The Great Internet Depression: Bo Burnham’s Critique on the Industry that Created Him
If you had the option to be either Amish or among the richest people in America you would probably choose the latter. But what if I told you both were recorded as being just as happy, with the Amish reported as having the most consistent, highest levels of happiness? Would that change your mind? Probably not. However most of the people reading this have grown up seeing and learning about all the things that are possible in today’s society. Right now is the best time to be alive, so why are there more cases of depression, anxiety, and generally lower or equal levels of happiness? While there is no definite answer to this question that millions of people have researched and considered, many agree that technology plays a big part in our deflated levels of happiness.
Social media is one of the biggest and greatest life altering technological advances of the 21st century. It bridges the gap between people of all cultures and gives them a way to convey their ideas instantly to everyone. But is it creating more problems then it is solving?
Bo Burnham, a product of social media, is also one of it’s biggest critics. His career started when he posted a video onto YouTube in 2006 and it went viral, gaining the attention of Hollywood, Comedy Central, and Netflix. Burnham rode the massive wave of social media in the mid 2000’s straight to the top among some of the best comedians out there.
In his latest special on Netflix, “Make Happy,” he takes shots at entertainment today, poking fun at Jimmy Fallon’s lip sync battles on the “Tonight Show” and pop country music. Burnham tells Rolling Stone magazine that famous people shouldn’t be able to get away with doing normal things for entertainment, explaining, “you deserve better entertainment than this.” While Burnham is completely aware of the irony of the situation, he willfully admits to being a hypocrite. Pointing out the hypocrisy in entertainers today, even other comedians who complain about daily woes at the airport, at restaurants, when in reality they take private jets, get priority over other people when they go places, and have problems most people would welcome over their current worries. Accepting of his fame and where he is in life, he says, “I feel I need to expose what I know.” Burnham believes that often the people who know the most about something, or are credible enough, are the hypocrites.
“You deserve better entertainment than this.”
Throughout his hour long special, Burnham interjects small monologues about problems he sees with social media, ending the entire show with a tribute to Kanye, where Burnham rants about living with a constant audience. He begins the final act by singing in auto-tune, “Can I say my shiii-IIIttt.” The bit starts off with him making fun of Pringles cans and burritos that are too big, but then slows down and starts addressing his biggest problem: the audience. Bo struggles with pleasing his audience and also pleasing himself. His love/hate relationship with his audience has defined most of his life.
“A part of me loves you. A part of me hates you. A part of me needs you. A part of me fears you.”
Earlier in the special he explained that growing up and being told to express himself, like almost all children growing up today, made him think people would want to listen to what he had to say. Burnham “had a privileged life, and got lucky” so people do want to hear what he has to say because he, like so many other comedians, has found an audience that will listen. He uses his fame to attempt to tell them that they don’t need an audience in life, saying “if you can live your life without an audience, you should do it.” Almost all middle-class Americans either have a Facebook account, an Instagram account, a Twitter account, or even all three. All of which serve the same purpose: a place people go to seek an audience.
“Everyone’s on Facebook, everyone hates it. Everyone’s on twitter, everyone hates it.”
One thing that I agree with about Bo Burnham’s opinion on social media is that it sucks. I’m not saying that there isn’t anything worthy that social media has given us, but the vast majority of content created on the internet is just content meant to make as much money as possible as fast as possible. Burnham considers himself lucky to have grown to an age where he could understand the importance of working hard for a long time on one thing just before social media and the internet took over everything. His concerns about content creators and artists paying more attention to how effectively something can be marketed rather than focusing on the content itself are well founded. How many times have you looked at a piece of modern art and thought, “I probably could have made that.” Or went on YouTube and didn’t see nine out of ten suggested videos with captions in ALL CAPS to try to grab your attention better. Industries are moving from focusing on their products to how they can better market their products.
The last seven and a half minutes of his special “Make Happy” are an ode to Kanye West. A celebrity known for not smiling most of the time and who’s most recent album “The Life of Pablo” was heralded as his most divisive album yet. Burnham says that he truly does love Kanye because he is so incoherent. To Burnham, is you’re famous, how could you not be crazy? What Burnham respects so much about Kanye is how much energy and passion he pours into his work.
So, has this changed your answer to the initial question about being an Amish person or one of the richest people in America? I doubt it. Anyone who has grown up in this age of technology where there’s more content created in a day than there is time left until death of our universe could never turn down the opportunity to achieve everything they’ve ever dreamed. However, since I don’t have the power to grant anyone this wish, and no one else does, maybe we can start by doing the things that don’t require an audience’s approval to make us happy. Giving ourselves an audience also means giving us more problems to solve. Focusing on how we can bring happiness to ourselves is the first thing we should work on, instead of worrying about how happy our ‘audience’ is with us. Even this can be something that some people might never be able to do for themselves, so they find their happiness in people like Bo Burnham who have found people who will listen. Even I myself am guilty of doing this with YouTubers and other comedians. Letting go of my problems and listening to them talk about their lives or their problems is an escape for me. Because we live in a time when true self-gratification can be so hard to come by, I’m going to steal Bo Burnham’s final line to his audience from “Make Happy” as the final piece you take away from my paper, “I hope you’re happy.”
