Dissect - Dissecting INSIDE (Part 4)

Episode Date: May 24, 2022

Our song by song, scene by scene analysis of Bo Burnham's INSIDE continues with "Unpaid Intern," "Bezos 1," and "Sexting." Follow @dissectpodcast on TikTok, Instagram, and Twitter. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

From Spotify, this is Dissect, long-form musical analysis broken into short, digestible episodes. This is part four of our seven-part series on Inside, a musical comedy special shot and performed by Bo Burnham over the course of a very unusual year. I'm your host, Cole Kushner. Last time I dissect, we examined Insides How the World Works, the skit, social brand consultant, and white women's Instagram, which was followed by a brief transition scene. There we saw Bo at work in front of his laptop at night, slowly crossed dissolved into a shot of him in the morning. sitting on his stool looking at his phone. The effect of these two shots overlapping created a subtle hall of mirrors visual

where multiple bows and reflections of Beau continued to foreshadow his slow dissociation and mental deterioration, something Beau addressed as an ominous side effect of our constructed digital presentations of self. You have Beau Burnham, but then you have Bo Burnham in the world. You have a brand, you are your own publicist.

You walk through your experiences, but you also float behind yourself like a camera. following yourself through your own experiences. You're sort of out of body all the time. You're disassociated. You're in a situation, but you're already thinking of how that situation is going to be perceived when presented to the world digitally. You're anticipating the backlash to that perception, maybe even before you've even had the experience. It's that weird sort of hall of mirrors, strange meta thing that, you know, makes you not want to leave the house, makes you not want to ever open your mouth. And it makes you not embodied, not in yourself, not in your moment,

which is very similar to anxiety, which is just, you know, objectifying yourself, objectifying your own experience. We can begin to see some of Beau's own anxiety and desire not to want to open his mouth and inside's next skit, where Bo sits alone on a stool in the spotlight, and rhetorically asks an imaginary audience if any of us can shut the fuck up. Here's a question for you guys. Is it necessary? Is it necessary that every single person on this planet expresses every single opinion that they have

on every single thing that occurs all at the same time? Is that necessary? Or to ask it a slightly different way, Can anyone shut the fuck up? The visual composition of this skit seems to extend the visual motif of dissociation we saw in the hall of mirrors effect in the previous scene. We see Bo on a stool with a spotlight on him, and we see his shadow created by the spotlight mirrored behind him. And interestingly, it is not the actual bow that is in the center of the frame. It's his shadow. It's Bo's reflection.

Again, it's subtle, but it displays Bow's very. calculated development of this visual motif of dissociation. In terms of what Bo is saying, it seems he's alluding to the enormous floods of commentary and content spewing endlessly from the guts of the internet, and the relatively newfound ability for anyone with an internet connection to publicly vocalize their opinion in the Global Town Square. While this mechanism for additional unfettered voices has its benefits, the sheer amount of competing voices can be quite deafening, the idea that at a certain point, the volume of too much communication makes any real communication impossible. And in the shadows of songs like how the world works and white woman's

Instagram, we're reminded of the currency of the internet, attention, and how we're all competing against each other to harvest the most amount of attention or currency we can. Thus we are compelled to comment on everything all the time in our endless pursuit of attention and sustained relevancy, and we pollute our digital public spaces with a thick smog of opinions that's impossible to sift through with any clarity. Cultural moments instantly transform into raw material for digital content. Like vultures to a carcass, we tweet, we think peace, we meme as fast as we possibly can before all the marrow is sucked from the bone. And of course, all of this ultimately works to benefit the large corporations who own the digital platforms,

as their business models depend on our continued use and engagement. Boe addressed this topic in a rare 2020 interview, giving insight to his approach to reducing his cultural emissions. Yeah, it's difficult. I don't know. It's a strange. It's a strange time and, you know, a strange way to engage with the world. It's also, it's very tough to offer when it feels just like the world is just drowning in opinion and drowning in commentary to feel like you're going to be additive when it feels like the most additive thing would actually be subtracting from it in some sort of way. I realize that, like I've been around too long for half of my life now in some way. And I realize that like, I, and I realize that like, I,

I would understand anyone at any point getting tired of me. So I feel like I am only, I've really decided I only want to engage with the world when I have something to really put out there. Like I really think we need to like talk more about like our cultural emissions, not just our physical emissions. And it's like I'm not really going to, you're only going to hear from me when I have something that I've really, really worked very hard. on and think is worthy of your attention.

These latter points about only speaking when he feels like he has something worthy of our attention seems to give insight into the very end of Bo's stand-up skit. Can any single person shut the fuck up about any single thing for an hour? You know, is that possible? And I know you're thinking, you're not shutting the fuck up right now. And that's true. but ever self-aware, Bo ultimately levies his critique of the world back on himself

and through the luxury of editing, cuts himself off before he's forced to explain away his own hypocrisy. It again underscores the trepidation Beau feels with even making this special, something he's expressed from its beginning. While we already went through why Bo likely went ahead and made the special, mostly to keep himself sane and ward off suicidal ideation, I do think the interview we just heard helps to clarify further why he decided to release his special.

He has something of value to say, and he worked very, very hard to say it. After this brief stand-up skit, Inside continues with the song Unpaid Intern. Who needs a coffee because I'm doing a run? I'm writing down the orders now for everyone. The coffee is free just like me. I'm an unpaid intern.

