Long response to questionnaire

1. It’s Bo FO’ Sho’
It’s very easy to achieve fame and success these days, thanks to good ol’ modern
technology and some people deserve the fame and others…well they don’t. Bo
Burnham is one of the very few whose made it big and genuinely deserves it, his
successful career path blossomed when he posted a whimsical musical
masterpiece meant as a humorous message to one of his elder siblings, little did
16 year old Burnham know it’d go viral and receive millions of hits and views
and in the future, he’d end up scoring a contract with comedy central and later
on, having his own MTV television show, ‘Zach Stone is gonna be Famous’, who
knew what a four minute thirty one second YouTube upload could do?
Bo continues to receive thousands of new fans on a consistent basis, but how
does he achieve this? With virality and the Internet, of course! His recent show,
‘What.’ was released free, on YouTube and Netflix for his fans to view for free in
the comfort of their own home. After recently interviewing some fans, I found
that the majority of them had become a fan around ‘March of 2014’ when they
‘randomly decided to watch his special on Netflix’ or a friend showed them his
work via YouTube.
The way that Bo achieved his fame is quite impressive and inspiring, although
some comics (‘Never the good ones’ Bo says during an interview for The
Guardian) shun him for it, thinking of his road to fame is an, ‘illegitimate route to
stand up’ – but does he actually inspire his fans? The answer is yes. Many fans
feel that he can ‘look at a bad situation and draw humor from it’ or that he is ‘an
idol for upcoming comedians’ – with that being said, a few fans don’t feel
particularly inspired, whether that’s because they aren’t ‘personally’ motivated
by what he’s achieved or they don’t feel he’s one hundred percent inspiring to
them but they admire his work instead, I don’t know. Looking at the answers
from fans, there are more who do feel inspired as opposed to those who don’t.
With that being said, Bo’s comedy and humor is pretty dark and offensive,
although fans are inspired by some of his work as it can often address real issues
and problems in the world, there are a few jokes or points he makes that are a
little outrageous. A lot of fans brought up that, ‘From the Perspective of Go d’
seemed to be the most extreme as they felt like the lyrics addressed the issues
with Christianity, even if he did it in an eccentric sort of way. That wasn’t
everything fans had to say, though, they found certain lyrics such as, ‘I’ll have you
going down like you’ve grown an extra chromosome’ took it just a step too far
and them feel ‘uncomfortable’ or the song, ‘The Perfect Woman’ where they
found it, ‘more harmful than it is funny’ as it ‘goes more for shock value.’
Even if Bo makes some rather devious jokes that push certain boundaries, his
fans still stay supportive of his work, for example, I asked fans for their favorite
quote from either a song, poem or an interview and what ceases to amaze me is
that each individual person picked a completely different quote – no ones
correlated or had the same favorite as another; to me this shows real success. Bo
Burnham isn’t just renowned for one quote or one singular, lucrative song, all of

2. his work is deemed as so good that there’s a range of amazing, cleve r quotes to
choose from, some examples are: ‘I love that your torso has an arm on either
side’, ‘you don’t love me, you love the idea of me’ and, ‘I made every girl different
and their perfect just the way they are. People tell them they’re different, and
people are smart. Right, I just made the stars. You think you know beauty? Love?
Trust me, you don’t, I’m the one who created them.’ – Bo Burnham as god.
His fans adore him, are inspired by him and he’s achieved so much already for
his age – so the people, the comics who don’t think he’s a ‘legitimate comic’
because his fame transpired from ‘that place called the internet’ maybe they
should re-evaluate their opinions because as far as his fans are concerned, Bo is
the new face of comedy.