Empathy as Entertainment: Bo Burnham’s "Inside"

Empathy as Entertainment: Bo Burnham’s "Inside"

Art
Autumn Jefferson
Media Staff

Here’s a typical scene for a college student like me: you come home, sit down, eat out of a foam bowl for dinner, scroll through TikTok to see your own life reflected back at you on a screen. It’s okay that you’re eating out of a foam bowl and nodding along to buzzwords, because everyone else is doing it too. The last three videos, ten posts, and four YouTube channels told you so. This is hyperfocus, you think. This is educating yourself. Buzzwords. The right ones. You click the little heart.

This is educating yourself. Buzzwords. The right ones. You click the little heart.

 

Musical comedy genius Bo Burnham skewers the buzzy, digitalized world of my generation in his Netflix show, Inside. A rundown of our shared pandemic year, his one-man show jumps from the pitfalls of capitalism to the aesthetic seductions of a “white woman’s” Instagram. He sings about the perils of FaceTiming your mom, and does a noir-style staged interview of Wheat Thins, the brand:“The question is no longer, ‘Do you want to buy Wheat Thins?’” he states, impersonating a social activist, “The question is now ‘Will you support Wheat Thins in the fight against Lyme disease?’”

We laugh along with Burnham because we see and hear ourselves in his send-ups. We aren’t flipping from one social media topic to the next because we’re alienated or disengaged but because we actually care too much about too many things. It’s empathy overload, no matter which channel we’re on. We care about social justice and the state of the earth and appearing perfect on social media and sexting the guy that will ghost us in two weeks.

In one of my favorite bits from Inside, Burnham sings “Welcome to the Internet,” (which, ironically, has also become a trending TikTok sound):

“Welcome to the Internet, put your cares aside. Here’s a tip for straining pasta. Here's a nine year old who died...show us pictures of your children, tell us every thought you think...could I interest you in everything, all of the time? A little bit of everything, all of the time? Apathy’s a tragedy and boredom is a crime. Anything and everything all of the time.”

We have gotten to the point where we are not allowed to not care. Things to care about are being spoon fed to us (read: shoved down our throats) at every turn, blanketed under the guise of entertainment. Burnham’s Inside illustrates how our own empathy is weaponized against us. And to make matters worse, it’s funny too.

In one bit, Burham reviews a video of himself singing a song about the exploitation of labor in the modern world, only for that video to bleed into the same video of him reviewing himself. Eventually he sees nothing but the flaws in himself and states that “self-awareness does not absolve anyone of anything,” suggesting that caring does not care (ha) about accountability. It just cares if you care. That’s the limit of what’s funny. Accountability can’t be made into a comedy musical. Well, Burnham is trying. “Isn’t anyone gonna hold me accountable?” he sings. The question remains unanswered.

Entertainment used to be outside of ourselves. It was a movie we watched or a game that, once finished, allowed us to come back home to “ourselves.” And we felt free to critique those movies and games because they seemed part of a dominant paradigm—specifically a white, male one. But now, as Burham shows, we want to criticize the same paradigm that we’re furiously trying to fit into.

The digital era has turned so much of caring into a performance that even caring about ourselves, and wanting that social connection or relatability, has become an object of critique.

 

We demand depictions of marginalized identities, communities of color, and economic inequalities in the entertainment we consume, but in the process, God forbid we don’t know the right buzzwords, or accidentally appropriate a culture, or are uninformed about a recent current event. It’s funny when others forget, but not when we do. We want to call others out, but fit in at the same time. The digital era has turned so much of caring into a performance that even caring about ourselves, and wanting that social connection or relatability, has become an object of critique—which means it’s also a source of entertainment.

“How are you feeling? Do you like the show? Are you tired of it? Never mind, I don’t wanna know,” Burnham sings. He’s asking about his show, but it almost feels like we’re asking about ours. Are these pictures good? Is my TikTok funny? We want to care, but not too much. The digital world exploits our insecurity, turning our caring into the butt of the joke anyway—entertaining for others but no fun for us when we’re the target of derision. So we laugh at our own traumas and insecurities depicted by others on social media, foolishly finding comfort in the notion that at least it’s not our own empathy that’s become the punchline.

Burnham gets our generational conundrum—do we curb our empathy because we fear it being turned into a mocking form of entertainment? Or do we follow Burnham’s lead and allow ourselves the humanity of caring about things that matter, even if we do it imperfectly? We can care about fighting Lyme disease, but it’s hard if we haven’t slept in three weeks and have an exam tomorrow. We can care about liking all our friend’s Instagram posts, but not if scrolling takes a toll on our mental health. We don’t have to stop caring—we should just prioritize, and redirect a little bit more of it to ourselves. And that sounds selfish, makes us feel guilty—but that’s precisely what a profit-driven mediascape wants us to feel. They can’t capitalize off of care if we’re not caring about, to quote Burnham, “a little bit of everything all of the time.” Caring isn’t linear, but it can be parallel.

We might laugh at ourselves along the way, gently. We might become the butt of someone’s joke. They care so much about self-care, they’ll turn into a yoga guru tomorrow. So what? Let yourself be the yoga guru. Log off for a day. Take a deep breath. Giving your friend a hug in real life counts as caring, too. Let the buzzwords unspool, just for a moment— if you must hyperfocus, hyperfocus on yourself. The little heart will be there tomorrow.