Dissect - Dissecting INSIDE (Part 6)

Episode Date: June 7, 2022

Our serialized analysis of Bo Burnham's INSIDE continues with "Don't Wanna Know," "Shit," "All Time Low," and "Welcome to the Internet." 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 six of our seven-part series on Inside, a music 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 inside shift from outside to inside, from Bo addressing the world around him to addressing himself. This shift was first signaled by Look Who's Inside Again, which compared being stuck inside in 2020 to being stuck inside as a teen. making songs in his bedroom. We then heard Bo addressed those teenage songs in problematic, before turning 30 at midnight, the official midway point of the special. Here we observed how Bo used this scene as a pivot point, transforming inside from a satire about Bo healing the world with

comedy, to a much more personal story about Bo's declining mental health as he attempts to survive making this special alone, isolated from the world devoid of human interaction. After 30, we reach the film's faux intermission, where Bo cleans the camera's lens with the squeegee, once again drawing our attention to the fact that we are watching a constructed performance, highlighting the dynamic of camera and screen, audience and performer. Following this intermission sequence, we see a long shot of the entire room. It's dark and we hear the chirping of crickets, signaling that it's late at night. In the center of the room, a spotlight shines down on Bo's keyboard, chair, and laptop. The room is noticeably cluttered

with equipment, and as Bo enters the frame and walks across the room to his chair, he has to carefully step over various lights and cables as if avoiding landmines. Given that this scene is the first that follows the intermission, it feels a bit like a reintroduction. We see Boe step into frame as if re-entering the room like he did at the start of the film. We also recognize that the framing of this shot closely mirrors the opening shot of the song Comedy, when Bo performed in the center of the room using the same setup. The key difference in both of these shots is that now the room is an absolute mess, as opposed to the spotless, clutter-free condition of the room at the beginning of the film.

As we've been noting throughout our analysis, the decaying condition of the room seems to mirror the decaying condition of Beau's mental health. Having made his way through the clutter, Beau sits down and hits record on his laptop. As soon as he does this, the sound of crickets suddenly stops, drawing our attention to the fact that they were fake, and that this thing that we're watching is constructed, is a performance. After hitting record, Bo begins to perform the song, Don't Want to Know.

Feeling, do you like the show? Are you tired of it? Never mind. I don't want to know. Are you finding it boring? Too fast, too slow. I'm asking, but don't answer because I don't want to know. Do I have your... Beau once again addresses us, his audience, directly,

asking how we're feeling, and how we're liking the show so far. Questions we might be asking each other during a film's intermission. He goes on to ask if he has our attention, if he's on in the background, if we're on our phones. He of course undermines his own questions throughout by telling us that he actually doesn't want to know the answers, likely because he fears that the answer could be yes, we are bored. Yes, he is on in the background, yes, we are on our phones. This thing he's been working so hard to make, this thing that he's putting his entire being into, this thing that's killing him, is potentially reduced to background noise, to content,

completely undermining the thought and painstaking detail he's put into it. Or perhaps even worse, we are watching, we are paying attention, and we still don't like it. Anyone who's ever worked hard to create something understands these fears very well, and Bo sharing his private thoughts and fears about his own special, is in line with Insides' transition from cultural comedy and satire to Bo's personal journey making the special. And while his direct questions feel to us like Bo is breaking the fourth wall, By this point of the film, we understand well that Bo is in reality asking these questions to his camera,

to a hypothetical audience that exists only in his head. So even if he wanted us to respond to his questions, we couldn't, because his questions hit the wall of recorded performance and parisocial relationships. Bo is trying to interact and connect with us, but his words are swallowed into the void of his camera's lens, recorded forever, yes, but in the moment, resounding with no one. With crescendoing backing vocals, bass, and drums, Bo sings into the void, about the void. The fact that additional instruments begin to accompany Bo during this section breaks the simulation that Bo is actually performing this song entirely live.

Just like we saw in Look Who's Inside Again, the visuals have us believing we're witnessing Bo at work in real time. But to add an instruments midway through the song remind us that even these more real-feeling shots have a constructed element. The penultimate line, I thought it'd be over by now, but I got a while to go, is on its surface self-referential. In his midnight monologue, Bo told us that he thought he'd be done with the special before he turned 30, yet he's only halfway done. On another level, Bo could be referencing the pandemic itself, which went on much longer than most of us thought possible. But given Bo's mention of suicide at the end of 30, and in the interlude that follows 30, we can't help but think but Bo might also be talking about the end of his life, that he thought

it'd be over by now, yet here he is, still alive, forced to carry on. Finally, while it's not so clear now, it's possible Bo is referencing the end of the world, or at least the end of civilization as we currently know it. This idea will become more clear toward the end of the special, but recall that in several interviews, Beau has been talking about things being over ever since Donald Trump's election in 2016. It's crazy. It's crazy times, but I get it.

