- Yeah, and I have a bit in my act, that sort of makes fun of Justin Bieber
and some of these young pop stars.
Basically, it's a song that mocks the way that those songs are written
which I think is... What the songs basically do is they...
they're love songs to girls and they describe the girls
as vaguely as they possibly can, so that every girl can think
that that song is about them. So it's like...
It's like "I love how your fingerprints are different than everybody else's"
And like "I love how your eyes have that, like,
blue-ish, brown-ish, green-ish color."
" And, like, your torso has an arm on either side of it"
or like, whatever...
That seems sort of harmless, but then it kinda gets a little darker
and sort of accuses these young pop-artists of being part of the cycle
where girls, who read magazines, feel terrible about themselves
cause it says, you know: "you should be skinnier,
you should be prettier". They feel terrible. And then these pop stars
tell them that they're perfect, and that they're beautiful
and the songs, they buy the song and ten the pop-star is
on the cover of the magazine, so they buy a magazine again so then...
And it sort of gets like this vicious cycle... And I basically... like...
... sort of implying that he's working for Satan, or whatever...
"Oh, hello, Satan! eats microphone"
(audience laughter)
- Little shout-out to Justin! How's Satan? Yeah...
- That's great.
Unless something else that I find more engaging
or more important comes along I do plan to continue making episodes
of Fake Friends proper past episode 4, but either way
there are a ton of topics related to parasocial relationships
that I feel would be better-suited to smaller standalone videos.
Like I got a lot of comments asking about k-pop or idol culture
and those would warrant a longer video,
but if I hadn’t included PARO in episode 2,
that’s the kind of topic that would fit as something shorter and more self-contained.
The Fake Friends episodes are long and dense and are my attempt at bringing together
a bunch of seemingly unrelated topics to show a broader picture
of how these relationships have infected our lives.
The spinoff episodes will be more self-contained and closer to
a regular video essay than a sprawling documentary.
The two shortest and most accessible pieces I’ve found in the past two years
of research that cover parasocial relationships the way that II view them
are the original Horton and Wohl write-up from 1956 and the music video
for Bo Burnham’s song “Repeat Stuff”.
It’s a fun video to watch and not think twice about. But part of why
I find it so valuable (and worth devoting a
a whole 40-minute video to)
is how dense it is and just how much is going on,
including what didn’t register the first time I watched it.
Or the second. Or the third. It’s not only one of my
favorite music videos, but as I watched it rewatched it
and grew to appreciate just how much work went into it
it's become on of my favorite short films as well.
You really should watch the full music video before watching this analysis.
I’ll link the music video, the earlier version from
his comedy special, and an even earlier youtube upload in the description
so you can watch all three version I'll be talking about, if you want.
The other two are more optional. But the music video
functions as a fun, dark short that goes unexpected places
and it’s also best to hear the final version of the song
before you listen to me talk about its evolution.
Burnham, especially as he has gotten older versus when
he was an edgelord teen youtube star,
has done a great job with taking subjects where an easy,
demeaning joke could be made and instead applying some
level of nuance and empathy.
The song "Art is Dead" is off of his special "words words words"
Repeat Stuff is off of his special "What" as is "Sad".
In his next special, "Make Happy", there are three great
examples of this as well- "Lower Your Expectations"
"Pandering", and "Kill Yourself".
There are other songs and other examples
but for brevity’s sake I’m sticking to six.
(because, as we all know, I am known for my brevity)
For all of these songs, you start with one surface-level
joke, whether it’s parody or a cliched joke
or a shock value joke or... whatever.
Art is Dead is the most serious of all of these examples
but it does still take that surface premise- art is dead now,
modern performers are shallow and immature
and adds an unexpected layer of self-deprecation and self-loathing
entertainers are entitled, whining monsters,
and Burnham is one of them.
"Sad" takes hacky shock sadness jokes,
some of which are, admittedly, kind of funny,
and subverts them in the last verse,
implicating both Burnham as a performer for exploiting tragedy
for cheap laughs AND his audience, who
has been laughing along the entire time.
