How Bo Burnham Predicted the Internet's Existential Crisis
2024-09-27 · 5 min read
Bo Burnham has been warning us about the internet since he was a teenager uploading comedy songs to YouTube in 2006. His 2016 special Make Happy ended with a song about performance and authenticity that played as a farewell to comedy. Then the pandemic happened, and Inside turned him into the defining artistic voice of internet-age anxiety.
Inside, filmed entirely in a single room during lockdown, is less a comedy special than an experimental film about losing your mind to screens. Songs like Welcome to the Internet and That Funny Feeling captured the specific dread of being perpetually online with surgical precision. The special articulated feelings that millions couldn't put into words.
Welcome to the Internet is particularly prophetic. Released in 2021, it describes the internet as an overwhelming buffet of everything simultaneously. Two years later, with AI-generated content flooding every platform and attention spans shrinking further, the song's satire aged into documentary.
Burnham's earlier work laid the groundwork. His 2018 film Eighth Grade explored social media's impact on adolescent identity with empathy and accuracy that stunned critics. The film understood that the internet isn't just something teenagers use but something that shapes how they construct their sense of self.
What makes Burnham significant beyond comedy is his formal innovation. Inside used lighting, editing, and sound design as comedic and dramatic tools. The special's visual language influenced a wave of pandemic-era content creation and video essay filmmaking.
Burnham's subsequent silence and selective output suggest he practices what he preaches about the dangers of constant content creation. In a culture that demands artists produce continuously, his willingness to disappear until he has something worth saying is itself a statement.