Sorting papers running around. Sitting in the meeting room, not making a sound. Barely people. somehow legal, unpaid intern. Unpaid intern evokes a 50s swing jazz band playing in a nightclub. The black and white visuals play into the vintage field of the song, as we see a close-up of bow and sunglasses singing into a stage mic. The song continues to develop inside's motif of work,

highlighting the insidious nature of unpaid interns, usually college-aged or younger, who work without pay in exchange for quote-unquote experience. As Bo acknowledges, this experience can include things, things like coffee runs, sorting papers, and other menial tasks considered beneath those who actually get paid to work. In Beau's second verse, he states, barely people somehow legal. And it's a fair question, how are unpaid internships actually legal? Well, it can be traced back to a 1947 Supreme Court ruling that challenged the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938, which required for-profit

employers to pay employees for their work. The Supreme Court case was centered on a seven-day unpaid program being offered by the Portland Terminal Company for aspiring railroad workers. The trainees of this program ended up suing the company in hopes to get paid. The Supreme Court ruled that the participants did not need to be paid because they were trainees rather than employees. The trainee's work does not expedite the railroad's business, but may and sometimes does actually impede and retard it, unquote. In other words, a business does not need to pay an intern so long as the intern is receiving

more benefit from the relationship than the business. setting a precedent that lasts a day. While some internships do lead to paid positions, of course there are businesses that have exploited this loophole for free labor, and interns are not guaranteed anything concrete at the end of their internship, aside from an addition to their resume and maybe a letter of recommendation. You work all day, go back to your dorm, and since you can't afford a mortgage, you just torrent a porn because you're an intent.

Bohear sings, go back to your dorm and torrent a porn, implying many interns are college students. And when you factor in things like the growing cost of college education and student loans, the flaws in our current system really begin to reveal themselves. Unless you have wealthy parents, you take on significant debt to get a college degree, which these days do not guarantee a decent paying job. Then while accumulating debt, you work a free internship to, in theory, better your chances at landing a paying job, but that's not guaranteed either.

The system also disadvantages those from marginalized communities, who might not be able to afford to work an internship without pay, as they would need to be working a paying job to support themselves while attending college. This only serves to increase the generational wealth gap and creates barriers in the path to equal opportunity. Thus we can see how unpaid intern aligns with Beau's motif of work as established in how the world works. Recall that work referred to both the operational workings of our current systems

and how those systems are built on the exploitation of work or labor. Despite new laws and regulations that attempt to mitigate, exploitation, throughout history, from slavery to unpaid internships, we can see how the system will always adapt and find new ways to exploit, because the system cannot survive without it. Exploitation is built into the model. And this historical aspect is likely why Bo chose to give unpaid intern a vintage feel. In fact, it's very likely that Bo intentionally modeled the song after another song, 195 16 Tons performed by Tennessee Ernie Ford. Here's a back-to-back comparison. First, 16 tons.

That's strong you load 16 tons. What do you get? Another day older and deeper in debt. St. Peter, don't you call me because I can go. I owe my soul to the company store. And now unpaid intern. Who needs a coffee because I'm doing a run. I'm writing down the orders now for everyone.

The coffee is free just like me. I'm an unpaid intern. While Bose is a bit faster, both songs feature an extremely similar descending bass line, shuffle drums, and vocal melody. And when we dig into 16 tons lyrics, we discover why Bo likely chose to interpolate or allude to this song. penned in 1946 by country singer Morrill Travis, 16 tons is written from the point of view of a coal miner and alludes to the exploitation practices common among coal companies during this time. The song's chorus states, you load 16 tons and what do you get? Another day older and deeper in debt.

St. Peter, don't you call me? because I can't go, I owe my soul to the company's store. This latter line about the company store refers to what's called the truck system in which workers were not paid in cash, but instead with non-transferable credit vouchers that could be exchanged only for goods sold at the company-owned store. This made it impossible for workers to store up cash savings. Workers also usually lived in company-owned dormitories or houses, and their rent was automatically deducted from their pay. This truck system, an associated debt bondage lasted until the formation of the United Mine Workers' Union, who organized strikes in order to end these exploitative practices.

By musically nodding to 16 tons and his own unpaid intern, both seems to be calling our attention to the history of labor exploitation in the United States. While the specifics might change, the underlying system reliant on exploitation has not. And given Insight's general examination of social media and the internet, the idea of unpaid labor in the modern world brings up an interesting question about the morality of data collection, the idea that, without permission or regulation, big tech companies like Facebook and Google began surveilling, collecting, and selling our online data. There's that saying now, if you're not paying for it, you're not the customer, you're the product being sold.

Are we all, in essence, the unpaid interns of the internet? Many of the apps we use are intentionally designed to keep us on our phones as long as possible, and in turn our activity is harvested for profit. Our online behavior has been commodified to better predict our online behavior. Meanwhile, social media apps rely on us to create the content for them, and the vast majority of us are not getting paid to do this. This is admittedly a pessimistic view, but even considering the positive attributes of social media, we should probably be asking ourselves from time to time if the exchange rate is fair, or even close to fair. What exactly are we getting out of this? Do the positives outweigh the negatives. And if not, how do we self-regulate it? Do we simply use our phones less?