I’ll get to "Repeat Stuff" in a minute.
"Lower Your Expectations" has elements of
“men are like this, women are like this!”
battle of the sexes gender essentialism,
but it’s more an exploration of the unrealistic expectations
put on any gender, including how these expectations
can be contradictory - societal expectations of men to be both
gentle feminists and chivalrous tough guys,
women to be both model-level attractive
and down-to-earth and humble.
It’s a critique of culture, of impossible heteronormative
standards of what LOVE is,
and it’s not putting people down for not meeting these expectations
It also ends with Burnham making fun of himself for even
pretending to know about life and love at his age.
"Pandering"
is a parody of modern country music,
but rather than making fun of poor people or southern people
or people who live in rural areas,
Burnham focuses on how rich musicians, well,
PANDER to a working-class demographic that they
have nothing in common with.
As someone, who gre up around a lot of working-class southern people
I appreciate the avoidance of easy-hit jokes.
At times those jokes are there there
but hopefully they are more at the expense of this persona
of a wealthy musician,
or maybe at the expense of country-songs like this one
which always rubbed me the wrong way,
"Pandering" is about a respect for art regardless of its origin
I think country music gets a bad rep, you know, why
it that when Bruce Springsteen sings about a fucking turnpike
- it is art, and when someone sings about a horse - it' dumb.
Apparently, I dunno...
I think some of the greatest songwriters of all time are country-artists
Dolly Parton, Willie Nelson, you know,
they've been writing honestly. That is art! And I wold never bash that.
The problem is: with a lot of modern country music
what is called "stadium country music", it's sort of Keith Urban
brand of country music
is that it is not honest
- And it's what we do, anyway. it's what you're doing
you create, we create, these guys are creating
and I get to do it with music
And a respect for human beings, regardless of how much money they have.
And it makes of both the impulse to write-off a genre or a region
as "redneck trash" and the people who play into these stereotypes
as outsiders and manipulate their audience, the same way
pop-star Burnham in "Repeat stuff" does to teenage girls.
How a lot of country music has a creepy, vaguely rape-y vibe to it
And how the songs are formulaic and exploitative
and have no real respect for their audience
One of my favorite parts of the song isn't a particularly
clever rhyme of reference
It's just Burnham saying "I don't like dirt!"
It's worth noting too that while Burnham is playing
a character here, he still talks in the first-person
There's also a similar joke about dumb Alabama rednecks elsewhere
in the special - here it is in full.
We just played in Alabama, they ust liked the lights, I didn't even need
to do jokes!
"Motherfucker's got moving candles!". No... Not quite
Alabama was actually nice. You're elitist pricks.
Is that fun?
And here's a clip from Burnham's guest appereance
on "Parks and Rec" in 2014.
Where he plays a sort of "Repeat Stuff", "Pandering"
hybrid country-youtube star, who uses vague allusions to his mother
and the troops to get views.
- His latest song, "Beutiful, like my mom (support the troops)" has like
2 million hits on Youtube!
- Bunch of dirty hecks!
Next is "Kill Yourself".
In my political correctness video I criticized
George Miller for making "kill yourself" song and used a clip of Burnham
regretting his own Helen Keller jokes because of how those could've
been used to bully a deaf person.
For "Kill Yourself", which speaks on inspirational pop songs and how
you shouldn't turn to pop-music or pop-artists to sustain you emotionally.
They're only there to use you for your money. After all,
it's about how you are sold overly simplified narratives
and simple solutions for complex problems
that you should seek actual professional help for.
- ... that life's toughest problems don't have simple answers.
You shouldn't just be "Brave", you shouln't just "Roar"
you shouldn't "kill yourself"
Burham goes pretty far out of his way to state that he
understands depression.
But I understand that it's a sensetive subject and you're probably just
hearing me say that...
Briefly hints that he has struggled with mental health issues himself
I've dealth with... I don't want to be insnensitive
Says that if you're depressed, you should seek a therapist
And then jokes that if you can only find meanng for your life in
Katy Perry songs, then, well, never mind. You should definitely just kill yourself.
