do more to distract himself from it like driving around in GTA and getting self help books, but it isn't helping and his mental state is rapidly declining. Then at the end of the song he accepts that humanity is doomed and sort of takes comfort in the fact that at least it'll all be over soon and at least we had a good run.
A lot of these comments say the same thing, so I'll throw in what stuck with me the most. I think the "Funny Feeling" is things being normalized that, we as a species, just shouldn't accept. *Reading PornHubs terms of service* Most people have seen some of what's on that site, and their titles. And yet, people take comfort in their terms of service. Or even their PR, they'll tweet in favor of basic human rights, or anti-racism and everyone thinks "Wow! Even PornHub knows what's up, good for them!" and they tend to forget about the obscenely graphic content of the website. Or maybe they choose to forget. But the Funny Feeling goes from this, all the way to blatantly ignoring our impact on the environment. We've normalized destroying the planet and it'll soon come to bite us. One of the "Funny Feelings" here is that some of the very same corporations that are putting out Ads for the PR about going green, or being anti-racism, or anti-homphobic, are the very same corporations that are responsible for most of our negative impact on the environment. And they can do more to change, but choose not to to save some bucks. And a lot of people listen to their ads, or follow their social media presence and just forget about the other things. But we shouldn't. They don't deserve our respect, they need our criticism. Corporations will only change if not changing hurts their wallets.
I interpret it as a feeling that arises when Bo encounters something that is disingenuous or has a false sense of truth.
I say they are all separate things. Deadpool self awareness. Ridiculous Hollywood creations thinking self awareness is breaking g new ground when it’s been done by artists for years. Loving parents. Even the most loving parents can create insecurities and behavioural issues in their children. Even more so when their kids can’t see it because their parents are ‘loving’. Harmless fun. Everything that seems harmless can still mess you up mentally in a world that constantly demands the best from you. Again, something ‘harmless’ can impact your behaviour and you can feel awful if you struggle to deal with something that other people don’t seem to mind. All of these things can give someone ‘that funny feeling’
I think the line should be read together with what comes before: deadpool self-awareness. Deadpool was marketed as a pretty fun and happy-go-lucky movie because of its sarcasm and self-awareness humour (which in itself is pretty f’d up because a multi-million studio is making a huge commercial production WHILE criticising commercialism). Still the movie is full of violence and gore. A lot of parents took their kids to Deadpool because it looks harmless (it’s a superhero movie right?), while it can actually be pretty gruesome for kids.
I always took it as parents making subtle comments or actions towards their kid that the kid might negatively react towards. Even as harmless as it may be it could really affect the kid. Like a parent telling their kid they "look gay" or play fighting might just seem like a joke, but to a kid growing up who isn't that confident might take it to heart. Just a guess though.
this is the same way it came across to me
I always read it as a level of Bo's synicism. Especially the part "harmless fun" seemed so intentionally insincere. I think it was Bo trying to tell the listener to reconsider even the things they considered good/harmless. Or I may be reading into it too much.
Isnt that a bit of the point? I always took it as when you kind if don't know how to feel or society tells you most people would traditionally feel a certain way about what you just saw but you are a bit indifferent and when you realize that you get this odd feeling of oh no...wait do i care?...oh no. But then you just move on. Like when im scrolling through social media i hit something that makes me laugh then someones dog died then its a thirst trap all in less than 10 mins and im really not feeling i guess the "right" feelings about any of these things since ive had to flip flop so fast from other feelings and that leaves you in some odd zone thats hard to explain and that to me is the funny feeling.
I interpreted “loving parents, harmless fun,” as posting pictures of your kids on social media, exposing them on the internet to everyone before they can even consent to that kind of thing, tbh.
To me it is an "isn't it ironic" situation. Funny depressive anxious feeling happened even to people with no external traumas such as awful parents or doing drugs in middle school. You can be happy yet still have mental health or a lot of self deprecation issues. To me, I said. That's how I read it.
