I think you hit the nail on the head. That funny feeling is the existential dread we're all feeling; the sense of impending doom that few of us dare acknowledge, but have all accepted. This is definitely a weird one to react to, since it's really just a jumble of concepts listed ad nauseum. I think it makes more sense in the context of Inside, which I highly recommend you watch. A lot of the songs from Inside really take on a deeper, more nuanced feeling when viewed in order, with the context of everything around it. This one more than the rest.
This one, All Eyes On Me and Goodbye hit waaay different when watched with the whole special. I still remember watching it at 3 am while depressed in the middle of the pandemic after getting Welcome to the Internet in my youtube recommendations looking for something to distract me from my insomnia and it really hit in exactly the way it was supposed to lol. I was just left speechless staring at the ceiling thinking "fucking same"
I think he said that on purpose, cause often people who sing really well but are shy says that they cant sing, and that gives you a funny feeling when you realize that they can sing really well. Cause that makes you think, did the person say that to fish for compliments or do they just have that low self confidence.
Great reflective reaction as always. For me, I love the strange dichotomy of the final lines: ‘Hey, what can you say? We were overdue, but it’ll be over soon, just wait’ At the time he wrote this, the pandemic was raging. And we were overdue for the pandemic because we’ve continued to populate the world and do nothing about pandemic prevention. But the way he sings the line, it almost sounds positive at first: like it’s ok, we’ll get through this soon. But when you start applying it to things like climate change and political violence and instability, it has a much more negative undertone to it, like we can’t stop it now: it will be over soon and there’s nothing we can do. If we also add the playful ‘da-da-da’s, he sounds apathetic to it all now. The ‘we were overdue’ sounds fatalistic, like ‘we’ve had a good run, but now is the end’. This song I think is the perfect theme song for Look Up.
"Look Up" was a crazy frustrating movie for me to watch. Not because it was bad, but to see the way they portrayed the news cycle and people's responses to something so catastrophic was... heartbreaking. Mostly because I think they did a really good job at pointing out just how short our attention span is with serious issues.
I think it's written so you can see it that way, but I actually think it's much darker. "20k years of this, 7 more to go," he sings. 20k years of human civilization, 7 before climate change is irreversible and we're literally doomed as a species. In that ominous context, presenting the line again: "Hey, what can you say? We were overdue, but it’ll be over soon, just wait..." Or maybe don't. Maybe don't just wait.
There is existential dread in this, but there is also cognitive dissonance. We are bombarded constantly with too much information to properly absorb - whether it is climate change, societal breakdown, random acts of violence all tossed in with things to distract us such as sales at stores, people singing in cars, self-help books, etc. At the same time we are disassociated from what is going on outside - the ocean's at the door - and are strangely connected to the whole world via the internet while at the same time being completely disconnected from other humans.
This one, All Eyes On Me and Goodbye hit waaay different when watched with the whole special. I still remember watching it at 3 am while depressed in the middle of the pandemic after getting Welcome to the Internet in my youtube recommendations looking for something to distract me from my insomnia and it really hit in exactly the way it was supposed to lol. I was just left speechless staring at the ceiling thinking "fucking same"
I saw an amazing comment once of someone breaking it down where basically, that funny feeling is cognitive dissonance. Not necessarily anxiety, or anger, or sadness. Sometimes one or all of those things, but sometimes just a... "Well that's not quite right." It can be existentially dreadful, or just something that makes you smirk at the absurdity of it all.
I think it’s all of those things too. Derealization is part of it, part of the absurdity or existential dread of it all. You can’t or don’t want to deal with all the unapproachable problems of our world and fall back into ignoring, or disassociating with it, or you start to feel like this isn’t real life anymore. It’s not just derealization, but that’s certainly one of the many “funny feelings” this song refers to.
I've been searching so hard for a reactor that can sit and listen and actually absorb the meaning of this song. So many people gloss over the deepest parts. Thank you for actually taking the time to really analyze such a meaningful song
To me it's a combination of the existential dread that civilation is ending, the resignation that comes with it when we give up on averting that end, and the many stupid distractions we choose to focus on instead of trying.
I have watched so many reactions to this video and most laugh this song off as a list of "random" things and only one or two lines (the most obvious ones) really land. Grateful to see someone else feel the weight of the lyrics on this song, though, because - while I love the whole special - this one still gets an ugly cry out of me every time.
This song can be so freaking powerful. Every time I hear it, it brings me to tears, and grips my insides and forces everything to the surface against my will. Not only is it one of the most beautiful and well written songs in history, it brings up some of the most complex feelings, and complicated societal awareness easily in people. Other songs can make you feel a powerful emotion, but its always a simple emotion; fear, hate, love, joy. These are relatively easy emotions to bring out of listeners. But Dread? Existential Crisis? Disassociation and Derealization? These are SUPER complex emotions that even the people feeling these emotions have a hard time comprehending. This song builds upon itself, setting all these seemingly random and different things, and grouping them together with a "funny feeling", making you wonder the connection. The complex relationships between what he says, the melody he plays, and then those jarring horrible situations and events that he sprinkles in there weave a spiderweb of emotion and comprehension that encapsulates such difficult emotions well.
