Welcome to the Internet by Bo Burnham Lyrics Meaning – Decoding the Digital Chaos in a Viral Age

You can view the lyrics, alternate interprations and sheet music for Bo Burnham's Welcome to the Internet at Lyrics.org.

Lyrics

Welcome to the internet
Have a look around
Anything that brain of yours can think of can be found
We’ve got mountains of content
Some better, some worse
If none of it’s of interest to you, you’d be the first

Welcome to the internet
Come and take a seat
Would you like to see the news or any famous women’s feet?
There’s no need to panic
This isn’t a test, haha
Just nod or shake your head and we’ll do the rest

Welcome to the internet
What would you prefer?
Would you like to fight for civil rights or tweet a racial slur?
Be happy
Be horny
Be bursting with rage
We got a million different ways to engage

Welcome to the internet
Put your cares aside
Here’s a tip for straining pasta
Here’s a nine-year-old who died
We got movies, and doctors, and fantasy sports
And a bunch of colored pencil drawings
Of all the different characters in Harry Potter fucking each other
Welcome to the internet

Hold on to your socks
‘Cause a random guy just kindly sent you photos of his cock
They are grainy and off-putting
He just sent you more
Don’t act surprised, you know you like it, you whore

See a man beheaded
Get offended, see a shrink
Show us pictures of your children
Tell us every thought you think
Start a rumor, buy a broom
Or send a death threat to a boomer
Or DM a girl and groom her
Do a Zoom or find a tumor in your
Here’s a healthy breakfast option
You should kill your mom
Here’s why women never fuck you
Here’s how you can build a bomb
Which Power Ranger are you?
Take this quirky quiz
Obama sent the immigrants to vaccinate your kids

Could I interest you in everything?
All of the time?
A little bit of everything
All of the time
Apathy’s a tragedy
And boredom is a crime
Anything and everything
All of the time

Could I interest you in everything?
All of the time?
A little bit of everything
All of the time
Apathy’s a tragedy
And boredom is a crime
Anything and everything
All of the time

You know, it wasn’t always like this

Not very long ago
Just before your time
Right before the towers fell, circa ’99
This was catalogs
Travel blogs
A chat room or two
We set our sights and spent our nights
Waiting
For you, you, insatiable you
Mommy let you use her iPad
You were barely two
And it did all the things
We designed it to do

Now look at you, oh

Look at you, you, you
Unstoppable, watchable
Your time is now
Your inside’s out
Honey, how you grew
And if we stick together
Who knows what we’ll do
It was always the plan
To put the world in your hand

Hahaha
Could I interest you in everything?
All of the time
A bit of everything
All of the time
Apathy’s a tragedy
And boredom is a crime
Anything and everything
All of the time

Could I interest you in everything?
All of the time
A little bit of everything
All of the time
Apathy’s a tragedy
And boredom is a crime
Anything and everything
And anything and everything
And anything and everything
And all of the time

In the aptly titled anthem ‘Welcome to the Internet,’ Bo Burnham encapsulates the essence of our contemporary digital dystopia, spinning a web of insights cloaked in his signature satirical wit. As he dissects the online ecosystem with the precision of a linguistic surgeon, the track from his 2021 special ‘Inside’ reverberates with a chilling blend of clairvoyance and comedy.

The song captures a snapshot of the Internet’s labyrinth, a place where limitless knowledge meets the voracious appetite of human curiosity and vice. With a melody that both entertains and unnerves, Burnham distills the cacophony of our wired world’s grandest utopia and its vilest hell into a sprawling lyrical manifesto. Let’s plug in and parse the bytes of meaning in this modern symphony of zeros and ones.

The Pied Piper of the Modern Age: Unveiling Burnham’s Cyberspace

From the outset, Burnham assumes the role of a digital-age ringleader, enticing us into the boundless expanse of the Internet with a siren song that is equal parts come-on and cautionary tale. As he guides us through ‘mountains of content,’ the duality of choice and consequence becomes evident—the sheer volume of information at our fingertips is as liberating as it is insidious.

In these introductory lines, the illusion of a personalized digital paradise is swiftly constructed, only to be subverted by the underlying menace that lurks beneath the surface. The juxtaposition of content ‘better’ and ‘worse’ alludes to the Internet’s indiscriminate nature, a repository of human thought untamed and unchecked.

A Society in Schism: The Absurdist Tableaux of Online Experience

Navigating the maze further, Burnham’s alliterative lyricism paints a tableau of the Internet as the ultimate equalizer, where civil rights advocacy shares bandwidth with hate speech. He offers a grotesque menu of emotional states, amplified and multiplied by the digital forum’s echo chambers.

Bo Burnham deftly illustrates the polarizing effect of Internet discourse—its power to inspire noble causes just as quickly as it can give rise to our basest impulses. This hellscape of hyper-engagement lays bare the paradox of interconnectedness: an arena that both dignifies and denigrates human communication.

The Concealed Shackles of Distraction: Burnham’s Sardonic Social Commentary

The song shifts tone, luring the listener into a twisted carnival of morbid curiosity and unyielding distraction. Burnham presents an inventory of macabre juxtapositions, suggesting that the online world has enmeshed us in a voyeuristic loop that prizes novelty and shock value over substance.

Here, critique cuts deeper, unmasking the Internet as a conduit of nihilistic pleasure where the tragic and the trite intermingle freely. In presenting the most incongruent pairings, Burnham invites reflection on our collective desensitization and the cost of our relentless quest for entertainment.

The Eerie Echo of Invincible Youth: Unpacking the Internet’s Hidden Intent

The latter verses of the song contrast the innocence of the nascent Internet, with its quaint chat rooms and travel blogs, against today’s omnipresent digital titan. Burnham sings not just of the Internet’s growth, but of its calculated evolution—’It was always the plan / To put the world in your hand’.

In this retelling, the Internet emerges as a double-edged sword, a creation that was meant to empower but now ensnares. The children who grew up as digital natives are now captive to a medium that has outgrown its original promise, becoming a behemoth of manipulation and control.

Memorable Lines That Cut Through Cyberspace: The Echo of ‘Everything All of the Time’

Burnham’s refrain—’Could I interest you in everything? All of the time?’—resounds as a siren call for the digital era’s insatiable appetite. It’s a summation of the paradox of plenty, where the endless buffet of stimuli breeds not fulfillment, but a sense of pervasive apathy and the misdemeanor of boredom.

These lines cement the song’s place in the annals of culture as a defining observation of our times. It is a clarion call that resonates with a generation at the intersection of technological wonder and existential malaise, a reminder that in the age of constant connection, we risk losing sight of what truly connects us.