I get why it's crazy. When the shit happened November 2016, I was like, it's over. It's over. And what you might be seeing is like, it's over. The final line of Don't Want to Know, I'd give away the ending, but you don't want to know, is appropriately cut short, a comedic motif that Beau has now employed

a number of times throughout the special. Next we see Bo in the bottom right corner of the screen wearing headphones and holding a video game controller, imitating a Twitch streamer. Recall that in the very first behind the scenes interlude near the beginning of the film, we saw a single-frame glitch of Bo, the live streamer flash on screen,

something we interpreted as four foreshadowing his disassociation process all of the film Fight Club. Now we're presented with the full scene, where Bo the streamer plays himself in a video game called Inside. What's up, boys? Welcome to the stream. I'm going to be doing some live play today for the first time in a while. You guys have been wanting that. So we're going to do, but there's the title, Inside. I've got a lot of requests for this game in chat. It's some indie developer. I'm not really sure. I'm going in totally cold on this. J.B. Thank you for the three months. My dude, much appreciated. Bo's impression of a typical Twitch streamer is spot on, as he talks directly to his audience while he waits for the game to load.

Notably, he says it's made by some indie developer, and on screen we see the words SSRI Interactive Presents. SSRI here is one of the first of many clever Easter eggs in this scene, as it's the abbreviation for selective serotonin re-uptake inhibitors, a class of drugs typically used as antidepressants. for major depressive or anxiety disorders. Bo follows by saying, J.B., thank you for the three months. This refers to someone purchasing a three-month subscription to his Twitch channel. Many have speculated that J.B. is short for Jeffrey Bezos, a nod to the fact that Amazon bought Twitch in 2014 for $970 million.

As the scene continues, we see Bo emerge on screen with his eyes closed, slowly opening them as if waking up. Bo, the Twitch streamer, then figures out the controls. first noticing that there's a button to cry and a button to walk. So we're going to be trying to do live plays every day this week. So tune in for that. I would be gifting 30 subs at the end of the week. Day 50, 250.

All right, so this dude's been in here for a while. So is this like an escape the room? Okay. So I can cry. So he's not happy about being in this room. I like the music. The music is actually nice on this. As Bo the streamer continues to get acclimated to the game,

there's a few more Easter eggs presented in his script and on screen. First, Bo mentions that he'll be gifting 30 subs at the end of the week, which feels like a cheeky nod to the song 30 we just heard a few minutes ago in the special. On screen, we also see giant text that reads, Day 253, which denotes how many days that Bo the video game character has been stuck inside. Knowing Bo, we suspect this number was chosen for a reason. One possibility is that when you multiply 2 times 5 times 3, you get 30, perhaps yet another callback to that pivotal song.

We might also wonder if this was the actual number of days that Bo has been working on the special. Recall that in our analysis of the turning 30 at midnight monologue, we figured out that if we take Bo at his word, he began working on the special in late February 2020. 253 days since then would put us in late October 2020, two months after his 30th birthday. But to me, the most convincing possibility, is the fact that the 253rd day of the year is September 10th, which just so happens to be

World Suicide Prevention Day. This seems thematically aligned with the SSRI reference, and as mention of suicide in 30 and the subsequent interlude, subtle indications of Bo's declining mental health. Bo, the streamer, also draws our attention to the music, and when we hone in on his chords and melody, we realize it's an adaptation of Look Who's Inside Again. There isn't much more to say about it can one. I'm holding the flashlight like a cop. Why is he doing that? Okay, he seems a little happier now.