As many of us who have tried to do this know, this is easier said than done. And perhaps therein lies the fundamental problem, the universally human ability of knowing something's bad for us, killing us even, and doing it anyway. Hey everybody. I thought I'd do a reaction video to the song that you just saw me perform. I thought that might be fun. So I got my laptop. set up. Song ready to go and let's go. I like this song. So the idea of this song was basically that

there are so many songs in the past about working class jobs but not a lot about the labor exploitation of the modern world. So that was the idea here. Unpaid intern gets cut off abruptly mid-vocal riff, perhaps because no one wants to hear from the lowly, barely a person intern. This transition's

directly into a skit in which Bo parody's YouTube first reaction videos. These popular videos typically feature a host watching or listening to a piece of media for the first time, usually a song or another video, giving their thoughts along the way. While I personally enjoy these types of videos, the premise is immediately strange and meta, the act of watching someone watch something. Bo is of course reacting to his own song, which adds an additional, intentionally strange and ironic layer to the skit. He begins with a surface level reaction, giving us insight into the premise of the song. He tells us the idea of this song was to address how there's so many songs

in the past about working class jobs, but not a lot about the labor exploitation of the modern world. This seems to confirm our hunch that unpaid intern was intentionally based on 16 tons, an example of the very kind of working class songs of the past Beau refers to here. At the end of the unpaid intern video, Bo points out its abrupt ending, telling us he thinks it's funny to cut things off mid-sentence, something he also did in the beginning of inside, when he told us not to expect any smooth transition. Ironically, Asbo is explaining to us that he thinks cutoffs are funny, he himself is cut off as he's startled by the fact

that the beginning of his own reaction video has started to play. And then you cut. I think it's funny to cut right on... I thought I'd do a reaction video to the song that you just saw me perform. I thought that might be fun. What? So I got my... Because this video played after that, right.

So... And now... Right. Okay, so I'll just... I'll keep reacting. So this is me reacting to the song. What I'm doing is I'm explaining what the song means. And what it's about being a little pretentious.

It's an instinct I have where I need everything that I write to have some deeper meaning or something. But it's a stupid song. And it doesn't really mean anything. And it's pretty unlikable that I feel this need, this desperate need to be seen as intelligent. and the video's ending here. Hey, everybody. It's fine. Bo decides to react to himself reacting.

While his first reaction revealed the intent behind unpaid intern, this second reaction reveals the intent behind the intent, which Bo explains as a desperate need to be seen as intelligent, and admits it's just a stupid song that doesn't really mean anything. The reaction video then loops again, and Bo begins reacting to himself reacting to himself reacting. So here, I'm reacting to my own reacting, and I'm criticizing my initial reaction for being pretentious,

which is honestly it's a defense mechanism. I'm so worried that that criticism will be led to against me that I levied against myself before anyone else can. And I think that, oh, if I'm self-aware about being a douchebag, it'll somehow make me less of a douchebag. But it doesn't. Self-awareness does not absolve anybody of anything. Am I balding?

This is really, really disturbing. I don't like looking at myself like this, and I want this to stop. I want this to stop. I'm stopping this. Bo criticizes his own self-criticism, saying that his self-awareness is a defense mechanism. He's so worried about criticism from others, he criticizes himself first before anyone else can,

as if that would somehow make him any less of a douchebag. He then says self-awareness does not absolve anybody of anything. Finally, he begins to find this whole hall of mirrors extremely disturbing, and abruptly puts an end to it by shutting his laptop. Now, fittingly, there's a few layers to unpack in this skit. Viewed through the lens and bows, can anyone just shut the fuck up routine. Reaction videos as a genre showcases uniquely modern phenomenon of overlapping commentary, content about content, reactions to someone's reaction to an event, creating a deafening

and potentially endless cultural feedback loop. Once again gets at the acceleration of the internet, where an event and the reaction to that event happens almost simultaneously. As some Reddit users pointed out, it's possible that Bo was inspired by the book Understanding Media by Marshall McLuhan. In it, McLuhan writes, quote, The slow movement of the past ensured that the reactions were delayed for considerable periods of time. Today, the action and the reaction occur almost at the same time, unquote. If you pause inside at the 8-minute and 44-second mark during Comedy's Bridge,

you can see a stack of books on Bo's desk. The only one visible enough to read clearly is McCluen's Understanding Book. media, an Easter egg that confirms Bo's active interest in the study of media, and perhaps even this idea of overlapping action and reaction. But just as we've seen consistently throughout inside, Bo's satirization of the outside world almost always runs concurrently with self-examination, which is what the reaction skit turns into. And in a sense, this brief skit is itself a microcosm of inside as a whole. The special we're watching, this is Bo's work. He creates content, like unpaid intern, then watches himself over and over, editing, judging, analyzing.

Bo has already shown himself undergoing this process in front of his laptop a few times, most recently directly after White Woman's Instagram. And what the reaction skit reveals is that the more and more Bo watches himself, the more and more he will self-critique and self-analyze, each layer cutting closer and closer to his core, leading to self-doubt, anxiety, panic, and disassociation. This is, in essence, the entire narrative structure of insight. In its beginning, Bo is motivated to create this special, motivated to heal the world with comedy.

