Trivia / Bo Burnham

• Creator Backlash: Burnham has admitted his earlier stuff, in general, is inferior to his later work, mainly due to relying mostly on shock value rather than actual satire or making a point. He specifically says he doesn't really like "The Perfect Woman" (a song about how Helen Keller would be, well, the perfect woman), mainly because he's concerned it might be used to make fun of a real blind and/or deaf girl.
• Creator Breakdown: While his personal insecurities about his identity as an artist began being worked into his material as early as Words Words Words (namely through "Art is Dead"), it came to a head in Make Happy, which features heavy allusions to his insecurities being intensified by problems with mental health. He then took a hiatus from performing onstage, since he began suffering panic attacks while performing, but his first special back, Inside, is arguably his darkest work yet, with him even joking that the special's main benefit for him while working on it was being a distraction from wanting to commit suicide.
• Doing It for the Art: While Inside was released exclusively through Netflix, Bo uploaded The Inside Outtakes on his YouTube channel for free, even opting out of having it monetized in order to include fake YouTube-style ads of his own in the video.
• Keep Circulating the Tapes: While Words Words Words and what. were released as albums, Make Happy was barred from this treatment due to "weird legal stuff", which made audio rips of the special quite common (which Bo outright encouraged fans to download). When Inside appeared to be another special-only situation, a cycle of rips surfacing on YouTube, being taken down, and quickly being reuploaded began almost immediately after the special's premiere, along with Bo's fans beginning a massive rally through social media to get Netflix to release the special as an album. However, unlike with Make Happy, an album was eventually confirmed and released.
• Referenced by...: TomSka has explicitly stated that his asdfmovie book Art is Dead is named after Bo's song of the same name.
• What Could Have Been: Before giving YouTube a try, Bo's plan was to go to open mics in New York while at college and be a one-liner comic more in the style of Demetri Martin.

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