After going viral in the early days of YouTube with hits like “i’m bo yo.” Bo Burnham is done with creating on the video platform.
In a recent live conversation with Jonny Sun at MIT, Bo talked about the state of YouTube and his impassioned take feels like what we need right now in the age of influencers and content creators.
He starts with the view that social media has democratized Hollywood in the worst way possible as all content creators inevitably wear more makeup, get better lighting and edit their videos more. In his mind, YouTube was the people’s medium. YouTube was meant to be a place where you could see humanity in it’s most pure form of any media platform.
But instead the homepage is Jimmy Fallon clips, Ariana Grande and a trending music video. He has nothing against these people, but it’s not what YouTube should be.
He says it’s just proof that as these internet companies grow they bring in the “old guard.” The execs that ran TV channels are now in charge of content strategy for new age media platforms and they inevitably start to resemble each other.
The solution: Search a topic, DON’T follow what the algorithm suggests and instead filter by upload date. That’s where you will again find a raw outpouring of humanity. People in their purest form. Actual people, sharing something with the world. Not content creators who are paid to sell us products and promote an unattainably aesthetic lifestyle.
That is a short, paraphrased summary of Bo Burnham’s take on the state of YouTube. There were some choice words mixed in, as well as a sentiment that it would be impossible for him to come up on YouTube if he started today because the influencer ecosystem is too powerful.
As someone who has spent maybe 1/100th or 1/1000th of the time Bo has thinking about YouTube, I can see why YouTube would push influencers rather than regular people. 1. They know the video quality will be high, but 2. People subscribe to influencers, thus they keep on YouTube notifications, and have a consistent reason to visit the platform. It builds predictability and viewership into YouTube in a way that random browsing never could.