This is the absolute best reaction to this song I’ve ever seen dude! You let it play through and didn’t try to figure it out until you had absorbed it as a full piece. You’re bang on. It’s existential dread. We all know that something is terribly wrong, but that thing is so massive, intricate and fluid that just perceiving it as it is takes a Herculean amount of mental energy. Trying to look at it pragmatically? Fuck, no one can do that without wanting to die. It seems insurmountable because it kind of is. There’s no simple solution to humanity. Love your reactions. Keep ‘em coming! Cheers
It's hard to say that this song is one of my favorites because that sounds too simple. I think this song is one of the most important songs I've heard in my life. It spoke to a feeling I couldn't name but had been drowning in at times when I would read all these doomsday articles from reddit about climate change and the steady march towards the point of no return. And then we turn around and look out our daily lives - going to school and work and the grocery store as if nothing's happening; watching silly videos on TH-cam and watching all the fights and drama on Twitter and I would just ask myself - what's the point of all this? What kind of life am I trying to build for myself while the planet is slowly becoming inhospitable and mass economic upheaval and loss of life are looking so large on the horizon. It was such a huge and overwhelming sense of dread and powerlessness that I didn't know how to describe or put into words until I heard this song for the first time. Another Bo fan called it "a lullaby for the end of the world."
Hearing my child singing this makes me feel...a lot. Reminds me I can visit my existential dread but I don't get to live there. And I can't keep it a secret from him.
That Funny Feeling is, I think, pretty much what you said at the end of your post. We're inundated with negativity via news agencies 24/7 and, even if we don't click the link, we've read the heading. Boom! You feel that pulling sensation in your hearts that says, "This is something to care about," as you pass over it because you're emotionally sick and mentally frustrated at feeling unable to do anything about the chaos that is the world right now. Broken down, It's a combination of shame for not following the trail of today's disaster, sadness because the care is there, a smidge of despair because you know you'll not do more than feel bad about something you can't fix followed by a chaser of watered-down hope that Things will be better soon. Yet I'm in for the long haul. Regardless of everything wrong in the world at large and here in my own microcosm, my curiosity to see what happens next overrides That Funny Feeling. Until the world redeems all of the hope I've poured into it, there's you and other creators here to provide fun, insights and interest to keep me going. Keeping an open mind and hopeful heart... Life is Beautiful.
to me it's knowing that the direction we're going, we're screwed, but nobody seems to care because there are so many things to distract ourselves with.
I think "that funny feeling" is, in part, what we feel when we pair the feeling that something is seriously wrong with the direction of the world with a feeling of powerlessness to stop it. It creates a disconnect in ourselves between how we act and how we feel deep inside. The corporate adoption of the counter culture is part of this. "In honour of the revolution it's half off at the Gap" and "Discount Etsy Agitprop". Any hope of a serious movement to change things gets watered-down to a slogan we hang on our walls as artwork or wear on a T-shirt.
Great reaction and interpretation as always! Have missed you're insights and so glad you're back! This song sounds so beautiful but makes me feel like crying out of despair for the way the world is going. On the other hand it can't be that bad as long as there are people like you and Bo in the world 😊💜
It's good to be back! Happy to see you here as well 😊 this song def made me feel like crying and throwing my hands up like "what's the point?!" But I am glad that I can connect with people like you as well and share these feelings
To me, the funny feeling is the feeling you feel when hearing the song. For me that's a but of wonder & dispair..I didn't like it at first compared to other songs in the special, but its grown on me, because I'm less afraid to acknowledge how it makes me feel. It's ok to feel uncomfortable & yet part of a grander population of confused/lost people who are just....living this life even if it doesn't all make sense
You didn't use the term "existential dread" but the feeling is that, and all the hopelessness that comes along with it, and that feeling of "here we go again" when a tragedy happens or a corporation uses a situation like protests to sell you something. This is one of those songs you can just ponder and ponder over each line, I love it for that. A lot of people see it a lot of different ways too, ya know? Is he criticizing capitalism? Or maybe people's inability to focus on issues and short attention spans? Or how he or society is becoming so conspiracy>information oriented (googling derealization fully out your mind). IDK, but I appreciate how good this song is both in sound and how it makes me think.
, regret, shame, disillusionment, detachment from the value of identity, inspiration to change what it isn't too late to change, paralysis, confusion, a self-care urge to shut off every mental process, a self-care urge to put every mental process on overdrive to catch up, the desire to watch a butterfly and see the stars, despair, despondency, like an ape turned man turned god turned demon turned hollow shell, like a five year old in a decrepit body and an octogenarian fresh out of the womb, like I watched the beauty of a world fall from grace due to a single genetic code; like the butt of the last deadpan dark humor joke told by a mad comedian in his last set before he walks away and jumps off of a bridge, and all the other people in the audience who heard the joke without being the subject of it didn't laugh either; like I remember when I was maybe six years old and the first thing I ever wanted to be was a biologist when I saw Jeff Corwin just look at animals and know stuff about them all day, but like I also remember when I first realized not long after that one of the loudest messages learned from studying the earth and her life was that humans are shifting the balances of nearly the entire rest of the web towards rot and decay, and like now both feel equally far away despite one clearly obviously logically necessarily being closer at least temporally Something like all that is my version of "that funny feeling" if "the funny feeling" is defined as the thing I feel in light of the first two verses. But in so far as it's what Bo roughly meant when he said it, I feel like his general idea is just what he said in the third verse, general disassociation and a difficulty in naming the feeling either 'cuz it sounds gaudy or 'cuz it's just contextually observant variations of "...........*sigh*.........................."