Part of makes me this song less able to be weaponized
to bully some kid, or less likely to encourage an actual suicidal person
are the ways he couches the jokes in empathy and the ridiculous
and over-the-top suicide methods that he suggests.
The only parts of "Kill yourself", that I would criticize, actually,
are the extremely hack jokes about AIDS
and Oprah being fat
which in 2016, almost seem like Burnham was being intentionally unfunny.
Overall, though, the juxtaposition between an empathetic
and supportive Burnham and the one suggesting suicide methods works.
- I feel like you pulled back.
Maybe it's on account of the fact, that I'm telling you to kill yourself,
but for a moment
Especially, because he pushes the edge of the "Kill yourself" line
then softens it, then pushes, then softens again.
I definitely feel like, if he had written this as a teenager
it would've been less empathetic. And without that sharp juxtaposition
between the empathy and the suicide joke, it would've been less funny
and less effective overall.
I do find his work and his songs funny. But even if they weren't funny
to me, even if, objectively, you don't get the laughs out of them
that I do, I wanted to break down what he's doing with his body of work,
and the way that he handles these jokes - Not just smugly rampaging through
our culture and striking down easy targets
but navigating satire with empathy for young people.
and downtrodden people and people with mental health issues.
And over and over taking aim at himself just as much as everyone else
if nor moreso.
- How does he do it? How does he pretend to do it?
How does he remain contrived? I'm not honest for a second up here!
Art is a lie! Nothing is real!
A comic can be funny and have ocassional moments of insight
when they're indiscriminately shotgunning everything, as many comics do.
And don't you dare criticize them!
- This could be a little offensive, but, you know, my motto is:
if you can laugh at one group of people, you gotta be able to laugh at
them all. Ya know?
This song is gonna seem terribly offensive, but, eh, remember: it's satire
and please, don't kick the shit out of me.
Jeez...
In 2009, when he was 18, Burnham was protested against
at Westminster College in Fulton, Missouri.
An article from the Columbia Daily Tribune states:
About 15 protesters, including members of the Gay-Straight Alliance,
Black Students Association,
International Club and the Cultural Diversity Organization
held signs and rallied outside Champ Auditorium,
where the concert took place.
The article then mentions Bo being uncomfortable while interacting
with a disabled fan, after his act that repeatedly mocked disabled people
(though the fan was clearly fine with offensive humor,
and it's possible that the author was reading some into the situation).
In a 2009 Boston Herald interview, which I paid 4 dollars to access, because
even the archived version was behind a paywall,
Burnham said: "It's so ironic, because gay bashers were the ones
labeling me in high-school", and "I try and write satire that's
well-intentioned, but those Intentions have to be hidden.
It can't be completely clear. and that's what makes it comedy"
But then, 7 years later, in a 2016 CBS interview
on political correctness he said:
"Well, I just think, like, comics are cry-babies and like, give me a break.
You get up there and you talk for an hour and then they have
and impulse to be heard too?
If it's rock n' roll, then who cares what they think about it?
And truly, like, political corectness with young people
for me, it's an over-correction. For a serious problem, like bigotry
and racism, but no comedians are being thrown in jail
They're getting, like, lit up on twitter maybe a few times, they go through
you know, and that's wrong and maybe bad sometimes.
But again, this is from people, who have had their opinions heard relentlessly
Hours every night, all the time, and then a blogger gets up
and expresses their opinion in a blog, and it's like: what?!
How do you not understand that the audience has the same impulse that you do?"
Don't kill yourself!
I don't like explaining jokes, but the joke where I tell everyone to kill
themselves might deserve an explaination. DO NOT!
And if you're offended, do not write a blog. I apologize immediately!
"Sorry!" - right away!
You know, my mother is a hospice nurse so it's hard for me to look at, you know
a couple college kids with signs outside a comedy show and think that
I'm... you know, up against anything, structually.
It's rare, and more rewarding to find someone who started out that way,
then grew up and uses his platform and his art to tackle what
upsets him and disturbs him in a wider culture.
Crafting clever or shocking juxtapositions and ripping open contradictions.