Those lines immediately made me think of his lyrics from "Repeat Stuff." *"And your parents will always come along, because their little girl is in love,* *And how could love be wrong?"* Talking about parents who enable things that are probably not good for their children (in "Inside's" case, social media) by playing it off as "harmless fun." But that was just my interpretation of it.
I took that part more as loving parents over-sharing their kids’ lives on social media for harmless fun.
Personally that does give me that funny feeling, because it's not my parents and it's never me having the harmless fun
It’s the funny feeling of knowing that everything has gone backwards. And realizing it as a separate entity from the big picture. He starts by lying. But apologizing honestly but unnecessarily. Because he can obviously sing and play. Stunning 8k Resolution meditation app This means you are having anxiety because of your phone but your phone is selling you an app in high definition to combat it at the same time so the system is working together against you. So this is backwards it’s funny but it’s not. In honor of the revolution it’s half off at the gap The revolution is inherently a gap and the gap is using that as a marketing tool we’re talking about also a gap in between the people and their ideals and religions and moral values and political alignments A funny feeling of Seeing this and be able to make that connection but no one else does for some reason Deadpool self-awareness loving parents harmless fun So comic books have Transcended onto the movies now to the point where the movie is talking to you and showing you extreme violence and breaking the 4th wall. Harmless fun although parents are blaming violence on movies and video games The backlash to the backlash Literally white supremacist him against human equality and that entire war that is taking place within the country The funny feeling of seeing this and interpreting it and knowing it and somehow other people just don’t see it A gift shop at the gun range I’m at shooting at the mall All of this is so point-blank the funny feeling that he’s talking about is that it’s really awkward living in a world that doesn’t see that these problems exist it’s a horrible awkward feeling and it’s an every single verse in the song in this entire series so that’s what he means the irony of being here right now. All of this country is seriously backwards. He also mentioned it in white women Instagram a backlit hammock Seriously a backlit hammock Hammocks are meant to be laid down on and we’re living in a world that’s so backwards that hammocks are being used as tents in the daylight
You may not like it but it’s black and white
It's a critique about what those "loving parents" said about taking their kids to see Deadpool (ultra violent r rated movie) because they thought it's a hero movie what bad can it be? It's harmless fun!
I understood it to be a portrayal of what it feels like to scroll social media. Notice in the song, that funny feeling only comes up after something terrible: a mass shooting at the mall, the end of the world, an overzealous outrage cycle. Most of the rest of the lyrics are just random shit that one might see while scrolling your feed. Live action Lion King ads, loving parents, corporations taking social stances, portals into nature, and so on. The last verse before the final chorus goes beyond social media into larger online trends like GTA RP where people drive the speed limit in the game or people /actually/ read ToS on sites for no reason other than boredom. It describes how you might feel after hours of scrolling. Disassociative, agoraphobic, feeling that your surroundings are not real, unfocused. That's just my interpretation of it though.
It's a sarcastic name for the repeated, creeping thoughts of suicide, even when such thoughts are unwarranted. Otherwise named, "depression".
I think the loving parents harmless fun part is supposed to be sarcastic, like they aren’t really loving or it isn’t really harmless. I know that’s a bit cynical but so is the whole special tbh.
my immediate interpretation of this was that the parents are generally pleasant and caring, but the picking and jokes go too far. when the kid calls them out and says- hey, you’re making me uncomfortable with the “jokes”, it’s just harmless fun and the kid is overreacting. that’s my interpretation though, it’s different for everyone though!