This song describes exentantial dread of the most terrible kind I have yet to come across. It's not like there's an asteroid coming to wipe us out, or a supervulcano or whatever, no it's way worse. Sometimes, it feels like these are the end times, and not the sign-bearing-market-crier-christian-loony-end-times with a sudden, heavenly crescendo, but like, a slow, painful, televised stagnation of terror, if that makes sense. It's the first time since the agricultural revolution that the world is in relative peace (but fuck you Putin), we have the means to make life easy and painless and even good for every single person on earth, we would have every reason to look optimistic towards the future, but we can't, and we don't. That future has been taken, climate change is not being combated as much as it should, instead everything dissolves in vapid distraction, in (purposefully sown?) division and a bombardment of things of absolutely zero importance. And as you said, "a week of outrage, and then there's nothing.", it's very fitting. We don't change, at all, nothing happens, we don't move anywhere, and yet all the while the world changes under our feet faster than we could run, even if we were running. But we're not, and so it's easy to feel as though the rug was being pulled out from under you. It's overwhelming trying to keep up with a world that's literally impossible to understand for a single human. Despite a couple of the songs in the special including this one, I don't think Bo completely subscribes to the crude "social media bad" stance, and I don't either, because there are limitless possibilites to it, but it is worrysome. It can be so much, too much, and if it is your only source of contact to the outside world, especially during a pandemic but also increasingly outside it, it will break you sooner or later. The last lines in this song are fantastic. As a fervent lover of history, I'm quick to relate or compare things I experience to the past. The outlook of "Look, it's been good, but it'll be over soon." is crushing to me, and yet I share it. This may be the first moment in history where tomorrow does not hold as much room for improvement as it does for destruction. That must suck as a parent, I have long since descided that I can't bear the responsibility of putting another life into the world as it is, but that's me. I suppose all you can really do, is to do your part to improve what little you can, and try and give your children the right lessons along they will need to maybe do their own part one day, and in any case, make it through healthy. Again, it's overwhelming that this responsibility of researching, understanding and enacting positive change is laid on individual parents and people, while Governments and Megacorps continue to ravage the planet. Maybe we'll find an answer one day, hopefully soon. I wish you the best. Great insights at the end of the video, really made me think (and looking back, ramble), thank you.
My take on this song is that line about "derealization" is the theme of this song (derealiztion = that funny feeling). Most of this song are things that seem ironic if not completely contradictory or hypocritical. Living life surrounded by and aware of these things can foster a sense of things just not even feeling real anymore.
I take it as there’s so many things going on. So much negativity thrown at us every day… where do you even begin to try and make a difference? Or do we just accept our fate and continue on with our day to day
So the song starts with musical and lyrical genius Bo Burnham stating that he cannot play the guitar _or_ sing... and then: "Stunning 8K resolution, meditation app" -- What kinda at-home cinema are you running an 8K resolution app on?! And why would a meditation app, something that you should probably have your eyes closed while running so as to not get distracted by visual stimuli, ever even need to be upscaled to that ridiculous resolution? It's just utterly absurd... but par for the course for our world... "In honor of the revolution, it's half-off at the Gap" -- So now the Gap needs a reason for its half-off bargains? And it's in honor of the revolution, of all things, as well? Again, kind of absurd... "Deadpool's self-awareness, loving parents, harmless fun" -- Deadpool is a fictional character who's aware of the fact that he's a fictional character, and he's also a complete maniac straddling the line between occasional goofball and murder-happy sociopath who's _way_ too egregiously violent... but sure, expose your kids to the funny murder guy and then have your kids ask you to take them with you to the shooting-range so they can pretend that they are Deadpool... What's the harm? It's just harmless fun, _right?_ "The backlash to the backlash to the thing that's just begun" -- This just immediately brings my mind to the Jan 6th mess... that thing happened, the backlash was immediate, people were rightly outraged, they demanded that those responsible be held fully responsible... and at the same time, the backlash to the backlash had already started: Tucker Carlson, Sean Hannity, Laura Ingraham, Ben Shapiro, Marjory Taylor Greene, Steve Bannon, etc... they were already lashing back at the backlash that they knew would come... "The surgeon general's pop-up shop" -- Imagine clicking around online and getting a pop-up. Eh, nothing too unusual about that. It's a pop-up for medicine and drugs and stuff? Sure, those kinda scams bombard us all the time. It's sent out by the highest authority on medical treatment in the US? Wtf is this alternate reality we've stumbled into...? "Robert Iger's face" -- There is something deeply upsetting about the fact that the face of Disney, THE family company with THE child movies, is (or was) a heartless, soulless corporatist only in it for the money... "Discount Etsy agitprop" -- Mass-produced and commercialized bootleg versions of communist propaganda sold as cheap interior design props to enrich some capitalist... Marx, Che and Castro aren't spinning in their graves, they're doing the "smh" routine... "Bugles' take on race" -- Yes, that's definitely what our society needs to turn around, isn't it?