That's nice. I don't know. I'll cry, I guess, again. As the game goes on, Bo tries opening the door, which of course is locked. He then picks up a flashlight, perhaps to help find a way out. And Bo, the streamer says, why is the game? is he holding it like a cop? This is a subtle callback to the end of look who's inside again, where Bo saying, come out with your hands up, we got you surrounded. As inside progresses,

the spotlight will become more and more threatening, an ominous symbol of our inescapable performance as our digital and physical lives increasingly homogenize. Bo, the game character then sits down at the piano and plays a little, causing him to smile. Bo, the streamer says, he seems a little happier now, that's nice. It's a cheeky nod to Bo creating this special to entertain himself and find meaning while stuck inside, momentarily warning off feelings of anxiety or depression he might have. After he stops playing the piano, he immediately cries again, and suddenly the words, day complete, appear on the screen. Yeah, great. All right, I'm into this. I'm into this. Yeah, it's giving me sort of like death-sranding vibes, you know,

because it's like, it's fucking boring, but that's like the point, I think. Dante, thank you for the four months. Appreciate it. As the day completes, Bo the streamer comments it's giving him Death Stranding vibes, which is a video game set in a post-apocalyptic world where people are isolated from each other, and the main character is a courier who delivers supplies to various towns. The gameplay doesn't resemble the inside game at all, but Bo likely referenced Death Stranding because after COVID-19 shut the world down, people began comparing our real-life circumstances to those in Death Stranding.

Bo The Streamer's final words are, Dante, thank you for the four months. many have speculated Dante here as a reference to Dante's Inferno, infamous for its nine circles of hell. Fittingly, the fourth circle is greed, perhaps one last jab at J.B., Jeffrey Bezos. Overall, the inside video game feels like one of the stronger symbols of Bo's disassociation, the feeling of being out of body, detached from yourself, feeling like your life is a simulation. Bo plays into this latter point with the transition from the video game scene into Inside's next scene. After seeing day complete on screen, there's a new title card that reads,

Another Night approaches. There's a slow dissolve into a shot of Bo unfolding his couch into a bed, as if this still is the video game. Then Bo the streamer ends his stream and disappears from the screen, yet we remain on the shot of Bo unfolding his bed. It gives the impression that we're still in the game, that Bo's life has become a simulation. There's then a cut to a new shot where we see Bo's bed completely unfolded,

only now there's a large spotlight shining down on. its pillow. Bo then lies down on the bed, head on the pillow in the spotlight. We cut to a close up of Bo's face, eyes half open and clearly exhausted. Then there's a quick cut to a close-up of the room's only door. It's slightly cracked open, letting in a bright, heavenly sliver of light. We cut back to Bo, presumably looking at the door, his escape, his way out. Still in the spotlight, his eyes slowly closed as if falling asleep, and the screen fades to black. This brief scene continues inside's development of the spotlight motif. Bo's entire being

is being consumed by the content he's making and it's killing him and thus the spotlight is beginning to feel more like a police's searchlight, a symbol of performance as an intrusive presence from which there is no escape. Then fading up from black we see Bo in the center of the room wearing a white shirt and gym shorts

holding a microphone. A funky prince-inspired beat begins to play and Bo once again addresses an imaginary audience. How we feeling out there tonight? Yeah, I am not feeling good. Wake up at 11.30, feeling like a bag of shit. Oh no.

All my clothes are dirty, so I'm smelling like a bag of shit. Go to pour my coffee and I miss my cup. Oh, m.G, that is just my luck. Look in the mirror, say, what's up, you useless fuck. Are you feeling what I'm feeling? I haven't had a shower in the last nine days. While we've witnessed Bo's mental health slowly deteriorating throughout inside, shit is the first song where Bo sings about it.

This continues to fortify the convergence of Bo's life and his content, as his emotional struggle to finish the special takes center stage. Fittingly, shit begins with him asking us how we're feeling, which is exactly what he asked us during Don't Want to Know. It's yet another failed attempt to connect with his non-existent audience, but of course, Bo goes on to answer his own question, telling us he's not feeling well. He sings about sleeping late, wearing dirty clothes, and not showering. Poor hygiene is a common result of depression, which Bo clearly seems to be falling into

here in the latter half of the film. The song as a whole is rooted in its juxtaposition between the downtrodden lyrics and its danceable, upbeat groove. It seems to reflect what many of us try to do when feeling down. We attempt to put temporary band-aids on our depression. We put on upbeat music, we crack jokes, we dance around, all the while unable to shake that underlying sinking sadness or debilitating anxiety stuck in our gut. This juxtaposition is also reflected visually.

The majority of the video features Bo dancing in place and controlling a light machine that's projecting an array of bright, jovial colors on the walls around him. But if you watch carefully, every time the danceable drums briefly drop out of the music, Bo briefly switches the lights to a stark white light that casts an ominous shadow over him. And right after Beau says, I hadn't had a shower in the last nine days. there's a brief switch to a faint blood-red pool of light that engulfs Boe while the rest of the room is completely dark. These subtle details help to convey the contrast between what Bo is feeling and what Bo is saying, the contrast between what's inside and what's outside.