In its initial songs like Comedy, FaceTime with My Mom, How the World Works, White Woman's Instagram, and Unpaid Intern, are all songs looking outside, commenting on the world around him. But just like the reaction to the reaction skit, as the process of constantly watching himself on a screen over and over and over unfolds, inside will get more and more introspective, progressively shifting its focus inside, on Bo himself. which will climax with the song All Eyes on Me. And again, just like the reaction skit, this layered, persistent self-analysis

will lead to self-doubt, panic, and deteriorating mental health. And it's with this in mind that we can return to an interview clip we heard earlier, where Beau essentially explains how this process has been democratized in the age of social media, where we're all, in a sense, performers. He specifically mentions a hall of mirrors,

which we saw in the overlapping reactions, and importantly, he directly relates this experience to anxiety, the endless loops of self-analysis to the point of paralysis. It's that weird sort of hall of mirrors, strange meta thing that makes you not want to leave the house, makes you not want to ever open your mouth, and it makes you not embodied, not in yourself, not in your mouth,

which is very similar to anxiety, which is just, you know, objectifying yourself, objectifying your own experience. In an interview with fresh air, Beau also relates these anxious feelings to social media. There's a part of social anxiety, I think, that feels like you're a little bit disassociated from yourself, and it's sort of like you're in a situation, but you're also floating above yourself, watching yourself in that situation, judging it. And social media literally is that.

You know, it forces kids to not just live their experience, but be nostalgic for their experience while they're living it. Watch people, watch them, watch them, watch them. my sort of impulse is like when the 13-year-olds of today grow up to be social scientists, I'll be very curious to hear what they have to say about it. But until then, it just feels like we just need to gather the data.

And we're just trying to, with this movie, kind of have just an emotional, subjective experience of what it feels like. Bo here was specifically talking about his film 8th grade, but I think this desire to express the emotional experience of the Internet is also at the heart of inside. At the end of the reaction skit, Bo awkwardly smiles at the camera after shutting the laptop

and tells us he hopes who enjoyed his video. Then there's an immediate cut to Inside's next song, Bezos 1. Musically, Bezos 1 draws on the synth-pop genre popular in the 1980s. Of course, the subject of the song is founder and former CEO of Amazon, Jeffrey Bezos, whose current net worth at the time of writing this is around $180 billion. Lyrically, the song seems to personify capitalism. who cheers Jeffrey on as he climbs up the ranks of global financial dominance. It starts with a quasi-origin story, stating his birth date and position as CEO entrepreneur.

Capitalism then offers Jeffrey some encouraging words and support on his journey. This section seems to play into the cliche rags to riches archetypes so fundamental to the ethos of the American dream. Capitalism tells Jeffrey to pave the way, tell us why, and show us how, before saying, look at where you came from, look at you now. This seems to imply that Jeffrey came from a working class background and achieved astronomical success through hard work, which in theory is possible for anyone playing the game of free market capitalism. Thus, Jeffrey Bezos should be heralded as an inspiration, proving that anybody, even you, can be as successful as Jeffrey Bezos. But as implied by deliberately placing Bezos 1 directly after unpaid intern,

and in the wake of how the world works, these inspirational origin stories often ignore that in our current economic system, for every one Jeffrey Bezos, there are millions of working-class citizens whose labor is exploited to create Jeffrey Bezos. In other words, for every super winner of capitalism, there must be, by default, millions of more losers. Indeed, to the Socos of the world, Jeffrey Bezos is a symbol of income inequality at the heart of capitalism, the disparity between the super wealthy and everyone else. In America, this disparity has widened significantly over the past half decade, where currently the wealthiest 1% collectively owned more wealth than the bottom 90%. And the gap only widened during the pandemic,

when global billionaire wealth grew by 54% between 2020 and 2021, while more than 100 million people fell below the poverty line. Bezos's wealth specifically increased 70% or 65 billion since March of 2020. Meanwhile, Amazon has been increasingly under fire for unrealistic demands placed on its warehouse and delivery employees, leading to a number of attempts by Amazon employees across the U.S. to Uninite. Look at where you came from, look at you now. Suckerberg and Gates and Buffet, amateurs can fucking suck it, fuck their wives, drink their blood. Come on, Jeff!

Capitalism continues its over-the-top encouragement, pushing Jeffrey to crush his competition by any means necessary. Naming other famous multi-billionaires that Bezos is competing with seems to imply that the competition built into capitalism is never ending, that even when you reach the pinnacle of wealth and achievement, you're encouraged to keep going, keep growing, keep extending your global influence and market reach. With Amazon specifically, we can see their globalization strategy in its acquisitions and expansions into markets outside their original business of e-commerce. To date, they have purchased over 100 companies, including Whole Foods, Twitch, Zappos, MGM, Amazon Robotics, the online pharmacy,

pill pack, audible, IMDB, and many more. Jeff Bezos himself bought the Washington Post, started Blue Origin Space Company, and also owns Bezos Expeditions, an investment firm, through which he became an early stakeholder in Google, and has since invested in at least 66 ventures including Airbnb, Uber, and Twitter. Clearly, Bezos understands the game and plays it very well. But with just one person's hands in so many pots, we have to ask, to what end? At what point is big, big enough?

At what point is rich, rich enough? What are the motivations behind chasing so much global influence? Who is actually benefiting from the consolidation of the world's resources into the hands of a few billionaires? And with the wealth gap continuing to widen significantly year over year, where does that leave the rest of us? Now, having looked at some of the implied themes of Bezos 1, we might wonder if, like Unpaid Intern, the song is actually nodding to another specific song of the past. 1984's hit Obsession by Animotion.

