Writer: Harsh Mehta
Editor: Jairaj Vij
Welcome back to Harsh Mehta and his obsession with Bo Burnham! I’ve talked about one of Bo’s songs, “That Funny Feeling” from Inside before and this time, I’m tackling “Welcome to the Internet”. In the modern age, all of us are constantly on the internet and social media. We may call it a burning trash heap, or claim repeatedly that we want to leave because of the toxicity, but it always pulls us right back in. I, for one, am a terminally online person. I don’t think I can really pull myself away. Well, in this song, Bo gives us a look into the internet and we see what he thinks about it. He has a past with observational comedy, so let’s see what insight he brings to the table this time.
He starts out by telling us about the ever-consuming, earth-shattering depth of the internet. There isn’t anyone in the world who can’t find something on the internet that won’t interest them. Some get in on the wild ride just because of news, but if you’ve gone on more of the internet-heavy news outlets like Buzzfeed, right next to the articles about daily, real news, you’ll be recommended stupid articles about celebrity appearances in public. A lot of them are even fixated on the interests of niche communities on the internet, such as foot fetishists. The presentation for the song is a mix between circus presenter and Disney villain. If Disney does ever tackle more gross themes like the ones taken on in this song, you can totally imagine Bo being the impersonation of the internet, doing a whimsical piece showcasing the wonders and horrors of the internet, tantalising the protagonist to take the plunge into the ever-churning internet. He goes on to talk about the algorithms that run on clicks from us, the people. Websites make money by getting our eyeballs on ads and more and more of their articles, so they’re run by algorithms specifically designed to recommend eye-catching content catered to our interests to keep us on their website as long as possible. They want you to simply sit back and consume.
The internet runs on attention, be it positive or negative. If they can get a rise out of you, their job is done. The internet is the embodiment of chaotic neutrality. Everyone has a place on there, be they activists concerned with racial equality or virulent racists spouting their hateful nonsense. If you use the internet to look at pictures of cuddling cats, hateful propaganda, or simply to fulfil your carnal desires. The internet does not care, as long as your eyeballs are trained onto it. Next, he talks about the escapist nature of the internet. We all struggle with parts of our lives, it’s inevitable, and for a lot of people like myself, diving into the internet can distract from that, most of the time, unhealthily. People let the internet sweep them away to avoid dealing with issues in their real issues. The internet has everything, going from a simple cooking tutorial to morbid news that would shock someone years ago, but we have all been completely desensitised to it. We’re jaded, even when we hear about tragedies. The internet exists to take us on a wild journey of algorithms and rabbit holes. The fandom culture created and bolstered by the internet also allows for people to express themselves and their interests on it, which often takes on a questionable appearance, just like how the Harry Potter characters have been portrayed. Repeatedly. Quite a lot.
Next, Bo goes on to talk about the depersonalisation people, and particularly, women, experience on the internet. The divide of having a non-personal medium through which people talk dehumanises everyone for us to a certain extent. Everyone gets reduced down to usernames and profile pictures, even though we do really know that it’s another real person on the other end. This results in people being viewed as a means to an end, people carrying out their base desires, uncaring about the woman on the other end who is just an icon and profile picture in their cognition. This is the part of the song where Bo starts singing faster, firing a ton of lines off that strike true to anyone familiar with the internet. A lot of us who grew up with the internet were exposed to graphic violence as kids, on websites like SteakAndCheese, LiveLeak, Limewire and more. Overdiagnosis and the adoption of the aesthetics of mental illness, as well as shallow, cynical outrage against the endless stream of internet content is exceedingly common. Log onto twitter and you’ll see it unfold right in front of your eyes. People jump onto hate bandwagons, making the internet like a mob. An amalgamation of people. Bo then goes on to address the lack of internet privacy, uploading pictures of your child to Facebook or Instagram automatically sends them through Meta’s servers. Meta itself is infamous for selling data, having data breaches and much more. Our kids won’t have details of their lives before, because from now itself, the company algorithms are being fed information about them. Bo continues for a few more lines, going into the duality of the internet and the rabbit holes that exist within so many of these algorithms. One second, you could be looking at cooking recipes for breakfast, next you know, you go down a wild rabbit hole of articles and videos, and end up at a video for why you should kill your mom. The internet runs on attention and retention. It has absolutely no qualms with recommending dangerous material to you if it believes that you would want to see it next in the rabbithole. One of the easiest markets to pander to on the internet are insecure teenage boys. Hormonal, thinly veiled anger issues and insecurity don’t react well with the sting of rejection from women, and that’s why the entity known as the man-o-sphere exists. It’s a way for men to make money off of the insecurities of teenage boys by telling them that their crushes not being into them isn’t really their fault, but it’s the fault of society, of feminism, of women as a whole. These circles also promote ultra macho, violence ridden personas such as Andrew Tate, or ‘alpha males’. These circles are also often intertwined with far-right politics, asking the victim moving down the rabbit-hole to “save” western civilisation from feminism, queer people, immigrants, Muslims, etc. These rabbit holes have also become more violent in recent years, hence the bomb-making instructions. The circles in question are also highly conspiratorial, with ridiculous theories like the last line, “Obama sent the immigrants to vaccinate your kids”.
Now, we move into the chorus of the song. A sing-song chorus that’s like a pitch, asking the viewer to indulge in the internet. Bo describes the internet as “everything, all of the time”, as well as “a little bit of everything, all of the time”. This is one of the most earth-shattering descriptions of the internet that I’ve ever heard. The 24 hour news cycle, the endless droning of social media, communities for absolutely every ultra niche interest, and a ceaseless, ravenous hunger for attention is all the internet really is. You could choose to not partake in it, but apathy’s a tragedy, and boredom’s a crime when the gaping maw of the internet is available to you.
AND BREAK!
We move into a far slower, classical simple piano tune. Bo tones down the persona, just talking to us. He tells us about the internet’s simple and humble past, travel blogs, a few chat rooms, catalogues, but that was when companies were lying in wait. Setting up their endless wells of attention till our generation were young, and our mothers let us use their iPads. It was exactly what these companies counted on. Turned us into a series of dopamine junkies. No downtimes, destroyed attention spans. The sinister nature of their plan is made evident after this as Bo starts laughing. First slowly, and then with ramping intensity like a total Disney villain. He then sets off into the chorus at high speeds, maintaining intense eye contact with us. Ramping up his speed until the song ends.
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