/sarcasm "Female Colonel Sanders, easy answers, civil war" -- Either, 1) the conservative demographic's usual overreactions to nonsense stuff like the M&M mascots getting less sexualized, or 2) the commercial sector's usual virtue signalling, which includes putting up a font of inclusivity and diversity and tolerance and stuff, while remaining as cruddy as usual; an "easy answer" to complex problems, or 3) just running down the list of weird af concepts... Kentucky isn't exactly known for its progressive spirit, so female Colonel Sanders would be disingenuous from so many angles; there are very few "easy answers" that are legitimately worth the air you expel when you say them; "civil war" is just plain an oxymoron, like "military intelligence." "The whole world at your fingertips, the ocean at your door" -- Here we are, computers, laptops, phones and so on with all the world's knowledge, and yet the oceans are rising... much thanks to the same technology that gave us all the world's knowledge to begin with... and to add another layer to the absurdity, many people wouldn't ever have even learned about the climate breakdown without the internet... "The live-action Lion King, the Pepsi Halftime Show" -- There is no "live-action Lion King", there's only a 3dcg movie that was billed and marketed as the "live-action" version of the Lion King, and we all just kind of went along with the marketing... and yet the 100% fake live-action Lion King movie is still somehow less fake than the halftime show at the Super Bowl... "Twenty-thousand years of this, seven more to go" -- Five years now... that climate breakdown doomsday clock keeps ticking... and it's not looking like we've got any intentions of stopping it before it's too late... "Carpool Karaoke, Steve Aoki, Logan Paul" -- Boy, that would be some carpool karaoke... Wanna body surf and get caked in the car? Or would you prefer talking about the guy who took a selfie of himself together with a man who had committed suicide, exposing himself for the d-bag he truly is and always have been to the entire world in the process? "A gift shop at the gun range, a mass shooting at the mall" -- ...I don't think this one requires elaboration... "Reading Pornhub's terms of service" -- Welcome to the world's gathering spot for smut, depravity, revenge sex videos and other such fun activities and pastimes; here's a legal document you should probably read in its totality to get you properly hot and bothered for a start. "Going for a drive, and obeying all the traffic laws in Grand Theft Auto V" -- Have you ever come home after a really bad day, feeling like you need to relax a bit, so you get some absurdly violent video game started, only to realize that "venting steam" is not the same as "winding down" and what you need right now is the latter -- some normalcy to get away from what's happened over the course of the day -- so you take this absurdly violent video game and make it an outlet for the peace and quiet that you're denied in real life? Just asking... "Full agoraphobic, losing focus, cover blown" -- Whoopsie! Slipping up and ʀᴇᴠᴇᴀʟɪɴɢ sᴏᴍᴇ ʀᴀᴛʜᴇʀ ᴘᴇʀsᴏɴᴀʟ ɪssᴜᴇs ᴛᴏ ᴀɴ ᴇɴᴛɪʀᴇ ᴡᴏʀʟᴅ ᴛʜᴀᴛ's sɪᴛᴛɪɴɢ ᴛʜᴇʀᴇ ʟɪsᴛᴇɴɪɴɢ ᴛᴏ ʏᴏᴜ ᴇxᴘᴏsᴇ ʏᴏᴜʀsᴇʟғ there, huh, Bo? "A book on getting better hand-delivered by a drone" -- This is just so messed up... But coupled with the above line, it's even worse: If you're suffering from agoraphobia, then human contact may be the last thing you want... But if you've already been isolating yourself for a long time, say, 5 years or so, and forcibly had to go back into isolation just when you were starting to feel okay with the idea of re-entering society again, then human contact, even fleeting and shallow, may have been just what you were looking for to keep the existential dread at bay... instead you got a drone handing you a self-help book, which probably included advice about reaching out to other people... "Total disassociation, fully out of your mind" -- Depersonalization is a disassociation disorder which makes it feel like you're separated from your body or like your body is not your own or like you are just an observer to your own body and actions. Ergo, it can very much feel like you are literally outside of your own mind. "Googling 'derealization,' hating what you find" -- Derealization is a disassociation disorder which makes it feel like you're separated from the world around you or like you're dreaming or like nothing around you is actually real... "That unapparent summer air in early fall" -- ...why did I decide to do this analysis while off my meds? For that matter, why don't I have meds in the first place when I know that I probably really do need them? "The quiet comprehending of the ending of it all" -- It's not going to get any better, is it? The ones in power aren't planning on averting the worst-case scenario, are they? People are way too unwilling to change their lifestyles if it means giving up their comfort and luxury, aren't they? We're actually approaching the end of the existence of human civilization, aren't we? "Hey, what can you say? We were overdue... But it'll be over soon, you wait" -- Heh. Yeah, I guess we were overdue for a pandemic, what with us having a globalized world but so poor protection against one should it act up. But, yeah, it'll be over soon. A thing of the past. We just need wait a little longer... Heh. Yeah, I guess we're overdue for a reckoning, considering that we've been living way above and beyond sustainable means for so long. But, yeah, soon it'll all come crashing down. We'll be a thing of the past. Just you wait a little longer... "There it is, again, that funny feeling" -- Funnily enough, that feeling is not "funny" at all... Cognitive dissonance. Existential dread. Disassociation. Disbelief at all of this absurdity along the lines of "this can't be real" or "what the hell is this shit?" What that feeling is differs for a lot of us, but still... there it is again... that funny feeling...
did you google derealization? Oh, and people have been activists about global warming/climate change for DECADES. I'm 50+ and remember stuff from being a teenager. 80's Pop had all kinds of stuff about it... and look how far we've come! Backward! You think you won't be around to see what happens? You're very optimistic. Even *I* will be around to see what happens. Part of me hopes to die in the next few years, just so that I DON'T see my kids having to deal with it. I wish I could be blissfully ignorant and stupid like the majority of the world.
![My Hands Are Up, Bo! | Bo Burnham "All Eyes On Me" [REACTION]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/vjTjjzHb2Js/mqdefault.jpg)
![My Hands Are Up, Bo! | Bo Burnham "All Eyes On Me" [REACTION]](/img/tr.png)
![I'm Kinda Worried About Bo | Can't Handle This (Kanye Rant) Bo Burnham [REACTION]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/7k19-IvIDfg/mqdefault.jpg)
I've seen so many reactors try to talk over this instead of just feel it and get it... best reaction to this song yet.
you should watch vids of ppl whistling at dogs, same perplexed head tilting goodness.
Felt the same way. It takes a special one to get it, generally the ones that don’t interrupt much.
This song hit me different. I love the whole special, but this song specifically just brings me to tears. It's overwhelming. I am overwhelmed.
Oh, there it is again...
