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No, Bo Burnham Isn't Teasing An 'Inside' Follow-Up

We're still healing from Inside — but it seems Bo Burnham is ready to go Outside. Or at least that's what a duo of mysterious YouTube and TikTok accounts have led fans to believe through a series of cryptic videos seemingly spelling out the title of his next project. 

UPDATE (1/14, 8:35 p.M. ET): The owners of the YouTube and TikTok accounts teasing said material have come forward to admit the "Robert Burnham" profiles are fake. Sad! 

As of press time, a TikTok account belonging to a "Robert Burnham" has been posting spooky videos with what appears to be music from the comedian's Inside outtakes overlaid on footage of a rolling tide, in addition to its three most recent uploads, which contain the letters "O," "U" and "T," respectively. Suspiciously, the account shares a profile picture with Burnham's verified Instagram profile, which currently has all posts either archived or deleted. 

The TikTok account's name, @destroyarasaka, refers to the fictional evil megacorporation from the Cyberpunk video game franchise, of which the most recent instalment arrived in 2020 (the year before Burnham dropped Inside), as Reddit users have pointed out. That profile's bio points to YouTube account @pleasestayoutside, which posted two more cryptic videos yesterday (January 12). 

Nothing from any official channels has been confirmed about Burnham's follow-up to Inside, and the timing of events does raise suspicions; the Robert Burnham TikTok account is counting down to January 19, the day the app is set to potentially be banned in the US. The Bo Burnham subreddit has further speculated that the new accounts are run by a fan, and the whole thing is a hoax. That said, things felt pretty equally apocalyptic last we saw Burnham — maybe the end of the world is just his thing now. 

What Does Going 'inside' Really Offer?

But that word can also be enticing, carrying with it the promise of discovery, of learning the story behind the story. "Stay tuned for a look inside the episode" is a common refrain.

At a time when TV viewers have infinitely more choices than they have ever had, networks and streaming platforms need to find ways to stand out and to make those viewers feel special.

So their overriding goal is to make fans feel as if they're being brought inside the shows they like. DVD features were once rife with this kind of thing, from behind-the-scenes footage to commentary tracks and blooper reels, all of which made their way straight to YouTube. But now all of those features pop up for your favorite streaming show, and the inside peeks have expanded to include "official companion podcasts" devoted to dissecting TV dramas and comedies, many of them hosted by the producers of the shows and featuring cast members and writers.

Along the way, the relationship between creatives and audiences has been altered. What used to be a matter of "They create, we consume" is now "They create, and then they explain, and we figure out whether the explanation sheds any necessary light on the story."

After the season two finale of "Bad Sisters" began streaming in late December, cocreator and star Sharon Horgan lost no time explicating — or, to use the preferred term, "unpacking"— the story lines and character revelations she helped concoct for the Apple TV+ series.

Tellingly, Horgan struck a note of misgiving, telling Deadline: "It's so weirdly practical when you break it down like this, when you start talking about story and how you sort of arrive at it, the routes you take." Speaking of both the creative process and the products of that process, Horgan added: "I want it to be magical."

So do we. But that brand of storytelling magic is hard to sustain when TV's auteurs and actors deconstruct each episode of their shows on day-after podcasts and in interviews.

Would we have wanted Melville to tell us that the whale was a metaphor? Or Orson Welles to spell out what Rosebud represented in "Citizen Kane"?

Actually, with our current mind-set, we might have.

Podcasts have become so commonplace that our assumption is that storytellers will take us inside the nuts and bolts of their stories. And some podcasts are genuinely thought-provoking, such as the official companion podcast for HBO's "Succession," hosted by the hard-nosed tech journalist Kara Swisher. Her guests included "Succession" creator Jesse Armstrong and executive producer Frank Rich. (One topic was "life in the writers' room.")

Yes, it's true that we can ignore the podcasts and the interviews, but it's also true that deep dives into the inner workings of our favorite shows have become a core part of the fan experience.

This can strengthen our engagement with a beloved series. But it can also intrude upon our experience of the shows. Interpretation is an invaluable aspect of living through this second Golden Age of television. Isn't letting the latest episode of a good series marinate in your mind part of the joy of watching it?

Post-facto exegesis can come perilously close to telling us how to think about what we've seen. Or have not yet seen but plan to see. Or it just demystifies the series too much, ruining our ability to suspend disbelief, or at least putting a serious damper on it.

On the news side, insiderism takes a different form.

For anchors of news-commentary programs, it's a credential they want to claim, especially now, when viewers have infinitely more choices than they have ever had. TV is a zero-sum game. If one network is gaining viewers, another is losing them.

The word "inside" signals that the anchors have built up a roster of sources that gives them access to inside knowledge, which they can share with viewers and readers.

When George Stephanopoulos, a former communications director in the Clinton White House, joined ABC News in 1997, journalists voiced concern about a partisan political operative moving into a journalistic role. Former New York Times executive editor Max Frankel wrote in the Times that the network's hiring of Stephanopoulos "highlights a disturbing phenomenon: the progressive collapse of the walls that traditionally separated news from propaganda." (Stephanopoulos, who cohosts "Good Morning America'' and "This Week," a Sunday morning show focused on politics, recently signed a new, multiyear deal with ABC News.)

But the two-way traffic between government and television has become so rampant since then that there has been far less consternation over moves to TV by Psaki, or Nicolle Wallace, formerly the communications director for President George W. Bush, who hosts "Deadline: White House" on MSNBC; or Symone Sanders Townsend, former chief spokesperson and adviser for Vice President Kamala Harris, who cohosts MSNBC's "The Weekend" (when she was appointed, the network said that she "brings her D.C. Insider perspective and bold interview style to MSNBC's weekends"); or Kayleigh McEnany, the White House press secretary during the Trump administration who now cohosts "Outnumbered" on the Fox News Channel.

If anything, the phenomenon is poised to expand still further. On its homepage, the new digital media company Puck promises to bring readers "the inside story happening at the nexus of Wall Street, Washington, Silicon Valley & Hollywood."

Like it or not, everybody is ready to play the inside game.

Don Aucoin can be reached at donald.Aucoin@globe.Com. Follow him @GlobeAucoin.

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