Who is Thom Yorke addressing when he sings the line, “You do it to yourself”? In the context of the music video for Radiohead’s “Just,” he is talking to his audience. He answers, with this line, the question that the music video raises to its viewers: “What makes this man lie down in the street?” Radiohead never divulges the literal answer to the question, but the music video uses it to engage viewers in the process of understanding its real intentions.

“Just” cautions its viewers against acting out of self-interest, like the crowd acts at the video’s end. This crowd does not come to the aid of the man on the ground but provokes him—despite his cries of “Don’t touch me!”—until they torture the secret from him. The music video intends for its audience to identify with the crowd, and uses this to build its warning against following the crowd in its actions.

Jamie Thraves, the director, promotes empathy for the crowd with several tactics. Suits permeate the video—even Thom Yorke is wearing a tie—to make the audience identify with this archetype for the common businessman. But the interest Thraves creates regarding the question he intends for viewers to repeat is his greatest tool in creating empathy, and sensitizing them to the fate of the crowd. Thraves’s use of subtitles anchors viewers to a definitive dialogue. The omission of subtitles at the end, the fallen officer, and the magnitude of the crowd lying down are meant to disconcert the audience because they disrupt the ordered world of the video. With the question unanswered, viewers are meant to demand one with the crowd’s intensity, and discover that, by asking this question, how alike they both are.

“Just” hints at who bears the responsibility for bringing the crowd to the sidewalk. At the younger man’s fist display of self-interest—“You could have broken my neck!”—he says the line with sudden anger. The music’s volume increases for emphasis, before the video cuts to Thom Yorke looking at the camera in contempt. It accuses viewers of their capacity to act just as the man does. The man on the ground prays, “You don’t know what you ask of me,” framing himself as religiously devoted and the crowd assailing him despite this. The fury of the younger man’s impatience portrays the crowd as equally antagonistic. Thus, the crowd’s role is reversed at the video’s end, making their self-interest obvious.

Radiohead intends for its audience to associate the self-interest of the crowd with what’s responsible for the crowd lying down. The video informs the viewer—if you suffer for indulging in your self-interest, you will have, ultimately, done it to yourself.