Is Thom Yorke Secretly A Robot-Fighting Badass?

By Brent McKnight | Updated

Thom Yorke is best known as the front man of the band Radiohead, those critical darlings of the alt rock world. Here’s a little known fact: Yorke also moonlights as a robot-fighting undercover agent. At least in the world of this short video, Thom Yorke: Robot Hunter.

If you have a hard time picturing the diminutive Yorke as a robot-battling badass, you’re not alone. But according to this video that’s not exactly how he goes about things. See, he doesn’t use brute force, expert fighting skills honed to a razor’s edge of years of combat, or even smarts to defeat the robots. No, it’s his sweet dance moves that save the day for all humanity.

In the end, Yorke’s spastic-kid-after-an-extra-large-soda dance moves prove too much for the robot’s computerized brains to comprehend. With no discernable rhythm or pattern, their mechanoid operating systems simply overload and burst into flames. It’s easier than you might expect, since the robots are made of silver painted cardboard.

This is only three minutes long, but even so it still feels a bit too long. Maybe it’s my general distaste for Radiohead and their music shinning through (their music bores me, and it’s annoying that so many people worship them as if they’re the second coming of the damn Beatles).

The set up is a funny enough concept, and they guy they have playing Yorke does a fine impression of the singer’s flailing, overwrought dancing. But the whole experience is underwhelming and falls flat, good for a quick chuckle, then best banished from the forefront of your thoughts.