Ladies, do you feel like shit? Tell me, do you feel like shit? Oh, yeah. Fellas, are you feeling like shit? Tell me if you feel like shit. So my current mental health is rapidly appropriate. approaching an ATL, which is, that's an all-time low, not Atlanta. At the conclusion of shit, Inside continues by cutting to a close-up shot of the room's window.

The blinds are slightly open, letting some of the daylight inside. At this point, the blinds feel like prison bars. Notably, we hear a plane flying overhead and a barking dog. Recall that in the very first behind-the-scenes interlude of the film, Bo waited for a plane overhead to fly by so as not to interfere with his recording. With Bo's struggling to finish this special, it seems he no longer cares about such details, and the frenetic ambiancy sounds create serves to amplify Bo's rapid mental decay. The close-up shot of the blinds cross-dissolves with the next shot,

which finds Boe sitting on the stool in the center of the room. The dissolve between these two shots seems intentionally slow, and for a few seconds we see both shots simultaneously. This creates an incredibly powerful visual, as the prison bar blinds are literally overlaid on top of Bo as if he himself is imprisoned. Bo is shirtless and his left knee is visibly shaking, as if in panic. He tells us that his mental health is approaching an all-time low. Visually, this is surely the most distraught we've seen Bo all-special, yet we're immediately forced to question the authenticity of his admission, as he continues by clearly setting up Inside's next song, All-Time Low. You know, I feel okay when I'm asleep.

Like when I'm asleep, I feel all right. But it's basically, from the moment I wake up, I just get this feeling in my body, way down deep inside me. I try not to fight it. Describe it. All right. A few things start to happen. My vision starts too flat in my heart. It gets too tapping.

And I think I'm going to die. Yeah. So, yeah, not doing. great the shot of bow on the stool hard cuts to a close-up of bow's face with bright colorful lights behind him he performs the entirety of all-time low without blinking once and describes symptoms of a panic attack including flattened vision increased heart rate and feelings of impending death once again the song's upbeat feeling and colorful visuals contrast with what bow is actually experiencing a contrast also reinforced by the shots of bow shaking on the stool that surround the song but clearly bow filmed

Bo filmed the stool scene specifically to set up the all-time low video. The two are so interconnected that the script for the stool scene deliberately connects to the first lyric of the song. And so technically, the stool scene is every bit as staged and performed as the more overtly produced song and visual. Bo is once again blurring the lines between performance and reality, forcing us to question what's what. As Inside continues, Bo on the stool reaches for his laptop.

As soon as he presses a key to stop recording, there's a hard cut to a new scene where we see Bo pressing a key on his laptop to start recording. He's sitting in front of his keyboard under the spotlight. The entire room is shaded pale blue and an array of tiny green star-like dots spiral clockwise against the wall.

Wearing sunglasses to obscure his eyes, Bo places his hands on the keyboard, looks directly at us, and begins to perform Inside's next song Welcome to the Internet. That's right after the break. Welcome to the Internet. Have a look around.

Anything that brain of yours can think of can be found. We've got mountains of content, some better, some worse. If none of it's of interest to you, you'd be the first. And welcome to the internet, Beau personifies the ringmaster of the internet, which is portrayed like a circus or carnival, full of fun houses, games, candy, toys, rides, and anything else our childlike hearts might desire. Fittingly, the music itself seems directly inspired by circus music,

as Bo uses something called the umpaw rhythm, which is one of the central characteristics of almost every circus song. Let's listen to the most well-known circus song and specifically focus on its rhythm. Now let me isolate just the rhythm and the chords here. Now let's compare that with what Bo plays and Welcome to the Internet. The Umpa rhythm remains the same, but rather than a bright, happy major key signature, Bo has chosen to play his in the dark key of D minor, appropriately imbuing his circus music with ominous undertones.

Lyrically, Bo the Internet's ringleader begins innocently enough, welcoming us to the Internet, letting us know that anything we can think of can be found in its mountains of content. We can imagine him with arms wide open at the Carnival's entrance, as we look around at the sights in wonder and amazement. This idea of mountains of content also seems to tie into the starry sky projected on the wall. These are the content installations. The universe's infinite stars representing the infinite amount of content available in the digital universe of the Internet. Welcome to the internet, come and take a seat. Would you like to see the news or any famous women's feet?

There's no need to panic. This isn't a test. Just nod or shake your head and we'll do the rest. With the song's second verse, things for the most part remain cordial. But we do get the first indication that a ringleader might be offering a little bit more than some wholesome fun. Piaz, would you like to see the news or any famous women's feet? It's as if he's pulled back a velvet cur. curtain, revealing the shadowy entrance into some secret adults-only backroom, gauging our interest.

