Bo Burnham Blog

So much to say in terms of this last video, but also not a lot at all.

I haven’t quite figured out how/what these blogs should be. I’m gonna let you guide in the comments. But for now this will kind of be a stream of consciousness on what thought I have on the previous video.

1- I knew when it was done that it was “good”. But I think all my stuff is good. I still don’t know what the fuck I’m doing with thumbnails, and I’m convinced that the YouTube algorithm segregates viewers by race (I’ll talk about that eventually) so I was scared that the video would bomb. I have a (as far as I can tell) mostly black audience, and as I said in the video, black people don’t do Bo Burnham all that much. So my fear was I made a video that wouldn’t find any audience. Whelp shows what I know…

2- That said, my other fear was how white viewers would respond to me being so critical regarding race, and in a way that I feel most don’t ever encounter. Especially since to an extent I’m kicking a dog while it’s down. I knew after watching Inside and researching other videos and the general response to it that it had a deep affect on it’s predominantly white audience. As I was writing the script I struggled with the thought of… are these folks gonna really hear me as I low key mock their existential crisis? Are they gonna be in a brain space to engage with the complexity of the situation from the standpoint I’m offering? I actually agonized over this one a bit cause I felt like I’m finally getting a push and some growth, what if this stagnates it? Thankfully that doesn’t seem to be the case, and at the risk of sounding naive, it helps renew my hope in forward momentum in issues around race in this country.  This isn't a big victory against racism or anything, but it is at least evidence that complex conversations are possible with the right people involved. 

3- I lost my cousin Dameion (mentioned at the end of the video) a few days before watching Inside. My cousin was an anchor in our family and his loss was sudden and unexpected. I had heard so much about Inside being dark I felt like it would help with the grieving process. I’m the type that when I’m sad, I engulf myself in the emotion and it helps soothe me. Inside definitely did the trick. I had "All Eyes on Me" on repeat until we laid my cousin into the ground. The nihilism of the song speaks to me a lot. I consider myself an optimistic nihilist… if that’s a thing. I don’t think there’s much real purpose or fairness in the world, but I also know I can control and affect the world plenty in my time here, so I might as well do what good I can. My cousin was similar, he had been in a lot of pain for years and had recently gotten a new lease on life. He was dead a month later. It shows just how uncaring the world can be about our hopes and dreams.  But I'm so happy that he did so much to affect others in his time here.

4- The hard part about being a nihilist for me is that I struggle with managing the grieving processes of others. To me there was no grand lesson or takeaway from my cousin’s loss, and for me that’s what made Inside resonate as I watched it. It was a confirmation of accepting meaninglessness and being ok with that and not letting that stagnate you.  

5- The one thing I’ll probably return to from this video is the conversation about “Evil” and why we need to stop referring to systemic or social ills as “evil”. When I say evil isn’t real, I don’t mean that the concept of evil is demonstrably false (although…), what I mean is that nobody thinks that they are evil. Nobody thinks that their harmful behavior is evil. Nobody thinks they shouldn’t be forgiven for the bad things they do, etc. So when we call anything evil it immediately creates distance between us and the systems that make certain things happen. This is why like 80% of these “karen” stories are centered around liberal white people. They have so separated the concept of racism from their reality as “this evil thing the other white people do” that they don’t realize that it can very easily be them on a bad day… but that’s for another video.

That’s all I got. Idk if this was any good… I promise the next one will be better. Let me know in the comments if you’d like something like this, more of a “production notes type of thing” or something else.

Still figuring this out but things are looking up!

Thank you

Fiq