I think you hit the nail on the head. That funny feeling is the existential dread we're all feeling; the sense of impending doom that few of us dare acknowledge, but have all accepted. This is definitely a weird one to react to, since it's really just a jumble of concepts listed ad nauseum. I think it makes more sense in the context of Inside, which I highly recommend you watch. A lot of the songs from Inside really take on a deeper, more nuanced feeling when viewed in order, with the context of everything around it. This one more than the rest.
This one, All Eyes On Me and Goodbye hit waaay different when watched with the whole special. I still remember watching it at 3 am while depressed in the middle of the pandemic after getting Welcome to the Internet in my youtube recommendations looking for something to distract me from my insomnia and it really hit in exactly the way it was supposed to lol. I was just left speechless staring at the ceiling thinking "fucking same"
I concur
We're being dragged to Hell by a hundred jerkoffs who own everything.
This is one of my favorite songs. And it kills my when Bo says he can't sing. That little vibrato he puts on "oOoOoOover soon" is some ear candy.
I think he said that on purpose, cause often people who sing really well but are shy says that they cant sing, and that gives you a funny feeling when you realize that they can sing really well. Cause that makes you think, did the person say that to fish for compliments or do they just have that low self confidence.
Great reflective reaction as always.
For me, I love the strange dichotomy of the final lines: ‘Hey, what can you say? We were overdue, but it’ll be over soon, just wait’
At the time he wrote this, the pandemic was raging. And we were overdue for the pandemic because we’ve continued to populate the world and do nothing about pandemic prevention. But the way he sings the line, it almost sounds positive at first: like it’s ok, we’ll get through this soon.
But when you start applying it to things like climate change and political violence and instability, it has a much more negative undertone to it, like we can’t stop it now: it will be over soon and there’s nothing we can do. If we also add the playful ‘da-da-da’s, he sounds apathetic to it all now. The ‘we were overdue’ sounds fatalistic, like ‘we’ve had a good run, but now is the end’.
This song I think is the perfect theme song for Look Up.
"Look Up" was a crazy frustrating movie for me to watch. Not because it was bad, but to see the way they portrayed the news cycle and people's responses to something so catastrophic was... heartbreaking. Mostly because I think they did a really good job at pointing out just how short our attention span is with serious issues.
I think it's written so you can see it that way, but I actually think it's much darker. "20k years of this, 7 more to go," he sings. 20k years of human civilization, 7 before climate change is irreversible and we're literally doomed as a species.
In that ominous context, presenting the line again: "Hey, what can you say? We were overdue, but it’ll be over soon, just wait..." Or maybe don't. Maybe don't just wait.
There is existential dread in this, but there is also cognitive dissonance. We are bombarded constantly with too much information to properly absorb - whether it is climate change, societal breakdown, random acts of violence all tossed in with things to distract us such as sales at stores, people singing in cars, self-help books, etc. At the same time we are disassociated from what is going on outside - the ocean's at the door - and are strangely connected to the whole world via the internet while at the same time being completely disconnected from other humans.
As a parent of 3, I share your feelings. Completely.
This one, All Eyes On Me and Goodbye hit waaay different when watched with the whole special. I still remember watching it at 3 am while depressed in the middle of the pandemic after getting Welcome to the Internet in my youtube recommendations looking for something to distract me from my insomnia and it really hit in exactly the way it was supposed to lol. I was just left speechless staring at the ceiling thinking "fucking same"
For me, the answer is in the lyrics, that funny feeling is "the quiet comprehending of the ending of it all"
But also derealization, that too.
I saw an amazing comment once of someone breaking it down where basically, that funny feeling is cognitive dissonance. Not necessarily anxiety, or anger, or sadness. Sometimes one or all of those things, but sometimes just a... "Well that's not quite right." It can be existentially dreadful, or just something that makes you smirk at the absurdity of it all.
It’s Derealization. He says it. He googled Derealization and hated to find that’s exactly how he feels.
I think it’s all of those things too. Derealization is part of it, part of the absurdity or existential dread of it all. You can’t or don’t want to deal with all the unapproachable problems of our world and fall back into ignoring, or disassociating with it, or you start to feel like this isn’t real life anymore. It’s not just derealization, but that’s certainly one of the many “funny feelings” this song refers to.
I've been searching so hard for a reactor that can sit and listen and actually absorb the meaning of this song. So many people gloss over the deepest parts. Thank you for actually taking the time to really analyze such a meaningful song
To me it's a combination of the existential dread that civilation is ending, the resignation that comes with it when we give up on averting that end, and the many stupid distractions we choose to focus on instead of trying.
I have watched so many reactions to this video and most laugh this song off as a list of "random" things and only one or two lines (the most obvious ones) really land. Grateful to see someone else feel the weight of the lyrics on this song, though, because - while I love the whole special - this one still gets an ugly cry out of me every time.
This song can be so freaking powerful. Every time I hear it, it brings me to tears, and grips my insides and forces everything to the surface against my will. Not only is it one of the most beautiful and well written songs in history, it brings up some of the most complex feelings, and complicated societal awareness easily in people. Other songs can make you feel a powerful emotion, but its always a simple emotion; fear, hate, love, joy. These are relatively easy emotions to bring out of listeners. But Dread? Existential Crisis? Disassociation and Derealization? These are SUPER complex emotions that even the people feeling these emotions have a hard time comprehending. This song builds upon itself, setting all these seemingly random and different things, and grouping them together with a "funny feeling", making you wonder the connection. The complex relationships between what he says, the melody he plays, and then those jarring horrible situations and events that he sprinkles in there weave a spiderweb of emotion and comprehension that encapsulates such difficult emotions well.
This is the absolute best reaction to this song I’ve ever seen dude! You let it play through and didn’t try to figure it out until you had absorbed it as a full piece.