Intuiting our trepidation, he then says, there's no need to panic, this isn't a test. Just nod or shake your head and we'll do the rest. This seems to speak to the silent consent of the internet, where things are constantly served to us and we can choose to indulge without saying a word. We simply choose not to swipe away. And as implied by Bose line and we'll do the rest, the algorithm will quickly learn what we like and keep serving us similar content. And all we have to do is kick back and enjoy. Welcome to the internet. What would you prefer? Would you like to fight for civil rights or tweet a racial slur? Be happy, be horny, be bursting with rage. We got a million different ways

to engage. Welcome to the internet. Put your cares aside. Here's a tip for straining pasta. Here's a nine-year-old who died. We got movies and doctors and fantasy sports. And a bunch of bunch of colored pencil drawings of all the different characters in Harry Potter fucking each other. Welcome to the internet. Beau, our charismatic ringleader, continues his sales pitch, but each verse becomes increasingly alarming. In verse three, Bo juxtaposes fighting for civil rights with racial slurs, and in verse four, he juxtaposes pasta straining tips with images of a dead nine-year-old boy in cartoon porn.

This seems like commentary on the odd democratized real estate of the internet, where seemingly incongruent media lay side by side, without any kind of did. differentiation or moral hierarchy. Absolutely anything is just a swipe away. And like Bo's ringleader character, the internet isn't here to judge what content we choose to make or to consume. Every objective, it'll keep serving us whatever it is we'd like so long as we keep buying tickets, riding the rides, playing the games, so long as we stay online, consuming content. During an appearance on the bonfire, both spoke about how the internet's democratization of information has made it all but impossible to discern what's important or valuable.

And it's also just like the whatever like democratization of information, all this shit, which is like we all thought was like super cool that everyone is a voice. But now we have no way to discern which voice is important where the hierarchy of like value or meaning is. And it literally is like perfectly demonstrated in what a feed is. You scroll through your feet as you're a kid. You will see in no particular order your mother, your friends, the president of the United States, Chick-fil-A.

It's just like these, they're all being presented with the same amount of space. A lot of chicks in yoga pants taking a picture in front of a mirror. Yeah. And it's, and it's a lot to process. And for kids at the end of the night to have to choose between, like, the back of your eyelids or everything in the history of the world. Crazy. It's like, you go crazy with that. I go crazy with that.

I started pissing sitting down so I could be in my phone, like 18 months ago, and I was like, something's wrong. Yeah. You know, like this is, and then I just, then it was just more comfortable. Do you think cell phones are going to be kind of like the new cigarettes where, like, 20 years from now, people would be like, you got to stay off cell phones you're going to get canned you know and i always said like it's going to be yeah it's going to be like smoking and we're going to the equivalent of my doctor used to smoke will be like my shrink at a twitter as welcome to the internet continues bow does one of the more clever things in the entire special he progressively speeds up the tempo of the song the first three verses have a tempo of

a hundred and twenty four beats per minute but beginning with the fourth verse and lasting through the end of the fifth, the tempo increases little by little. And because the tempo is unstable during these verses, we lose our sense of the song's pulse, creating an ungrounded, dizzying effect. It's as if our ringleader is slowly turning the knob on an amusement park ride, making it spin faster and faster and faster. Hold on to your socks, because a random guy just kindly sent you photos of his cock. They are grainy and off pudding. He just sent you more. Don't act surprised you know you like it, you whore.

fittingly just as the song begins to accelerate bow sings hold on to your socks and just as the tempo gets more intense so too do beau's lyrics as he describes a guy sending grainy unsolicited photos of his penis to a woman before calling her a whore it's the disturbing most abusive side of the internet laid bare and our once welcoming and friendly ringleader has turned villain in the blink of an eye it once again speaks to the rapid twists and turns of the internet where he can be watching funny cat videos one moment and be sexually harassed the next. By the sixth verse, we become locked into the song's new tempo of 166 beats per minute, which is over 40 beats per minute faster than the original tempo. The ride has reached max speed, and Bo the ringleader no longer attempts to

disguise his ill-intents behind a welcoming smile. He drops a refrain welcome to the internet completely and instead just lists increasingly disturbing content at an intense rapid-fire pace, mirroring the speed of the internet, where images and ideas and events move so quickly, we hardly have any time to process any of it meaningfully. Bo's portrait of the all-encompassing, all-consuming black hole of the internet spirals out of control. As in contrast, beheadings, misinformation, death threats, grooming children, killing your mother, incels, building bombs, conspiracy theories, racism, and xenophobia with buying a broom, Googling healthy breakfast options, Zoom calls, and taking a silly Power Rangers quiz.

