bo burnham on audience

at the end of your last standup special, you said, “If you can live your life without an audience, do it.” If you can imagine 16-year-old video-making Bo watching a 25-year-old comedian he admires saying something like that, how does 16-year-old Bo react?

Bo: It’s so funny because I don’t think the thing I was responding to in that special existed in 2006, when I first started posting videos. I did standup for a long time, the first five years I just sucked, and then I was like, OK, well, I want to be honest on stage, and if I’m being honest, I’m a performer, so I have to be honest about that. So I’ll talk about the show, because that was my main stress. I was having panic attacks on stage, I had stage fright, all the stuff. I was like, No one’s going to fucking get this! I will only have actors and comedians coming up to me. And I did it, and 14-year-old girls would come up to me after the show and—more than men my own age—would go, “I really got what you were saying about the performer thing.” So, if there was a bridge between us that I had to cross to write this movie, it was built by them, to me, first! I felt understood by people like Kayla before I presumed to understand people like Kayla, and I think that journey has to do with the internet. Because of the internet making kids feel like performers, giving everyone an audience. I was seeking an audience when I was 16 in 2006 because it wasn’t just naturally afforded to everybody, and now it is. So if I heard that in 2006, I would think that guy was tired of just performing, but the narrative of that really did develop in the meantime, if that makes any sense.

“We’re confused. We’re unsure of what this moment is.” 

speak your fears into the world

• I have been blessed with remarkable comrades and collaborators: Together we organize the world for ourselves, or at least we organize our understanding of it; we reflect it, refract it, criticize it, grieve over its savagery and help each other to discern, amidst the gathering dark, paths of resistance, pockets of peace and places from whence hope may be plausibly expected. 

youtube as the truman show:

My nephews that are three years old watch a YouTube channel of a kid and his dad playing with his toys, and—I told this story and multiple people said their kids do this—my nephew will be playing with toys and he’ll turn to my sister and go, “Tell the subscribers!”–and my sister has to pretend to film him while he talks about his life? That is a dissociative state, to float around yourself and view yourself while you live yourself, which is very similar to a camera following you or something. It’s way weirder than The Truman Show. Way weirder than The Truman Show is to know you’re on The Truman Show and be chill, you know?