Over and over trying to call attenton to wide-spread exploitation
that we accept and ignore.
In a 2013 interview with Vulture he said:"I don't think it's very
cynical to be critical of the media. Being critical of what pop-stars
and celebrities say seems obvious to me. I hope it's level-headed. I find pop-culture
and celebrity to be very cynical. When I'm being critical about it
I hope I'm not being too cynical about it. Realistic, I think.
Or, hopefully, just showing what people swallow without thinking about it
just because they have real jobs. Where I have this silly job, where
I think about it all the time.
It's not like Burnham is afraid to offend anyone either.
Or that his stage persona is strictly sensitive and gentle, and thoughtful
If I fuck a kid, I'm a pedophile, but if a kid fucks me - I'm a pedophile, again?!
Twice in a week?
Part of the persona, even as he's gotten older, has been using
offensive humor to push the people in his audience away.
Bo Burnham: Macaroni and... Audience: Cheese!
Our favorite chips, salt and v... Wow!
Who said it?!
And while I wouldn't consider it the strongest aspect of his work,
it does make the moments of empathy seem sincere, rather than compulsory.
OK, now for the actual subject of the video! Sort of!
I'm gonna talk about the song first, then I'll get to the music video.
This interview was uploaded to Youtube on May 3rd 2013.
His special "what" dropped on December 13th of 2013
on Youtube and Netflix. As did the seperate perfomance of the show
that's on the album. Which, as an additional track, included
the studio version of Repeat Stuff.
That being the exact same version later used in the music video.
The full music video for "Repeat Stuff" dropped on September 24th 2014.
These are the earliest versions of the song I can find on Youtube.
Both from a performance at a Trocadero Theatre in Philadelphia
on December 4th 2010. Meaning, here he's 24, here he's 23, here he's 22,
and here he's 20 years old.
He might've started writing the song when he was 19 or even younger.
I'm not sure. I mention all that both to show that this was an evolution over
a period of at least 4 years to get to the final music video
and that Burnham was very, very young when he first started it.
There are only a handful of uploads of older versions of "Repeat Stuff"
on Youtube. The first few are shorter than the final version
"This song is a work in progress."
And Burnham draws attention to the song being unfinished.
- How do you get out of a song you haven't finished?
Sound-man, hit the third track for me please, hit the third track
He also says "my producer", instead of "my agent".
These segments here were eventually cut.
And the "girl with no arms" bit was more aggressive and less funny.
There were other minor changes over time, before the finished version
came out on "what". Apart from a Jason Derulo joke,
- Jason Derulo...
the only real difference in the song, between a "what" version
and a studio version used in the music video, is Burnham pretending
to perform oral sex on Satan.
- Oh, Satan, you taste so good!
and making weird noises...
versus in-the-studio version, where layered distorted voice clips are used.
"I am a servant of dakrness" Repeat stuff, repeat stuff...
The effect is similar, though. The "what" version even has visual
elements that are repurposed for the music video. Gentle blue and magenta
lights are used for most of the song. With sudden red light blasting
accompanied by nazi salute as an over-the-top gag highlighting the evil
and exploitative nature of these performers. The "what" version allows
for further audience implication. The nazi salute comes partially as a joke
at their expense. Just as he's gotten them to enthusiastically sing along
- Repeat stuff, repeat stuff, everybody!
- Come on, louder, I can't hear you!
His voice is a little different as well. In the "what" version the juxtaposition
between his faux-carefree pop star voice and his evil voice
is more played-up and both are more cartoonish. One - sillier
Repeat stuff, repeat stuff, repeat stuff...
and one - more menacing.
Fuck em! Who needs em!
All of the songs, I've mentioned here, are in some way about exploitation.
"Repeat Stuff" included, but it has a larger scope
The surface-level joke here is very clear and easily accessible.
Pop-stars pump out repetitive, simplistic hits, and are part of a machine
that traps young girls in a cycle of self-loathing and turning to them
for love and comfort, in exchange for money.