The quick, rapid-fire pace of these references creates a psychological and emotional slot machine, rolling through infinite options until something perfectly appeared. to our specific wants and needs. And once again, it makes no difference whether those wants and needs are dark or harmless, disturbing or practical, dangerous, or amusing. In the fun house of the internet, there's something for everyone.

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. Good I interest you in everything, all of the time. A little bit of everything. Boch crystallizes his portrait of the internet into a nine-word mantra,

a little bit of everything all of the time. This instantaneous, insatiable, omnipresent over-stimulation, an enchanting wonder world where you can do anything and be anybody. It's no wonder why we're all so addicted to it. The internet is such a thing to look at. I'm saying there's never been a more tempting... It's a temptress. Yes.

It's so hard to not be on it all the time. It is so addictive. It is everything. It contains within it everything you could ever want to look at. If you want to look at anything, it's there. Which is very difficult as opposed to like, I don't know, like, you know, you're in the 1600s and it's like, oh, do I work on my novel or do I play with that wooden hoop? Like, yeah, it's not, you know, I have 10 minutes with a wooden hoop and you're born. But with this, it's like, and that's tough.

So I don't quite know how to deal with it. These are all, these are deep questions. Yeah, yeah. I have bad answers to it. You mean like, I don't have answers to any of these things. As Boe alludes to here, the internet has essentially eliminated boredom as we once knew it. Hence the chorus lyric, apathies a tragedy, and boredom is a crime. With so much entertainment, news, and information at her fingertips at all times,

it would be criminal not to have an opinion on something or be bored even for a moment. we're now filling any potential lull with a quick hit of the web, while we wait in line, while we go to the bathroom, while we sit at traffic lights during commercials, when we get bored of a show, when we get bored of a conversation, when we get bored of a podcast, when we're trying to fall asleep,

when we're trying to wake up. And this fundamental shift in human history just happened in a matter of just a few decades with seemingly no foresight or regard for its potential consequences. But also just like things are changing. It feels like cultures may be going, through a little bit of puberty right now or something. It feels like...

The internet is in what as well. Yeah, exactly. And like the internet's like... Yeah, and the internet's like... It's a little younger than that. But like, yeah, the internet's hitting puberty, kind of almost. The internet was like sort of fun and it was this like playing with trucks and toys. And now all of a sudden it's becoming self-aware in the same way a person does.

And it's inviting an emotional life into itself the way... I never really thought of it that way, but I think that's true as well. It's the volume and the bandwidth. Yeah. terrifies me, not the character of it. And I actually think the character erodes because of the bandwidth, because of the speed, because we're moving at a speed and a volume that we're just not emotionally suited for. This latter point about the overwhelming speed and volume of the internet explains the structure of welcome to the internet's first half,

as the structure of the song mirrors exactly the rapid maturation of the internet. The song began slowly with welcoming, harmless lyrics about all the fun we could have together. Like Beau said, it was playing with trucks and toys. But little by little, the internet grew faster, bigger, stronger, which is reflected in the rapid acceleration of the song's tempo. And seemingly overnight, we suddenly found ourselves in a much different, much more terrifying place looking around, asking ourselves how the hell we ended up here.

You know, it wasn't always like this. Not very long ago, just before your time. Right before the towers fell, circa 99. This was catalogs, travel blogs, a chat room or two. We set our sights and spent our nights waiting for you. Satiable you. Mommy let you use her iPad. You were barely two

And it did all the things we designed Now look at you, look at you, you Bo's ringleader character explains that not too long ago The internet was a much different place, characterizing the pre-9-11 pre-internet age as archaic and ancient. But all along, he knew the day would come, setting his sights on and investing in the future generations that would grow up with the internet and never know the world without it.

And this is when we realized that like the aforementioned lyrics, DM a girl and groom her, Bo's character, in essence, did just that. In this bridge section, he's portraying a predator. The internet groomed us. It baited us with harmless fun. It gave us lollipops, earning our trust, appealing to our most base desires without restriction or regulation.

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'd realize, like, oh, this thing is designed to appear 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, that are meant to create things that market to the base wants of 10-year-olds. You literally have businesses that are built on the base wants and desires of a 10- or 11-year-olds. which is insane when of course we should be catering to the needs of a 10-11-year-old. For something like Snapchat, I'm saying, you know, a photo, a photo app that disappears after 24 hours, what do you think kids are using that for?