And now Bezos 1. Obsession shares a few specific musical qualities with Bezos 1. Both have an extremely similar drum set and drum pattern, and both feature an arpeggiated synth bass playing two chords. And just like unpaid interns seem to nod to 16 tons in order to point to their shared theme of labor exploitation, it seems Bo is doing the same with obsession, as its lyrics are about obsessing over and chasing a potential love interest.

Quote, you are an obsession, I cannot sleep. I am a possession unopened at your feet. And here's where things get really telling, quote, There's no balance, no equality, be still, I will not accept defeat. Just as we can imagine capitalism cheering Jeffrey on in Bezos I, we can imagine these words from obsession personifying Jeffrey and his obsessive drive to win the game of capitalism at all costs. Meanwhile, the lyrics, no balance, no equality,

continues to imply the resulting inequality between the working class and the wealthy elite. A theme first established back on how the world works and its portrayal of Bo and Sacco, Master and Puppet. And it's here that we realize that Bo likely paired Unpaid Intern and Bezos 1 together to once again display this juxtaposition, as together the songs function as its own kind of puppet master dichotomy, contrasting the lowest and highest rungs of capitalism. Fittingly, Bezos 1 ends with a menacing, unrelenting synth solo

and a primal psychotic scream. And just like Unpaid Intern, the song is cut off abruptly. Inside then transitions into a new interlude scene, where we see Bo laying on the floor, covered by a blanket, head on a pillow, surrounded by a mess of cables and camera equipment. He begins to speak into a microphone that lays next to him on the pillow. We'll hear what he asked to say right after the break. Welcome back to dissect. Before the break, we transition from the primal scream that ends Bezos 1 to a new interlude scene. Here we see an overhead shot of Bo lying on the ground, wrapped in a blanket, head on a pillow, eyes closed.

Surrounding him on the ground is a chaotic mess of cables, batteries, and other. equipment. This clutter is consistent with the progressive deterioration of Bo's room in each successive interlude scene. In the beginning of the film, when Bo first stepped inside, the room was completely clean, and with each new behind-the-scenes interlude, it becomes a little bit messier, a visual motif that parallels Bo's mental decline. And the way this particular shot is framed, with a mess of cables above and around Bo's head, it feels like we're getting a peek into his mind as he lies motionless in bed, full of cluttered thoughts and claustrophobic disorder. We've also started to observe how each interlude scene communicates as disassociation, becoming increasingly

out of body. And we see that here too. Right next to Bo's pillow, there's a field monitor, which is a small digital screen that attaches to a camera and allows you to preview your shot from a distance. In this small field monitor next to Bo, we see the same exact image as we see on screen. And this makes practical sense. Bo is likely using the field monitor to help frame the shot as he lie there on the ground before filming. But choosing to leave the monitor clearly visible next to him, him mirroring the current shot we are now watching adds to the Hall of Mir's visual motif that has been developing since the very first interlude scene, a symbol of slow dissociation. It's also a reminder of the poignant aspect of the film, a reminder that Beau is actively

constructing this experience, that Inside is as much about the process of making Inside as it is about the content presented in Inside. I don't know about you guys, but, you know, I've been thinking recently that, you know, maybe allowing giant digital media corporations to exploit the neurochemical drama of our children for profit, you know, maybe that was a bad call by us. Here we get a glimpse into the thoughts cluttering Beau's mind. Just like his Can Anyone Shut the Fuck Up, Skit, we're starting to get more direct commentary from Bo about the world around him. He calls out giant digital media corporations,

presumably ones like Facebook, Google, Snapchat, TikTok, and others for their exploitation of our children's neurochemical drama for profit. Bo has discussed this issue more extensively in interviews, often citing how these unregulated tech companies have unchecked influence on our youth. This ridiculous idea that it's like a narcissistic generation where it's like, where do you think they got these values? Like these are things, like if you watch a baby with an iPad, he realized like, oh, this thing is designed to appeal to us when we literally can't even think. And like, it's just a, you know,

there's entire buildings full of, you know, hundreds of employees that are meant to create things that market to the base wants of 10-year-olds. I always say, like, if you want to say the word shit on television, you have to go in front of Congress. If you want to change the neurochemistry of an entire generation, you have to be five people in a room full of nine

in Silicon Valley putting your hand up. And it's like, I don't know how to solve this. In recent years, some of the initial architects of websites and apps like Facebook have revealed some of the original thinking around their creation and have admitted to them leading to unintended consequences. In 2017, the founding president of Facebook, Sean Parker, admitted that Facebook was intentionally designed to answer the question, quote,