You’re bang on. It’s existential dread. We all know that something is terribly wrong, but that thing is so massive, intricate and fluid that just perceiving it as it is takes a Herculean amount of mental energy.
Trying to look at it pragmatically? Fuck, no one can do that without wanting to die. It seems insurmountable because it kind of is. There’s no simple solution to humanity.
Love your reactions. Keep ‘em coming!
Cheers
Nice reaction. Well said. Bo has a subtle way of delivery and your reaction reflected that well.
You had me at Bo! subscribed.
It's hard to say that this song is one of my favorites because that sounds too simple. I think this song is one of the most important songs I've heard in my life. It spoke to a feeling I couldn't name but had been drowning in at times when I would read all these doomsday articles from reddit about climate change and the steady march towards the point of no return. And then we turn around and look out our daily lives - going to school and work and the grocery store as if nothing's happening; watching silly videos on TH-cam and watching all the fights and drama on Twitter and I would just ask myself - what's the point of all this? What kind of life am I trying to build for myself while the planet is slowly becoming inhospitable and mass economic upheaval and loss of life are looking so large on the horizon.
It was such a huge and overwhelming sense of dread and powerlessness that I didn't know how to describe or put into words until I heard this song for the first time.
Another Bo fan called it "a lullaby for the end of the world."
Hearing my child singing this makes me feel...a lot.
Reminds me I can visit my existential dread but I don't get to live there.
And I can't keep it a secret from him.
My parents truly believed we'd all be gone by the year 2000, 2012 at the outside. Growing up with that fatalism is rough.
That Funny Feeling is, I think, pretty much what you said at the end of your post. We're inundated with negativity via news agencies 24/7 and, even if we don't click the link, we've read the heading. Boom! You feel that pulling sensation in your hearts that says, "This is something to care about," as you pass over it because you're emotionally sick and mentally frustrated at feeling unable to do anything about the chaos that is the world right now. Broken down, It's a combination of shame for not following the trail of today's disaster, sadness because the care is there, a smidge of despair because you know you'll not do more than feel bad about something you can't fix followed by a chaser of watered-down hope that Things will be better soon. Yet I'm in for the long haul. Regardless of everything wrong in the world at large and here in my own microcosm, my curiosity to see what happens next overrides That Funny Feeling. Until the world redeems all of the hope I've poured into it, there's you and other creators here to provide fun, insights and interest to keep me going. Keeping an open mind and hopeful heart... Life is Beautiful.
It feel like we're all teetering on the edge of a cliff and wondering if today is the day we go over
to me it's knowing that the direction we're going, we're screwed, but nobody seems to care because there are so many things to distract ourselves with.
What can you say, we were over due but it’ll be over soon
I think "that funny feeling" is, in part, what we feel when we pair the feeling that something is seriously wrong with the direction of the world with a feeling of powerlessness to stop it. It creates a disconnect in ourselves between how we act and how we feel deep inside.
The corporate adoption of the counter culture is part of this. "In honour of the revolution it's half off at the Gap" and "Discount Etsy Agitprop". Any hope of a serious movement to change things gets watered-down to a slogan we hang on our walls as artwork or wear on a T-shirt.
Aontaím leat
There are a couple of bits in the special that link to that too.
Great reaction and interpretation as always! Have missed you're insights and so glad you're back!
This song sounds so beautiful but makes me feel like crying out of despair for the way the world is going. On the other hand it can't be that bad as long as there are people like you and Bo in the world 😊💜
It's good to be back! Happy to see you here as well 😊 this song def made me feel like crying and throwing my hands up like "what's the point?!" But I am glad that I can connect with people like you as well and share these feelings
10/10 reaction
To me, the funny feeling is the feeling you feel when hearing the song. For me that's a but of wonder & dispair..I didn't like it at first compared to other songs in the special, but its grown on me, because I'm less afraid to acknowledge how it makes me feel. It's ok to feel uncomfortable & yet part of a grander population of confused/lost people who are just....living this life even if it doesn't all make sense
You didn't use the term "existential dread" but the feeling is that, and all the hopelessness that comes along with it, and that feeling of "here we go again" when a tragedy happens or a corporation uses a situation like protests to sell you something. This is one of those songs you can just ponder and ponder over each line, I love it for that. A lot of people see it a lot of different ways too, ya know? Is he criticizing capitalism? Or maybe people's inability to focus on issues and short attention spans? Or how he or society is becoming so conspiracy>information oriented (googling derealization fully out your mind). IDK, but I appreciate how good this song is both in sound and how it makes me think.
, regret, shame, disillusionment, detachment from the value of identity, inspiration to change what it isn't too late to change, paralysis, confusion, a self-care urge to shut off every mental process, a self-care urge to put every mental process on overdrive to catch up, the desire to watch a butterfly and see the stars, despair, despondency, like an ape turned man turned god turned demon turned hollow shell, like a five year old in a decrepit body and an octogenarian fresh out of the womb, like I watched the beauty of a world fall from grace due to a single genetic code; like the butt of the last deadpan dark humor joke told by a mad comedian in his last set before he walks away and jumps off of a bridge, and all the other people in the audience who heard the joke without being the subject of it didn't laugh either; like I remember when I was maybe six years old and the first thing I ever wanted to be was a biologist when I saw Jeff Corwin just look at animals and know stuff about them all day, but like I also remember when I first realized not long after that one of the loudest messages learned from studying the earth and her life was that humans are shifting the balances of nearly the entire rest of the web towards rot and decay, and like now both feel equally far away despite one clearly obviously logically necessarily being closer at least temporally
Something like all that is my version of "that funny feeling" if "the funny feeling" is defined as the thing I feel in light of the first two verses. But in so far as it's what Bo roughly meant when he said it, I feel like his general idea is just what he said in the third verse, general disassociation and a difficulty in naming the feeling either 'cuz it sounds gaudy or 'cuz it's just contextually observant variations of "...........*sigh*.........................."