The video adds other aspects in addition to this - axes of exploitation on display
in the music video are on the basis of race, gender, age, ability and income
An audience member is only valuable as far as they can consume his product
or be used by him to sell his product to consumers. Take this bit-
For the record, little girls who don’t have arms CAN use itunes,
being disabled doesn’t preclude you from enjoying pop music
and being just as exploited-
While Burnham clearly meant it as a dig at sociopathic capitalism
I have known enough disabled people that enjoy music
that I figured I’d mention it.
The actors in the video who are black or mixed race are shown literally dancing
at Burnham’s command for Burnham’s amusement, and him using “swag”
is both a funny juxtaposition of slang vs his satanic monster character AND
an example of how white pop stars appropriate black vernacular.
The change bit is weird- I guess, like, a visual gag, it’s more silly than anything
but maybe also an implication of pennies paid for the work
black artists put in, and as a further gag he says “what the fuck”
here not even understanding them or what is happening.
Burnham is also playing multiple characters and incorporating multiple
layered personas in this video. There’s the persona that little girls fall
in love with- the Bieber-esque Bo, there’s the behind-the-scenes cult leader
Satanic monster behind that persona, and there are a surprising number
of incorporations of Burnham himself or his original persona
separate from the video.
The Bieber parody is that surface-level joke and most of the non-satanic
lyrics are from this point of view.
“Repeat Stuff” sounds similar to Bieber's song “Baby”
and the video is in part a parody of his “Confident” music video.
There’s a little bit of insidiousness to the character though it doesn’t start overt
for example, he’s androgynous in a way that lowers the guards of female
fans and as a cover to mask how sexually exploitative he is.
There are jokes about an agent performing oral sex on him
but it’s not homophobic. Rather, it’s a web of sexual predation on all
sorts of people, - men around him, women in his video, a young girl, whatever.
Where the video gets wild and visually interesting is when Satanic Cult
Leader Burnham comes in. He is Satan in human form.
His music is a plague and his purpose is virgin sacrifice.
As far as people his own age, he’s surrounded by a cult of sycophants
engaged in bizarre, child-like behavior.
It’s a funny juxtaposition to have a bunch of people in their late teens
and early twenties playing with toys- especially because the only actual
fans shown are very young- it reminds me of tobacco ads that target children,
or a corporate idea of what kids would like or want.
The cult all also literally drink kool-aid together, emphasized
by this group suicide pantomime that I always found pretty funny.
There are multiple overt references to the illuminati. I don’t know if they’re related
or if it’s some other weird reference, but this guy’s hand signal reminded
me of Jay-Z’s roc-a-fella records diamond hand sign that paranoid conspiracy
theorists have insisted is related to the illuminati or satan or whatever.
The video also has a bunch of one-frame text inserts, being
subliminal messages are a cliched aspect of brainwashing conspiracy theories.
Some of the messages are silly jokes, but many of them involve encouraging
the pursuit of money and fame, tying back into the key themes
of the video and of Burnham’s typical message.
There are a few satanic symbols and references throughout the video,
some overt and some more subtle.
Did you notice that the cross he wears and puts in his mouth is upside-down?
Even more extreme are the comparisons to Hitler.
There are the illuminati nazi armbands, the hitler speech in the background
the actual nazi salutes- it’s played for shock laughs and to catch
the audience off guard in the "what" version but is more a piece
woven into a wider tapestry of evil in the music video.
The color symbolism that carried over from the what. version,
while simple, is really effective, and it builds out a solid and
consistent color palette for the video.
I really like the look of the video and the costume design and the visual motifs.
Whether intentional or not, the opening shot reminds me of Halloween and Bo’s
outfit and a jumpsuit worn by Michael Meyers are a similar shade of navy.
My favorite cut in the entire video is this one.
All of these songs I have talked about have juxtapositions played
for comedy, but the one here is genuinely sad and creepy.
You have Bo moving and dancing and being silly, leaned back on the car
with casual body language, then you cut to him just looming
over a girl’s corpse, staring directly at the camera.
It’s made even more effective by a later shot with the same setup
but of Bo dancing, incorporating both the violence
and the manufactured carefree silliness.