How do we consume as much of your time and conscious attention as possible? He specifically cited creating the like button in order to give users a hit of dopamine whenever someone engage with their content, which creates, quote, a social validation feedback loop, exactly the kind of thing that a hacker like myself would come up with because you're exploiting a vulnerability in human psychology, unquote. In this feedback loop Parker cites, it's a real thing, known formally as a dopamine-driven feedback loop, a self-perpetuating circuit fueled by the way the neurotransmitter works with the brain's reward system. Dopamine is associated with seeking behavior, used to motivate us to

eat, procreate, seek out rewarding information and entertainment, among many other things. Once one of those targets are achieved, we are rewarded by the brain's opioid system through the release of dopamine. With repetition, the brain learns to anticipate pleasure from seeking the reward, perpetuating the loop. As Bo noted from the floor, the design of social media intentionally exploits these neurological dopamine feedback loops. We search for information and entertainment through an infinite, rapid scroll of content, anticipating the pleasure when something interesting or stimulating actually shows up. The fact that not every single post is rewarding is actually a good thing, since being rewarded at random, unpredictable intervals is the

most effective for maintaining target behavior. The anticipation and search is just as important to the loop as the actual hit and keeps us scrolling as long as possible. Because these apps are loaded with a little bit of everything all of the time, there is always new content to consume, and without a built-in mechanism for satiation or satisfaction, the behavior driven by the dopamine feedback loop can continue for much longer than we intend, and for much longer than we actually receive our psychological rewards. To again quote former president of Facebook Sean Parker, it literally changes your relationship with society, with each other. It probably interferes with productivity in weird ways. God only knows what it's doing to our children's brains.

Maybe the flattening of the entire subjective human experience into a lifeless exchange of value that benefits nobody except for um you know a handful of bug-eyed salamanders in silicon valley maybe that as a as a way of life forever maybe that's um not good Beau here reframes his thoughts, commenting on how flattening the human experience into compressed images shared in exchange on social media, benefits nobody but the handful of executives at giant tech corporations. It continues the threat of exploitation built into our current systems, how we are all unpaid interns of the internet, our attention and the images of our lives being harvested for profit,

profit that disproportionately lines the pockets of the Zuckerbergs and Bezos of the world. While the specifics might change, like new technologies and a global shift toward digitalization, the underlying economic systems have not. Today, our attention and our social lives joined physical labor in our services to the corporate elite, because that is how the world works. The internet, when it was me, it was like, oh, YouTube, post something you do there, as opposed to what the internet is now and YouTube and all these things. Live there, be there.

Facebook, MySpace, what I had, create a little website, your interests, your profile picture. That's very ornamental or something. What the internet is now for kids, Twitter and Instagram, what do you think, what do you look like? What do you think? What do you look like? Those are base, weird, deep questions that are being asked of kids. And the thing that's happening, and these decisions that are being made by a bunch of men

in Silicon Valley that have absolutely no, on average, social skills are making decisions about entire generation's neurochemistry by updating an app and raising their hand in a room. And there's a sort of like, bullshit, whatever, cap, like, this is hard to explain. Like, you take a horse and buggy to work, it takes an hour. Then you invent a car and you get to work in 30 minutes. Great, you've actualized that, and you've made it,

you've streamlined it. There's no proof that you should do that with your social life and your emotions. You should streamline your emotions. You can talk to five people, and now you can talk to 5,000. You are connected with 12 people, and you're connected with everybody. There's no, our social lives did not need to be actualized.

They did not need to be made more efficient. And we're applying, like, capitalist logic to our relationships with each other, with ourselves. It's fucking insane. It really, really is. And it's going completely unchecked. And the decisions are being made by people who have no idea what the actual repercussions of it are,

or even the participants are doing. They don't, they don't. Zuckerberg versus the senators. Are you kidding? Yeah. You know, they don't. They have no idea. It's going to be like smoking.

You know, in 50 years they're going to go, what do we do to these kids? You know what I mean? At the end of Beau's floor monologue, there's long pause. And then Bo says, I'm horny. Inside then segues into its next song, sexting. Sexting is a satire of modern Drake-inspired R&B songs. Like FaceTime with my mom,

it centers around an attempt at intimate connection through a phone and screen, and ultimately ends with disconnect. The song's hook, sexting, It isn't sex, it's the next best thing, seems to tangentially tie into what Bo just said on the floor, the flattening of the human experience as a result of our attempts to replicate human interaction in the digital world.

Sex, one of the most intimate, powerful, emotional, and physical human experience shared with another human, is reduced to a clumsy exchange of emojis, text, and images. Bo also cheekily plays with the popular adlib of A in contemporary hip-hop songs. ultimately transforming the ad lib into AT&T, a reminder of the omnip presence of large corporations as the hosts of these intimate digital exchanges. Sexting's three-verse structure mirrors the escalating intensity of a sexual experience,

where foreplay progresses over time. It begins with emojis only in the first verse, words in the second verse, and pictures in the third verse. In each verse, the reductive tools being used to replicate a sexual experience causes miscommunication, ultimately breaking the simulation. For example, in verse 1, after exchanging peach and carrot emojis, both commonly used to imply sexual body parts, Bo is sent a ferris wheel, which likely implies that the woman wants to ride him. But Bo doesn't get it, sends back a ticket stub, and then worries that she'll misinterpret the reply. The clunkiness of these digital exchanges climaxes at the end of verse 3.