This reads like poetry
This song describes exentantial dread of the most terrible kind I have yet to come across. It's not like there's an asteroid coming to wipe us out, or a supervulcano or whatever, no it's way worse. Sometimes, it feels like these are the end times, and not the sign-bearing-market-crier-christian-loony-end-times with a sudden, heavenly crescendo, but like, a slow, painful, televised stagnation of terror, if that makes sense. It's the first time since the agricultural revolution that the world is in relative peace (but fuck you Putin), we have the means to make life easy and painless and even good for every single person on earth, we would have every reason to look optimistic towards the future, but we can't, and we don't. That future has been taken, climate change is not being combated as much as it should, instead everything dissolves in vapid distraction, in (purposefully sown?) division and a bombardment of things of absolutely zero importance. And as you said, "a week of outrage, and then there's nothing.", it's very fitting. We don't change, at all, nothing happens, we don't move anywhere, and yet all the while the world changes under our feet faster than we could run, even if we were running. But we're not, and so it's easy to feel as though the rug was being pulled out from under you. It's overwhelming trying to keep up with a world that's literally impossible to understand for a single human.
Despite a couple of the songs in the special including this one, I don't think Bo completely subscribes to the crude "social media bad" stance, and I don't either, because there are limitless possibilites to it, but it is worrysome. It can be so much, too much, and if it is your only source of contact to the outside world, especially during a pandemic but also increasingly outside it, it will break you sooner or later.
The last lines in this song are fantastic. As a fervent lover of history, I'm quick to relate or compare things I experience to the past. The outlook of "Look, it's been good, but it'll be over soon." is crushing to me, and yet I share it. This may be the first moment in history where tomorrow does not hold as much room for improvement as it does for destruction. That must suck as a parent, I have long since descided that I can't bear the responsibility of putting another life into the world as it is, but that's me. I suppose all you can really do, is to do your part to improve what little you can, and try and give your children the right lessons along they will need to maybe do their own part one day, and in any case, make it through healthy. Again, it's overwhelming that this responsibility of researching, understanding and enacting positive change is laid on individual parents and people, while Governments and Megacorps continue to ravage the planet. Maybe we'll find an answer one day, hopefully soon. I wish you the best. Great insights at the end of the video, really made me think (and looking back, ramble), thank you.
My take on this song is that line about "derealization" is the theme of this song (derealiztion = that funny feeling). Most of this song are things that seem ironic if not completely contradictory or hypocritical. Living life surrounded by and aware of these things can foster a sense of things just not even feeling real anymore.
I take it as there’s so many things going on. So much negativity thrown at us every day… where do you even begin to try and make a difference? Or do we just accept our fate and continue on with our day to day
So the song starts with musical and lyrical genius Bo Burnham stating that he cannot play the guitar _or_ sing... and then:
"Stunning 8K resolution, meditation app" -- What kinda at-home cinema are you running an 8K resolution app on?! And why would a meditation app, something that you should probably have your eyes closed while running so as to not get distracted by visual stimuli, ever even need to be upscaled to that ridiculous resolution? It's just utterly absurd... but par for the course for our world...
"In honor of the revolution, it's half-off at the Gap" -- So now the Gap needs a reason for its half-off bargains? And it's in honor of the revolution, of all things, as well? Again, kind of absurd...
"Deadpool's self-awareness, loving parents, harmless fun" -- Deadpool is a fictional character who's aware of the fact that he's a fictional character, and he's also a complete maniac straddling the line between occasional goofball and murder-happy sociopath who's _way_ too egregiously violent... but sure, expose your kids to the funny murder guy and then have your kids ask you to take them with you to the shooting-range so they can pretend that they are Deadpool... What's the harm? It's just harmless fun, _right?_
"The backlash to the backlash to the thing that's just begun" -- This just immediately brings my mind to the Jan 6th mess... that thing happened, the backlash was immediate, people were rightly outraged, they demanded that those responsible be held fully responsible... and at the same time, the backlash to the backlash had already started: Tucker Carlson, Sean Hannity, Laura Ingraham, Ben Shapiro, Marjory Taylor Greene, Steve Bannon, etc... they were already lashing back at the backlash that they knew would come...
"The surgeon general's pop-up shop" -- Imagine clicking around online and getting a pop-up. Eh, nothing too unusual about that. It's a pop-up for medicine and drugs and stuff? Sure, those kinda scams bombard us all the time. It's sent out by the highest authority on medical treatment in the US? Wtf is this alternate reality we've stumbled into...?
"Robert Iger's face" -- There is something deeply upsetting about the fact that the face of Disney, THE family company with THE child movies, is (or was) a heartless, soulless corporatist only in it for the money...
"Discount Etsy agitprop" -- Mass-produced and commercialized bootleg versions of communist propaganda sold as cheap interior design props to enrich some capitalist... Marx, Che and Castro aren't spinning in their graves, they're doing the "smh" routine...
"Bugles' take on race" -- Yes, that's definitely what our society needs to turn around, isn't it?/sarcasm
"Female Colonel Sanders, easy answers, civil war" -- Either, 1) the conservative demographic's usual overreactions to nonsense stuff like the M&M mascots getting less sexualized, or 2) the commercial sector's usual virtue signalling, which includes putting up a font of inclusivity and diversity and tolerance and stuff, while remaining as cruddy as usual; an "easy answer" to complex problems, or 3) just running down the list of weird af concepts... Kentucky isn't exactly known for its progressive spirit, so female Colonel Sanders would be disingenuous from so many angles; there are very few "easy answers" that are legitimately worth the air you expel when you say them; "civil war" is just plain an oxymoron, like "military intelligence."