Burnham is very tall- google says 6’5”- and normally he plays up being
skinny and lanky in an effeminate way with dancing or slapstick
(in a 2013 interview with NPR he said
"The comedy club environment, unless you're very careful about it, it's kind of
creates a very tough, very, I think, masculine comedian
that can be very combatant on it, you know, twelve PM Satruday show
and the crowd's getting a little rowdy. As opposed to I think I was able
to make this sort of weird, slightly androgynous theatrical comedy
that would've been squashed had I brought it around the clubs.
This shot is the only time I’ve seen his height used deliberately to look
hulking and intimidating. He works as the video’s villain not
in spite of his lanky physicality but because of it and I could see
the aesthetic and the character working in a more traditional
narrative horror short or feature film.
There are also some small weird shots and jokes that I liked.
Why does this person’s hoodie just say “hoodie”?
These posters on the girl’s wall are references to two of Burnham’s
old music videos- "words words words" from september 2010
and "oh bo" from october 2010.
This shot is so funny.
What are they even doing? What are you all doing?
I tried to see if 1213 has any meaning but only found weird angel stuff.
In the vocal montage you can very quietly hear him insulting his audience.
His face on magazine is so dour and serious.
I know they probably had to reverse this in editing,
but why is this guy walking backwards?
Artemis looking into the camera before this cut is so brilliant.
It's such a great touch.
And, well, during the course of making this video, I also discovered my own mystery
one that I did not expect.
So, if you did what I suggested and watched the youtube upload
of Repeat Stuff, did you notice that something was off
when I used this clip at the beginning of this video?
t’s from an alternate version of the "Repeat Stuff" music video.
There’s a discrepancy. Could it be a conspiracy???
The illuminati?!
So I don't know much about the technical specifics or the industry standard specifics
of this overall, but I've seen a lot of times where someone
who worked on a music video will have an upload of that video
on their personal vimeo account as part of their portfolio
separate from the popular and official youtube upload.
Vimeo is a more professional website and compresses videos significantly
less than Youtube does, so, when I am looking for versions of music videos
or short films to use in essays, I will check both youtube and vimeo
for uploads and try to use whichever one looks better.
At some point I watched the vimeo upload of "Repeat Stuff"
on the channel of Rami Hachache, the music video's director.
Since I had seen the youtube version a million times in the past year
and since I’m a neurotic, obsessive, I IMMEDIATELY
noticed a difference between the two uploads.
It's a clip I had never seen before and the color balance is completely off
so it stands out a lot and I feel like I would have caught it just on that even if
I wasn’t as familiar with the other cut. It's at around 1:21 in both
versions. I rewatched a couple times and I think I kind of caught
that the clips before it were different as well. So being a
very normal person who definitely does not have too much time on my hands,
I grabbed both versions at 1080 and I synced them up and layered
one on top of the other in the timeline with the top one at around half opacity
I sat there and I watched the whole video. This starts at around 1:12
if you are watching the full videos. Even all of the subliminal text bits
match up. The only discrepancy was the one I had noticed.
And a few clips preceding it.
I really like in the vimeo version the way his body language
makes a nice transition from from him looking down with his arms out
and how it adds movement and connectivity between two cuts
where before it was pretty arbitrary.
And I got really curious. Why is this here?
I feel like it's a better transition, but the color is off and that makes
it look unfinished, even though the timing of the cut is great!
Here's a comparison of me doing around two minutes of rough
color correction work in premiere to show the difference and
how easy it would be to fix.
Why wasn’t it fixed? Especially if the rest of the video looks and sounds exactly the same.
Apart from the end of the Youtube version, having a Burnham ad tacked on
The Vimeo version also has a nice, professional-looking thumbnail
that the youtube version doesn’t.
So, here came the real challenge. I wondered, was the director's version
uploaded prior to the youtube version, hence the unfinished shot?
Or was it uploaded after, since they would, of course, want to premiere it
on Burnham's youtube channel for maximum views and impact?
Youtube has a date clearly visible: "Published on Sep 24, 2014"
but on vimeo it just said "4 years ago". 4 years ago under the video,
4 years ago on a bunch of comments. "4 years ago" doesn't help me!
