The Meaning of Bo Burnham's Inside
- 2 themes
- Leftist/socialist stuff - e.g the sock song. Remember watching this and looking out for the "surprising nuance" that I admire Bo for, but being disappointed that the sock character didn't seem to have anything really insightful to say that you won't hear from a generic radical leftist. "Private property is inherently theft, separate the worker from the means of production, paedophilic corporate elite etc..."
- Theme Two: "Can everyone just shut the fuck up?"
- Aka: The democratisation of (and cultural acceptance of) the means to cultivate and distribute one’s own unique worldview has long surpassed the point at which it is of societal value.
- Aka: The fact that everyone broadcasts what they think and how they feel, all the time, at each other with digital megaphones, makes it difficult to tune out and connect to truth and wisdom.
- Bo puts a lot of this down to the capitalist system and corporate greed (commodity fetishism) - which to me while obviously true feels scapegoat-y and I think lets people off the hook.
- "When the digital space is where data can be mined like a natural resource, and attention can create profit, the digital world becomes the real world, and the physical world exists only to serve it." -- Such a good quote.
- Ultimate theme: Bo is incredibly pessimistic on the state of the world - "They say the world is ending, honey it already did", and believes it futile to look for solutions within the system, when it's the system that created the state we're in. Makes me a bit worried for Bo. I'm personally a bit more optimistic and to be honest think Bo is, because I don't think he's have made this special if he had truly given up.