After admitting he's self-conscious about sending a photo of his penis because it looks like the alien baby from David Lynch's film, Eraserhead, Bo finally builds up the courage to do it. At his head. At his most intimate and vulnerable moment, Bo's phone, yeah, another night on my own, you're stuck in my home, yeah. Sitting alone, one hand on my dick in one hand on my phone, yeah, another night on my own. At his most intimate and vulnerable moment, Beau's phone dies, exposing the somewhat depressing reality of the situation, that he's physically alone, and the simulation was dependent upon

technology. Throughout sexting, we see the narrative of the song play out on the screen. Bo is on his phone standing against the white wall of his room, and a projector overlays the text exchange and various emojis throughout. There's a few fun Easter eggs in the video, too. If you look carefully in the upper right-hand corner of the screen, you'll see that Bo's thermostat is set to 69 degrees. Also, just before the third verse, there's one very quick shot of Bo standing against the white

wall with the projection overlaid on him, only this time the screen is filled with a long paragraph of text. It's only on screen for one second, but if you pause it here, you can see. could read the text in full. Quote, No pressure, by the way, at any point, we can stop. I just want to make sure you're comfortable with all this. Please don't feel obligated to send anything you don't want to. Just because I want things doesn't mean I should get them.

And it's sometimes confusing because I think you enjoy it when I beg and express how much I want you. But I don't ever want that to turn into you feeling pressured into doing something that you don't want to do or feeling like you're disappointing me. This is just meant to be fun. If at any point it's not fun for you, we can stop. And I'm sorry for me saying this is killing the mood, unquote. It's implied here that after asking for a picture of the woman's boobs at the end of verse 2,

Beau sent this text to check that she's not feeling pressured to do anything she's not comfortable with. It's a form of consent, perhaps a subtle reminder that in our new digital sexual domains that abuse is still possible, and we should be actively making efforts to ensure both parties are comfortable. Sexting ends with Bo sitting in the middle of the room on a chair, looking at his phone, alone in the dark. The projector now covers Beau and the wall with water splash emojis, the symbol for for ejaculation or climax. The juxtaposition of lonely Bo in the dark covered with these emojis imply that this is his climax,

the end result of sexting. The attempt to replicate sex digitally has failed, and he sits alone on his phone in the dark, a pretty sad image. This shot is suddenly interrupted by a new scene. Bo is front and center, wearing a white shirt, portraying a content creator or influencer.

The background behind him is solid green, implying an at-home green screen used by YouTubers. smiling widely, he talks to us directly, enthusiastically thanking us for consuming his content. But he's also holding a knife, casually gesturing with it, even pointing it directly at us each time he says, you. Hey, everybody. I just wanted to make a really quick video to say,

thank you. Thank you for watching my content. As you guys know, I work really hard to try to bring you guys high-quality content that I think you'll enjoy. So the fact that you are enjoying it means everything to me. So thank you. And also, keep watching because there's a lot more content where that came from. All right, guys.

See you later. Bo, the content creator's warm expression of gratitude while gesturing with a knife creates an extremely tense juxtaposition. This strange tension is heightened by the music behind Bo, which emulates the kind of warm, whimsical stock music commonly used in modern ads. The main instrument heard is the ukulele, and the chord progression it plays seems to be a bit of a musician's inside joke. The key of the song is C major, music's most basic key,

and the core progression played is the most basic chord progression in music, what's known as the 1564 progression. While extremely functional, this overused progression has become a kind of musical cliche at this point, which seems to be the reason why Bo uses it here. It implies there's a hollowness or insincerity in what Bo the content creator is telling his audience, which is a progression of verbal cliches to express this, quote-unquote gratitude, which likely has some ulterior motives behind it, as implied by the knife. Now, Bo adds another clever Easter egg in the music behind his portrayal of a content creator.

If you listen closely to the melody played by a vibraphone over the ukulele, you'll realize it's the same melody from the song, Content, which of course is a clever nod to the content creator being portrayed. Let's compare the two back to back. First, here's content. Now we'll just play the melody of content on keyboard. Now let's hear this melody as it appears in the content creator's music. It's high-quality content that I think you'll enjoy. So the fact that you are enjoying it means everything to me. So thank you.

And also, keep watching because there's a lot more content where that came from. All right, guys. See you later. For me, it's clever details like this that show the level of thought put into every scene and inside. As far as the thematic implications of the content creator skit, it feels like Beau is addressing the potentially harmful dynamics of people. parisocial relationships, which is the name given to the one-sided relationships that audience members develop with a performer or media personality. Since the audience interacts and builds connections with the performer as if they're engaged in a reciprocal relationship, parisocial interactions

are described as an illusionary experience because the performer has no idea who they are, making any real individual reciprocation impossible. In other words, a parasycial relationship isn't a real relationship, but it's the next best thing. While the term was coined back, back in 1954, parassocial relationships have become more common with the rise of new internet-based media platforms, which allow deeper parasycial relationships to form. Like Bo's skit, it's now extremely common for an influencer or YouTuber to talk directly into their camera, giving the illusion of talking directly to their audience. Also, modern content creators are increasingly personal online, sharing intimate details of their lives, some even vlogging their banal daily

activities, which only deepens our perceived personal connection with them. Not only that, but a lot of content creators now are niche-driven, meaning their content is about one specific thing, like, for example, a podcast that dissect your favorite album. This allows us to find like-minded people with not only similar interests, but our exact interests, reinforcing our parisocial connection even more. Bo's knife implies the potential danger of these relationships, and seems to suggest this plays out on a number of levels. One idea being that despite the enduring grateful persona a creator might portray online, they could be a legitimate psychopath behind the scenes. The inherent one-sided parasycial interaction will never allow us to see the person

as they really are. We only see what they choose to show us, only what they curate, only what they perform. But beyond the psychopath possibility is the much more common exploitation of these parasocial relationships. Most content creators now understand the value of their audience's personal connection to them. And in the wrong hands, this connection can be deliberately manipulated for profit. Here's Bo talking about parasycial relationships all the way back in 2013 on the Pete Holmes podcast. Someone could maybe wonder that, you know, this pursuit of fame and other people is selfless in a way because you want other people to love. I mean, what's better than just wanting people to love you in general? Doesn't that mean you're relating to people and you want them to love you?

