@satoristeve

1 year ago

This is my favorite Bo song right now. There's objectively not very many lyrics at all, but yet it's got an incredible amount of depth that we all intuitively understand to some degree if we have the relevant context and subtext. This came out right at the height of the lockdowns, when the only place we could go was "where everybody knows everybody"—our own house. And we were all super-depressed and lacking that social connection like telling stories and jokes to a group of people you’re hanging out with, even if we didn’t have a laugh track to use as an artificial replacement. Also this is in some ways the intellectual sequel to Can't Handle This (Kanye Rant). The laugh track is part of that. Humans cross-culturally sometimes laugh in response to being psychologically distressed/uncomfortable. It's an instinct. At a comedy show with a live audience, the crowd is already mentally primed to react with laughter. So even though he writes all of these deeply vulnerable and personal things as jokes and he expects the laughter, I'd imagine sometimes it might still get in your head that people are laughing at your emotional distress. Maybe especially if you're prone to anxiety. It's so common a tool used in comedy that sometimes we don't even notice when we're in the audience and in the moment that we're laughing at things that aren't really things to laugh about. But it's a hell of a lot more obvious if it's just you sitting in your living room alone. Especially if there's a laugh track highlighting it for you.

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