Bo Burnham gained fame at a young age after one of his musical videos went viral on YouTube. Since then, he has had a successful career as a comedian and musician. Many fans discovered Burnham through his YouTube videos or through friends' recommendations. His special on Netflix also helped gain new fans. While some critics think Burnham's route to fame was illegitimate, his fans find him inspiring and feel he addresses real issues through his comedy. However, some of Burnham's jokes are considered too outrageous or offensive by fans. Nonetheless, his fans still greatly support his work and can cite many different favorite quotes from his various performances.

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! I had the pleasure
of interviewing a handful of his fans to find out how and when they first
discovered him. One fan heard of him when ‘YouTuber, Jack Howard talked
about him on Tumblr around May 2014’, another discovered him when he
‘appeared in Watsky’s (American rapper and poet) ‘Whoa, Whoa, Whoa’ music
vide’ roughly around July. There seemed to be an equal amount of fans that
discovered Mr. Burnham through YouTube or a friend; fan, AJ Hawkes
discovered Bo when a friend showed him “My Whole Family” (Bo’s first ever
YouTube video) in early 2013, whereas Preston Parrish discovered Bo through
watching a parody video from the Homestuck fan base, entitled, ‘Dinks Whole
Family thinks he’s Gay’, Parrish ‘found out it was Bo Burnham’ looked up more of
his songs and now considers himself ‘obsessed.’ Bo’s recent show, What. was
released free on Netflix for fans to view in the comfort of their own home, the
majority of interviewees became fans around March 2014 when this special was
released, they either had his show ‘suggested’ to them, they attended a ‘Netflix
party’ or they just ‘randomly decided to watch it.’
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 particularly
feel inspired, whether that’s because they choose to see him as more of a ‘role
model’ because he’s ‘making money doing what he loves’, as they personally see
that as the definition of an idol. Or simply because they might think he inspires
other, but not them personally. Looking at the answers, there are more fans who
do feel inspired as opposed to those who do not.
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 God’
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

2. 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.’ Fan,
James Liversidge personally picked the song, ‘Repeat Stuff’ as the most offensive,
he found the music video ‘pretty dark’ and brought up that the song was played
‘in front of Justin Bieber and sparked a big media story.’ There is not one
singular, consistent choice of the most offensive piece of work Bo has created,
but another fan chose Nerds as their option, what’s interesting about this choice
is they picked it as the most extreme because it ‘lets kids that are going through
high school like he (Bo) did know that they are not alone.’ They chose it because
of how hard hitting it is rather than how offensive it may be.
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
his work is deemed as so good that there’s a range of amazing, clever quotes to
choose from, some examples are: ‘I love that your torso has an arm on either
side’ chosen by fan, Shania Carter who states she chose it due to it ‘stating the
obvious’ but still being funny. Another strong pick is, ‘If life makes you wish you
were dead, just put on a good movie and promptly put a bullet in your head,
spend forever asleep, ‘cause life pales in comparison to living the dream’ chosen
by Nadia Leiby who states, ‘the ending of #DEEP speaks to me so much, it
punches me in the gut every time.’ And one last quote, ‘I made every girl different
and their perfect just the way they are. People them they they’re different and
people are smart. You think you know beauty? Love? Trust me, you don’t, I’m the
one who created them.’ – Bo as God (From Gods Perspective), this was chosen by
Jennifer Sybrandt because it, ‘really resonates’ with her, it reminds her ‘that
earthly beings don’t judge worth and all materialistic values of the modern age
are worthless; everyone is perfect, everyone is beautiful.’
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.