Isn't that empathetic? And it really isn't because it's a bit psychotic and for the most part it's it's it's asking for parasycial relationships rather than actual relationships parasocial relationships are that what they call these relationships with celebrities and fans quote unquote that go completely one way yes and when when the artist or whoever is encouraging it and thriving off it it is insane and destructive in his comedy special what Beau also exposed the dynamics of parasycial relationships as a response to someone in the crowd yelling, I love you. You love me? That's very nice. You love the idea of me. You don't know me, but that's okay.

It's called a parasycial relationship. It goes one way and it's ultimately destructive. But please, keep buying all my shit forever. That's how it works. It's terrible. I'm a horrible person. All right. Now, while the potential for exploitation is inherent in a parissocial relationship, that doesn't mean they're always exploitative. But there are clear limits to these relationships, and the limits are built into the tools being used to form the relationships. There's only so much that can be communicated by a performer to their camera, and there's only so much we can experience through a screen.

I think part of what Insight is doing as a whole is attempting to make us more conscious of these new mediums we're using to communicate and encourage us to actively think more critically about their limits and potential dangers. With Bo being on the performing end of the parasycial relationship, it seems he's doing his best to be as honest as a performer can be throughout Insight. He's been trying to show us the behind the scenes. He's showing us the cameras and cables. He's showing him editing the special.

He's even talked to us directly in his mirror monologue, telling us exactly why he's making the special and how. But even those scenes are performed. As soon as a camera begins recording, the performance begins. Even an honest performance is a performance. This is the unavoidable inherent limit of parasocial relationships, caused by the unavoidable inherent limit of the tools used to create the relationship. And if you'll allow me to be honest for a second, as someone who is right now on the performing

end of this parasycial relationship we're currently in, I can say that I have incredibly mixed feelings about it. There's a large part of me that is so incredibly grateful for you. To have an audience is an extreme privilege, and it's something I try very hard not to take for granted. Without you, I would not be able to create this podcast for a living. And being able to do this as my work is quite honestly a dream come true, and you are absolutely essential to that happening. But this is also the very thing that complicates my end of the relationship. I need you. I really do.

Without an audience, I would not be able to keep creating this thing that I love. And I have a family. I support them through this podcast. And this dependency on an audience can sometimes feel a bit like a hostage situation. It can make you second-guess yourself and your decisions. It can cause you to center your life around the perceived desires of your audience. You can become reliant on feedback. Your personal growth can become stunted.

because you're afraid to change and potentially lose your audience. It can make you second-guess even admitting these thoughts because you fear being vulnerable only deepens the parisocial relationship and you're hyper aware that this vulnerability is inherently a performance. Because while it feels like I'm talking directly to you right now, I'm actually sitting here in my closet, alone in front of a microphone, talking to nobody. I'm reading from a script. I'm messing up reading the script quite often.

And the only reason this sounds natural is because post-production editing creates the illusion of continuity. I'm honestly trying to be as honest as possible right now, but my honesty is hitting the wall of the mediums being used to communicate, transforming my honesty into a performance, an honest performance, but a performance nonetheless. And when you really break all of this down, it's kind of strange, right? It's not inherently bad, but there are limits, and both the performer and the audience should probably be a little more conscious of the dynamics of the relationship. And to finally bring this all back to Bo's content creator skit, I think this potential two-way danger of parasycial relationships is ultimately why Bo holds the knife.

We don't know whether Bo is going to hurt himself if we don't keep watching his content, or hurt us if we don't keep watching his content. We aren't exactly sure who's on whose hand here, who's holding who captive. Meanwhile, it's the big media platforms that host and ultimately reap the financial rewards of these media-centered relationships. Creators create content to sustain their audience. The audience consumes content to sustain their relationship. And it all benefits the bug-eyed salamanders in Silicon Valley who created the platforms who are used to mediate these relationships. Now following the psychotic YouTuber skit, inside cuts to another behind-the-scenes interlude that shows Bo working on the special.

He sits cross-legged on the floor in front of a keyboard. He hits record on his laptop and begins to perform. This is in much more to say about it. Can one be funny when stuck in a room? Being in trying to get something out of it, try making... This is Look Who's Inside Again, a song that marks a pivotal shift in the narrative arc of Inside. While the majority of the songs and skits to this point have focused on Bo's observations about the world outside, the film will now shift inside toward introspection. Just as the reaction to the reaction skit revealed with each additional viewing comes deeper self-analysis,

we will now see how Bo watching himself over and over while creating this special triggers a deeper look into himself and his past. Look Who's inside again marks the beginning of this journey. A journey will examine line by line, scene by scene, next time on Dysect. This episode of Dysect was written and produced by me. If you enjoyed today's episode, please tell a friend about the show or share on social media. It really helps. Additional analysis by Camden Ostrander. Audio editing by Kevin Pooler.

Theme music by bureaucratic. All right. Thanks, everyone. Talk to you next week.