Is there any joke? I mean, is there any, is there any, are we going to pretend like we don't know what this is literally designed for, which to me seems to be to disseminate child pornography amongst children? But this stuff is disappearing so no one can be held accountable. Right. It's like, I mean, it's mind-boggling. It really is.

It's really, there's such, 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. Like, I don't, it's so, to me, the only danger, the danger with the internet is not only that it's not only that it's not free enough. And that's sort of the conversation we're having, you know what I mean?

It's like net neutrality. it's not going to be free. I'm like, well, it also needs to, in a big way, not be as free. Like, that the safeguard to a kid watching porn online is them clicking yes on a RU18. And again, these are questions we don't ask. Like, we put a 40-millimeter lens on an iPhone and now kids can take beautiful compressed portraits of themselves.

Should they be able to? I mean, there's not even a mechanism to ask that question. The should question is just never introduced. I don't know what the solution is. As Bo alludes to here, knowing a solution. solution to the internet and technological-related problems we face feels impossible since we're only now beginning to diagnose some of those problems. And because the internet and technology advance so quickly, by the time we diagnose and develop a solution to a particular problem,

a myriad of new ones have developed in the meantime. We just still have no idea. I mean, we're starting just now to see what being on your phone did to people like me that are 30. And I'm looking around and I see millennials and I'm like, oh, we're broken by being on our phones and watching television our whole life, let alone what's going to happen to these people that have been on their phone since they were three years old. We have to like, yeah, I think it's, I think it's scary. Now musically, there's a few things to note about this bridge section. For one, Boas again shifted tempos down to 96 beats per minute, the slowest of the song so far. The time

signature has also changed from 2-4 to a waltz-like 3-4 time. If we look again to that classic circus music track, we realize that It2 shifts from 24 to 3-4 midway through the song. When Welcome to the internet's bridge crescendos into the section where Bo sings U and satiable U, the song modulates from the darker key of D minor to F major, a much warmer key signature, and then when the part repeats, when Bo sings U, unstoppable, watchable, the song modulates yet again, up to the hierarchy of G major. With an endearing, almost proud father-like undertone to his lyrics, it's as if Bo the ringleader is deliberately manipulating us again, like an abuser who follows acts of violence

with acts of quote-unquote affection. Look at you, you. Unstoppable, watchable, your time is now, your insides out, honey, how you grew. And if we stick together, who knows what we'll do. It was always the plan to put the world in your hand. The internet makes its appeal to the narcissist in all of us, repeating and putting emphasis on his direct address of you. The two-year-old with an iPad has grown up,

and now their insides out. They have been raised online, sharing their internal world with the external world, living their life and documenting the movie of their life all at once. Just like Bo making this special, they are both performer and audience, the film's star, and its director. It's here that we have to take a closer look at the visuals we see during this section. During the first half of the song, Bo was immersed in a swirl of rotating green stars. When the song switches to this bridge, Bo changes the projection to what appear to be nebulae,

which are giant, colorful, cosmic clouds of dust and gas in space. Nebulae are considered the basic building blocks of the universe, because they contain the elements from which stars and solar systems are built. So do you see what Bo's doing here? Just when he sings about the internet grooming us from a young age and promising to make us a star, we see the very thing that births stars. Recall that in his last special Make Happy,

Bo discussed this idea of the internet and social media being the market's answer to a generation who demanded to be stars. They say it's like the me generation. It's not. The arrogance is taught or it was cultivated. It's self-conscious. That's what it is. It's conscious of self.

Social media, it's just the market's answer to a generation that demanded to perform. So the market said here perform everything to each other all the time for no reason. It's prison. It's horrific. It is performer and audience melded together. What do we want more than to lie in our bed at the end of the day and just watch our life as a satisfied audience member? As both states here, the me generation was cultivated. It was taught. It was the older generations that built the tools that encouraged these values.

This seems to be a big reason why Bo portrays the internet like a mastermind ringleader luring us in like kids at a carnival. He's in part representing the architects of the internet, new technologies, and social media. Those who built the tools specifically designed to appeal to us before we can think. And as Bo saying, it was always the plan to put the world in your hand. The younger generation quite literally inherited the world in the palm of their hands. What did we expect to happen? Did we really think kids could resist the temptation of everything all of the time? Ha!

