Bo Burnham: Transmedia Comedian and the Natural Progression of Things

So this wasn't ever a post that I had planned on writing, mostly because (while like every human on the planet, I like comedy) I would not consider myself someone who really studies comedy. As a writer and creator myself, I like throwing jokes around every once and awhile, but I'm by no means an expert, so it never occurred to me that even in the realm of stand up comedy, transmedia is making itself known.

That's pretty cool in and of itself that even in places we don't often think of, people are experimenting with new media, technology, and social media to better get their points across. One of the most well known and popular comedians doing just that is Bo Burnham.

Bo Burnham's biography is succinctly (and much more funnily) described on the about page for his book of poetry, Eggheads:

Bo Burnham was a precocious  teenager living in his parents' attic when he started posting material on Youtube. 100 million people viewed those videos, turning Bo into an online sensation with a huge and dedicated following. Bo taped his first two Comedy Central specials four days after his 18th birthday, making him the youngest to do so in the channel's history. Now Bo is a rising star in the comedy world, revered for his utterly original and intelligent voice. And, he can SIIIIIIIIING!

His success as a comedian stemmed very naturally from his work on youtube. Now, Burnham has a vine channel, an instagram, a book, and a comedy special available for free on youtube and on Netflix--his comedy spans easily over many mediums, and that is how he would have it.

The natural progression from youtube star to mainstream star is becoming an increasing trend. Many of our celebrities nowadays had their start on youtube or other video sharing platforms, and gained their audience through the web, such as authors, Cassandra Clare, and David Wong; cartoons like "Adventure Time", "The Adventures of Bee and Puppycat", and"Bravest Warriors"; and musicians, like Jonathan Coulton and various mash up artists. I mean, if you need any other examples of the power of youtube, one simply has to look at Justin Bieber, another youngster who got their start by simply sharing and building an audience. What's interesting about this is that it has become natural. Many older celebrities have to cultivate an online presence in addition to their media celebrity. But with young people, online was always the way to go.

Alisa Rivera, a blogger, reporter, and writer, recently published an article on her blog entitled: "Transmedia is a word for old people". In it, she explains that for the younger generation (which is a weird thing to type, seeing as I consider myself part of that still...) they

don’t need a word to describe transmedia because this is how they live every day. The narrative of their own lives unfolds across different social media platforms and they consciously create identities for themselves depending on where, what, how and with whom they share information.

Reading this, I thought that perhaps we don't need a word, but it is exciting that there is a study of that form of narrative, and that a form of narrative is now reflecting our lives and how we live them.  Certain aspects of older stories no longer ring true to us because we have access to one another instantaneously. There are more reasons to communicate and thus, we communicate more. Jokes about waiting three days to hear a boy call, only for your mother to be using the phone are no longer as funny, as jokes about how there are so many more ways for a boy not to call nowadays, a la "30 Rock".

The core of the article really understood why transmedia is the natural habit of our young generation. For us, we have always consumed media on multiple channels. For us, as Rivera puts it, we are and we see ourselves as "collaborators in creating a shared experience". And this is the environment which creates the comedian that encapsulates our generation, Bo Burnham.


What Bo Burnham does is play with media, quite literally. He plays with language, he plays with editing, and he plays with expectations. In his stand up special "what" (which is what inspired me to write this post), he goes from darkly introspective, vulnerable, and laugh out loud funny not just within milliseconds, but all within the same moment. He explores what it means to him to be a comedian, and what his journey has been in being such a young comedian and trying to do such new and different things with his comedy. For him though, it's not necessarily different--he's using the tools at his disposal. He is a silly person, interested in magic, music, and making people laugh. He is a young person, with social media, digital editing software, and a camera all tools that he uses to achieve his goal of making people laugh and enjoy the comedic narrative and persona he weaves.

(Trigger Warning for Homophobic Slurs. He uses them to make fun of those who use them to demean others, but just in case.)

One could probably see the natural progression from the old vaudeville acts, to SNL, to today's Vine Comedian crowd quite easily, if they were to sit down and study the history of comedy. Just as one could see how easily and naturally we have slipped as a culture into transmedia lifestyles and thus, transmedia narratives. The multiplicity and variation that the internet allows for simply is the same thing as we once defined folklore. Everyone can share their story, or their version of a story now, and that is simply something we take for granted because that is the way the world is. That very notion is why it is worth studying and analyzing, so that we might have a deeper understanding of ourselves, and our own narratives and personas that we weave.