"The whole world at your fingertips, the ocean at your door" -- Here we are, computers, laptops, phones and so on with all the world's knowledge, and yet the oceans are rising... much thanks to the same technology that gave us all the world's knowledge to begin with... and to add another layer to the absurdity, many people wouldn't ever have even learned about the climate breakdown without the internet...
"The live-action Lion King, the Pepsi Halftime Show" -- There is no "live-action Lion King", there's only a 3dcg movie that was billed and marketed as the "live-action" version of the Lion King, and we all just kind of went along with the marketing... and yet the 100% fake live-action Lion King movie is still somehow less fake than the halftime show at the Super Bowl...
"Twenty-thousand years of this, seven more to go" -- Five years now... that climate breakdown doomsday clock keeps ticking... and it's not looking like we've got any intentions of stopping it before it's too late...
"Carpool Karaoke, Steve Aoki, Logan Paul" -- Boy, that would be some carpool karaoke... Wanna body surf and get caked in the car? Or would you prefer talking about the guy who took a selfie of himself together with a man who had committed suicide, exposing himself for the d-bag he truly is and always have been to the entire world in the process?
"A gift shop at the gun range, a mass shooting at the mall" -- ...I don't think this one requires elaboration...
"Reading Pornhub's terms of service" -- Welcome to the world's gathering spot for smut, depravity, revenge sex videos and other such fun activities and pastimes; here's a legal document you should probably read in its totality to get you properly hot and bothered for a start.
"Going for a drive, and obeying all the traffic laws in Grand Theft Auto V" -- Have you ever come home after a really bad day, feeling like you need to relax a bit, so you get some absurdly violent video game started, only to realize that "venting steam" is not the same as "winding down" and what you need right now is the latter -- some normalcy to get away from what's happened over the course of the day -- so you take this absurdly violent video game and make it an outlet for the peace and quiet that you're denied in real life? Just asking...
"Full agoraphobic, losing focus, cover blown" -- Whoopsie! Slipping up and ʀᴇᴠᴇᴀʟɪɴɢ sᴏᴍᴇ ʀᴀᴛʜᴇʀ ᴘᴇʀsᴏɴᴀʟ ɪssᴜᴇs ᴛᴏ ᴀɴ ᴇɴᴛɪʀᴇ ᴡᴏʀʟᴅ ᴛʜᴀᴛ's sɪᴛᴛɪɴɢ ᴛʜᴇʀᴇ ʟɪsᴛᴇɴɪɴɢ ᴛᴏ ʏᴏᴜ ᴇxᴘᴏsᴇ ʏᴏᴜʀsᴇʟғ there, huh, Bo?
"A book on getting better hand-delivered by a drone" -- This is just so messed up... But coupled with the above line, it's even worse: If you're suffering from agoraphobia, then human contact may be the last thing you want... But if you've already been isolating yourself for a long time, say, 5 years or so, and forcibly had to go back into isolation just when you were starting to feel okay with the idea of re-entering society again, then human contact, even fleeting and shallow, may have been just what you were looking for to keep the existential dread at bay... instead you got a drone handing you a self-help book, which probably included advice about reaching out to other people...
"Total disassociation, fully out of your mind" -- Depersonalization is a disassociation disorder which makes it feel like you're separated from your body or like your body is not your own or like you are just an observer to your own body and actions. Ergo, it can very much feel like you are literally outside of your own mind.
"Googling 'derealization,' hating what you find" -- Derealization is a disassociation disorder which makes it feel like you're separated from the world around you or like you're dreaming or like nothing around you is actually real...
"That unapparent summer air in early fall" -- ...why did I decide to do this analysis while off my meds? For that matter, why don't I have meds in the first place when I know that I probably really do need them?
"The quiet comprehending of the ending of it all" -- It's not going to get any better, is it? The ones in power aren't planning on averting the worst-case scenario, are they? People are way too unwilling to change their lifestyles if it means giving up their comfort and luxury, aren't they? We're actually approaching the end of the existence of human civilization, aren't we?
"Hey, what can you say? We were overdue... But it'll be over soon, you wait" -- Heh. Yeah, I guess we were overdue for a pandemic, what with us having a globalized world but so poor protection against one should it act up. But, yeah, it'll be over soon. A thing of the past. We just need wait a little longer... Heh. Yeah, I guess we're overdue for a reckoning, considering that we've been living way above and beyond sustainable means for so long. But, yeah, soon it'll all come crashing down. We'll be a thing of the past. Just you wait a little longer...
"There it is, again, that funny feeling" -- Funnily enough, that feeling is not "funny" at all... Cognitive dissonance. Existential dread. Disassociation. Disbelief at all of this absurdity along the lines of "this can't be real" or "what the hell is this shit?" What that feeling is differs for a lot of us, but still... there it is again... that funny feeling...
It's okay. It will all be over soon.
did you google derealization?
Oh, and people have been activists about global warming/climate change for DECADES. I'm 50+ and remember stuff from being a teenager. 80's Pop had all kinds of stuff about it... and look how far we've come! Backward!
You think you won't be around to see what happens? You're very optimistic. Even *I* will be around to see what happens. Part of me hopes to die in the next few years, just so that I DON'T see my kids having to deal with it.
I wish I could be blissfully ignorant and stupid like the majority of the world.