So then I keep looking and googling around
and I find this this random blog post on some blog called "spiral of hope"
on how in order to see the date a video was uploaded to vimeo
you have to download the video’s XML file. So using their template
and changing the URL to match the video's ID
I download the XML file of the "Repeat Stuff" upload, and
there it is- "2014-09-24". It went up the same day.
I learned nothing, basically, but like the virtual woman segment of "fake friends 2"
I found it weird and interesting.
I really enjoy strange inconsequential deep dive mysteries.
I wanted to be a detective when I was a little kid and I enjoy
looking into stuff that nobody else cares to look into.
I might try to reach out to and interview Hachache
after I publish this video.
I'd rather get my own ideas and interpretations out there before I talk to him
and if I do interview him I will definitely bring up this tiny discrepancy
that I found really interesting.
Pop stars and boy bands can be a safe and non-threatening
place for young people to have crushes. I'm not demonizing young people
for being fans of pop stars or demonizing musicians for making music
pop or not. But, while Nazi iconography is a little extreme
for any satirical music video, I do feel that all of the Illuminati
Satan stuff - meant as cultural shorthand for evil
- is apt in describing the tangible negative effects these
these relationships can have on young people- being tricked into thinking
spending their parents’ money on more merch and more
music will help fulfill them or make them happy.
The first “demon eyes” shot is this one
- on an explicitly sexual line and played as a joke,
But the most shocking and upsetting aspects of the "Repeat Stuff"
music video are how predatory Burnham is in moments, where it isn't played up for laughs
Him looming over a corpse is one and others are the creepy shots of him
outside of a teenage girl's room where it’s almost implied that
he’s masturbating to her photograph.
The little girl has Egghead, his real-life book of poems, by her bed.
Bunrham's persona with regard to sex is usually portrayed
as him being non-threatening and inept and immature.
I talked about his physicality being used differently to express physical violence
The same can be said about him being sexually predatory.
The beginning of the song praises the girl Bo is speaking to for giving
her heart to him.
but by the end we see that it’s not given, it’s taken.
She reaches out to touch him with this stunned look of reverence
in her eyes and he murders her and eats her heart,
surrounded by ephemera of his own real-life career.
In the Vulture interview, Burnham said, “...with “Repeat Stuff,”
so much of the pop songs have absolutely no artistic function
and only function to sell something to little girls.
That particular genre in my opinion targets very precarious things
about little girls: their own insecurity and self-esteem issues.
This poem is called "Ashley".
Little Ashley hung magazine spreads on her wall, after picking the
magazines out in the mall.
Models and actresses, singers and more, with cleavage and makeup
and glamour galore!
All of her heroes were finally nearer.
Her whole room looked perfect - except for the mirror.
"That to me is a little bit predatory and a little bit evil.
I’m fine with things not being original. I want hardcore
content to be the product of someone’s beliefs and for them to
make something that connects with people as opposed to
making something that is meant to sort of trick people and just
sell them something, to have your way with them and then leave them.”
Burnham’s treatment of sexual assault language in this interview and in the imagery
in his video may seem flippant, but I can see what he’s going for
not only with stars fostering trust and love in fans to in return harvest fame
and money from, but also real-world consequences for young fans
who DO meet their idols or famous crushes and let their guard down or see
his person they’re a fan of with rose-colored glasses who end up,
at the best, used and hurt and with a new “don’t meet your heroes” mindset,
and at worst assaulted- this applies to feminist comedians who
took advantage of fans or colleagues as well as rock and pop stars who have
historically had a habit of statutory raping teenage groupies.
- I can do whatever I want, all right? If I want to shoot a paintball gun
at my dad, I'm gonna do it!
So. Why didn’t Burnahm come up with a fake name
or character name for the video?
Jon Lajoie’s pop parody
uses his name as a flashy background
but he plays characters totally unrelated to his own youtube
music career sans one cameo, and in “Pandering”, a music style parody
of a different genre,
- You know, like THAT genre?
Burnham is clearly playing someone separate from himself.
