Digital humor analysis of Bo Burnham’s Netflix comedy special Inside
New sincerity, postirony, and metamodernism at play
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 13032882 |
|---|---|
| Authors | N Elyamany (0000-0002-3385-194X, Arab Academy for Science, Technology, and Maritime Transport, corresponding author), Noorhan Abbas (0000-0002-1434-6497, University of Leeds) |
| Year | 2025 |
| Volume | 12 |
| Issue | 1 |
| Pages | 20-66 |
| Publication date | 2025-08-19 |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Language and Semiotic Studies (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 2096-031X • E-ISSN: 2751-7160 |
| Publisher | Walter de Gruyter GmbH (PUBLISHER • DE) |
| DOI | 10.1515/lass-2025-0031 |
| OpenAlex | W4413342266 |
| Language | EN |
| References cited | 53 |
This research endeavor undertakes a rigorous forensic analysis of Bo Burnham’s 2021 Netflix special, Inside , situating it as a significant socio-cultural artifact reflecting contemporary anxieties, particularly those amplified by the COVID-19 pandemic. Operating within the evolving landscape of postdigitality, Inside distinguishes itself from traditional stand-up. By confining its performance to a domestic setting and integrating diverse media, the special grapples with pandemic-induced trauma, critiques the pervasive influence of Internet culture, and offers a “sincere” portrayal of Burnham’s own internal struggles. Employing a mixed-methods approach integrating qualitative thematic/linguistic analysis with Natural Language Processing (NLP) tasks, the present study investigates Burnham’s deployment of postirony and explores how he recalibrates irony’s critical potential within this contemporary context. Crucially, this recalibration is intertwined with the emergence of New Sincerity , a cultural sensibility that responds to the perceived failures of postmodern cynicism by seeking genuine emotional expression and connection. Through a quantitative analysis grounded in sentiment, sarcasm, and irony detection, coupled with a qualitative analysis informed by incongruity and relief theories of humor, the paper elucidates how Burnham utilizes humor both as a personal coping mechanism and as a critical instrument for interrogating societal issues. Synthesizing findings from this dual analysis, the present study provides a novel, transdisciplinary analysis of Burnham’s multimodal performance, positioning Inside as a crucial text for reconsidering the role of humor in addressing questions of individual identity and collective disillusionment during a period of profound societal upheaval
Aesthetics · Art · Comedy · Literature · Sincerity · Comics and Graphic Narratives · Discourse Analysis in Language Studies · Humor Studies and Applications · Psychology · Social Psychology
Humorous Texts
Comic Relief
The sociology of humor
Developing a Typology of Humor in Audiovisual Media
Metamodernism or Metamodernity
The Lockdown Historic House Museum
On necessary conditions for verbal irony comprehension
The Passing of Postmodernism
The Affective Turn in Metamodernist Fiction and “New Sincerity”
Two Cues for Verbal Irony
That funny feeling
Notes on metamodernism
Bequeathing “new sincerity” in the age of the homo digitalis
Conceptualizing conversational humour as (im)politeness
Online feminist stand-up comedy
Metamodern pastiche Introduction
Cool Characters
Affect and Emotion
Metamodernism and Social Sciences
Humor as a Double-Edged Sword
A new look at literal meaning in understanding what is said and implicated
| Highly cited | No |
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