Bo the ringleader has caught his prey in his worldwide web, and we imagine him crawling towards us with sinister intent, laughing menacingly that we fell for his tricks. Musically, the song switches back to two-four time here, but now plays halftime in the key of E minor. It also switches from the more subtle electric keyboard to a piano, providing a much harsher, more violent, percussive sound. After performing the chorus once in this frightening halftime feel, the song once again changes tempos, this time back to the relentless, menacing pulse of 166 beats per minute. A number of additional instruments and backing vocals enter here, creating a zany, musical cacophony that is also matched by the visuals we now see.

Whereas the stars and the nebulae were previously seen separately, here are the song's chaotic end, we see them together. We see stars and the very things that creates more stars, positioning the internet as infinitely expansive and self-propagating as the universe itself. It is both God and God's creation. It is past, present, and future all at once. Indeed, here at the song's end, Bo is quite literally giving us everything at once,

everything all of the time. Welcome to the Internet is Inside's most forthright critique of the Internet, a conceptual personification of its history, its motives, its rapid exponential spread, that dramatically transformed how we work, how we socialize, how we think, think and how we feel. Indeed, the moniker World Wide Web ended up being a pretty accurate assessment of what the Internet would become, an expansive, all-consuming web in which were all

irreversibly entangled. And for me, welcome to the Internet as a whole is an invitation to examine our own relationship with the Internet, a call to be more conscious about the ways we are engaging with it, how we're choosing to use its countless tools, and the way that we're feeling as a result. because as the structure of the song points out, with its slow build to a suddenly frantic tempo, the internet's invasion to every facet of our life felt so gradual that it seemingly avoided any real widespread scrutiny. As a whole, we were swept up in excitement and awe at what these new tools could offer us, yet here we are now looking back and realizing how dramatic of a cultural shift we've experienced in just a decade or two, not even a blink of an eye from a historical

perspective. I know for me personally, I never consciously chose to be on my phone three to four hours a day. I never consciously chose to be on my laptop another five to six hours a day. My adoption of technology and reliance on the internet just kind of happened. And like an addict attempting to quit, it's only when you try to reduce your reliance on these tools that you truly realize just how dependent you become. Nasbo implies throughout the song, there's no regulatory constraints placed on the internet like there are on other things that can potentially harm us. certainly big tech companies aren't going to regulate themselves. Like Bo's ringleader character,

they're inherently incentivized to keep us as relying as possible on their products. And so most of us have ended up in complicated relationships with the internet. We stayed together despite the horrible things it's doing to us because the internet offers us so much. And obviously it's not all bad, but sometimes it can feel impossible to know the difference, and it just might be the case that its benefits and its detriments are fundamentally inseparable.

The truth is that the internet was just bad, it'd be so easy to address. Just throw your phone into the ocean. It's over. The problem is it's not. It isolates us and it connects us. It stimulates us and it numbs us. We can express ourselves and we can objectify ourselves. We can start a wonderful social movement that, for example, changes the way we think about women in the workplace,

or we can set the country on fire. And we've done both of those things. So, yeah, there's like, you see the internet playing out personally and nationally, good and bad all the time. I just think the internet is powerful. It just makes things deeper and more powerful. I don't have the solution. If I had the solution, I would have solved it or tried to. I'm saying I'm just trying.

I only try to be like a diagnostic, not. the word that means solving the disease. You know what I mean? Like, I don't know. I just feel like this is the conversation. These are the questions that I haven't heard people say, and I can't solve it monologuing. You know, it just hopefully had conversations.

Notably in these interviews, Bo makes clear his intentions with his art, to be a diagnostic, and to encourage cultural conversation, which to me perfectly explains the function of a song like Welcome to the Internet and Inside as a whole. It's a call to self-reflect on our relationship with the internet, take emotional stock of how we're feeling,

share what we find with each other, and try to figure out how to best move forward. Because we're all stuck inside the web, but we are here together, so we might as well try to help each other find a way out. I feel like the more I learn about the internet, the less I'm certain about it. There's really great things about it.

There's really toxic things about it. I just hope a conversation in his head about these things. That's a little more subtle. The conversation starts to be. head about what, what, maybe about what it means to be alive and the internet that's a little more subtle than Russia. We're talking about the internet in such big terms and maybe, you know, it's not just about the internet, but I just hope, maybe just with a deeper understanding of kids and what they're going through and just having a subtler conversation about it.

We'll resume the conversation as we continue our line by line, scene by scene analysis of inside, next time on Dysect. Today's episode of Dysect was written and produced by me. 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.