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by yamtaddle
1215 days ago
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I wouldn't quite paint everyone in Project Mayhem as immature edgelords (not even the narrator)—I think there's some genuine hole in their lives and need for belonging that's missing, and that society/capitalism/the-standard-life-plan/media-defined-masculinity/whatever isn't providing. Thing is, Tyler's message and the way he actually "helps" these people are very much at-odds, and a lot of his message is, in fact, immature edgelord shit, sprinkled with trite and well-worn but not exactly wrong nuggets of kinda-wisdom. I actually think Tyler's being a bit appealing, at first, is an important part of the movie. If the audience isn't convinced someone could fall for his schtick, the story doesn't work very well. In fact, I think the film's maybe more relevant than ever. There are whole movements and personalities that look an awful lot like Tyler's mix of true-and-false and smart-and-stupid "wisdom", and in a lot of cases they are (nominally) addressing actual problems or something that's missing for a lot of people. |
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Absolutely agreed. On a surface level, especially in the beginning, Tyler is this good looking guy who does what he wants in the face of the world, and is pretty appealing and charismatic. To make people understand the point, you need to make them relate to the situation in a good way. Having a cool and a charismatic guy who is pissed at the world in similar ways to you is a really great hook.
The concerns of people who fell for project mayhem were indeed valid in the real world at the time (and imo still are), such as heavily increasing consumerism, apathy due to a lack of direction, etc., which made it very relatable. I don't know how common it is among people empirically, but I definitely had a brief moment in life when I felt the whole "everything is a copy of a copy of a copy". And I would not be surprised to find out that this is actually very common.
Those things are something that resonates with a ton of people in real life, but majority of people have much healthier ways of acting on those feelings, compared to how people in the fight club acted on them. However, many definitely fantasized about acting out in "edgy" ways in response, and the movie just used those fantasies to illustrate where the satirized logical conclusion leads.