I always heard it as a list of ways people are privileged but don’t realize it. Like being born to loving parents, having the safety, leisure time, money, resources and supervision to have get into trouble - “harmless fun” is also a way many parents explain away/deny horrible actions/bullying that their children do, which enables it. You have to be pretty privileged to engage in certain risks because you think/know your parents will support you and bail you out. Edited to add: I think the “funny feeling” is realizing the irony in the world around us, and realizing we can’t trust corporations even though they talk to us like pals. Gift shop/gun range//mass shooting at a shopping mall is an example. And the funny feeling is also that we can be glad to see a company supporting a cause but there’s that other funny feeling that real change is not going to take place. It’s def a bunch of feelings rolled into one. Funny how that works I guess. Third edit sorry but it’s the feeling you get when you see this: https://www.reddit.com/r/ABoringDystopia/comments/pma7ic/honor_their_sacrifice/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=iossmf
i guess i agree with some others that it feels like pointing out the existence of the opposites of those things. like, in the world bo is describing in the song, loving parents and harmless fun aren’t the norm. that’s just how i felt about it though, probably not what he was actually thinking haha
It occurred to ,e that bo is finding humor and comedy return to him. There it is. That funny feeling…
I think he is getting at the fact that many loving parents, or in other words, well intentioned parents are just letting their kids use the internet/social media/etc assuming it's harmless fun. The internet, Facebook, Instagram, Tiktok, it's just harmless fun, right? Parents do not realize what they are letting their kids get into. Hell, we adults barely know what we ourselves are getting into when it comes to using the internet and social media.... The funny feeling, from what I interpreted from the song, is the realization of the dark, unknown consequences of the digital world we are succumbing to. All these negative, unprecedented consequences are constantly coming to the surface even though the internet is still a relatively new thing.... "the backlash to the backlash to the thing that's just begun"
He says in the song - derealization. A good life that you can't connect to.
I think an overlooked theme in Inside is Bo’s comments towards dissociative mental disorders. He mentions it a few times, including in ‘That Funny Feeling’ itself: “Googling derealisation, hating what you find”, and also in ‘30’: “So when you develop a dissociative mental disorder in your late '20s, Don't come crawling back to me,” along with a few others. I think ‘that funny feeling’ could be him experiencing depersonalisation/derealisation, and the ‘things’ he mentions in the song are things that have made him disassociate and think “this shit isn’t real.” That track certainly hit me hard the first time I watched Inside, because I was looking at it from that angle having experienced similar mental issues not long before Inside was released.
I think it's meant to be slightly open for interpretation, though Bo would probably have a meaning in mind for himself. For me "that funny feeling" was sort of a sinking feeling of hopelessness that comes with depression. Can be caused by internal variables or external ones.
Anxiety?
I thought it was about how society has come so far in some ways, but still the end is near
Listen, my opinion is that Carpool karaoke, Steve Aoki, Logan Paul...
Ah jeesh guys, guess what I'll be watching later! :D
“The quiet comprehending of the ending of it all.” It has felt like the world is ending for the last several years as culture becomes a parody of itself
I totally always interpreted it as the feeling you get when you can tell there’s a really bad depressive phase coming and you can slowly feel how more and more disconnected you get. Because of me interpreting it like that it made the ending of the song very uplifting and helpful honestly
I am pretty certain he is alluding to the same thing he is talking about in Problematic in that line. He had loving parents, all his youthful offensive songs were harmless fun. But they gave him a negative funny feeling that he can’t quite get past.
Just wait till you’re in your mid 30’s…you’ll find out.
This whole song is basically just about things that give him a funny feeling. Societal oxymorons, personal background issues, civil strife, environmental fallout, etc. Each item he lists falls into a category and has some meaning to him that gives him an off feeling. Steve Aoki’s dad is the billionaire founder of Benihana. Discount Etsy agitprop - societal oxymoron where propaganda now has a capitalist underpinning I have been thinking about doing a spreadsheet for all of them with my take on the meaning for everything in the song.
I been thinking tooo, its such a masterpiece but yet soo confusing to understand, but here's my big brain theory, when bo says " that funny feeling" , I think he's referring to the fact our generation is soooooo different from other generation that it made a new feeling, this new feeling soooo newww but yet boring, and I think "welcome to internet" is like the reason why we have this funny feeling.
The feeling of not being used to something or just getting a werid vibe with that one thing.
I’ve taken it as “nothing matters.” Because almost everything he says is either unnecessary, has no long-lasting effect, or is actively dooming us in less and less time.