But here a deliberate choice was made for the evil pop
Satan to be Burnham. In the "what." version he's happily serving
Satan as an accomplice, but in the music video he IS Satan.
It's next-level self-deprecation.
This is beyond brand recognition or an easy go-to.
This is self-implication.
This shot of him- in a white T-shirt at a piano-
is a quintessential Burnham image.
He wears the same shirt when he smothers the girl to death with her own pillow.
How many of Burnham's fans, especially when he was a YouTube star,
were teenage girls?
Here’s a clip from the track “Out of the Abyss”
from the album performance of "what." that I used in the intro
of the first episode of "Fake Friends".
- I'm giving you attention, girl that's wooing. Are you happy now?
- You love me? That's very nice. You love the idea of me, you don't know me
but that's ok. It's called a "Parasocial relationship"
- it goes one way, and is ultimately destructive.
But please, keep buying all my shit forever.
That's how it works! Capitalism! I'm trapped! It's terrible!
I'm a horrible person! All right.
right after this aside, Burnham segues into the album performance of "Repeat Stuff"
How many audience members screamed at him that
they loved him despite his rebuking them when they did?
My experience even with an audience a fraction of the size of Burnham's
is that people like you a lot more more when they perceive you as
being honest, even if what you're being honest about is how your
audience sometimes scares you.
Or, in his case, if you feel like you're exploiting them.
It's the quality of “heart” that Horton and Wohl talked about.
So even as I insist that my audience doesn't know me
and should be inherently suspicions of the idea of emotional
intimacy with someone they're a fan of, I get messages from strangers telling
me I'm a good person or asking me for help with very personal life
problems that I'm not remotely qualified to help with.
Many people told me my last big video made them cry and changed how they
interact with media online.
That's great! That's awesome! That's what I wanted!
to reach people emotionally and intellectually.
but having that kind of power makes me feel strange and uneasy.
When thousands of people trust you and care about your
opinions and what you think they should do in their day-to-day lives,
It's a responsibility I wasn't really prepared for.
you have to take conscious effort not to end up playing into it for
your wallet or your ego. Not that I'm in any danger
of turning into a rapey Satan monster and not that
Burnham 100% saw himself as one either. It's just that the more
I grow my fan base the more I can relate to Burnham's
anxieties and the more I appreciate his work.
The "Repeat Stuff" music video has over 100,000 views on Vimeo
and over 10,000,000 on YouTube.
I really appreciate how accessible it is and how clear
the message it has is while remaining uncompromising in its dark tone.
Hopefully, it didn't just preach to the choir or fuel those making
fun of teenage girls for loving pop stars, because if you spend any
time looking at it there's so much more to it!
I've received dismissive comments on the first Fake Friends from people who
found Burnham annoying but that seems to have decreased
as I showed less of his song clips and more of his self-loathing anti-fame rhetoric.
Like I said before, I don't care if you like him or find him funny or not
I just wanted to share my appreciation for what he's doing on a technical
level as well as an ideological one.
Most of the Vimeo vs YouTube video discrepancy segment
was repurposed from a patreon post I made while researching.
Thanks to Michael Brown for other research help and a couple other
unnamed folks for help as well.
The genius page for "Repeat Stuff" helped my research some,
especially with the Bieber parody aspect, and it links this music video
by Axis of Awesome
- link in the description - that explores the
“sung with the same four chords” aspect of Burnham's parody.
I don't know much about the mechanics of music and I
wanted to focus on writing and filmmaking but that’s
worth watching for some further elaboration on how derivative
a lot of these songs are in their construction.
If you enjoyed this video and want to check out more of my work,
I'd recommend the first two "Fake Friends episodes and my essay
on political correctness and empathy.
Long time viewers might have noticed that I was able to spend
more time on motion graphics, visual effects, redoing voiceover,
and the like for this video, and that I finished it relatively
quickly for a video of its length.
That's a direct result of my patreon support growing significantly after
"Fake friends 2".
If you want to support my work, I have my patreon for ongoing donations
and a Ko-fi for one-time donations. Thanks!