Let's Unpack Because The Internet | Mic The Snare

this album was so damn ahead of it’s time, its like it was made strictly to be a masterpiece FOR the internet generation

La Biblioteca feat. Danny Pudi is still Gambino's greatest song.

Aw yeah, I love Childish Gambino's screenplay, "Because The Internet." What a great standalone work. The hell you mean there's an album?

I understand how Awaken My Love is more musically proficient but I'd honestly just rather listen to the best tracks off BTI than the best ones off AML

flight of the navigator is the most beautiful song I've ever heard

honestly i came to the opposite conclusion about why 'an album that means nothing' is actually an interesting concept it's the perfect way to show the complete hollowness and nihilism of the internet generation.

Mostly agree, except the bit about the lack of other character development in the music video series being a detractor. I think the 2D-ness of others around the boy is totally THE POINT. He exists in the this cloud of celebrities, random porn stars, and meme references but doesn't have any actual relationships - it's all parasocial. So whether he's "really" with these people or they represent encounters over the internet, he's just as distanced from them. My interpretation of the boy's sort-of-arc is that he's succumbing to internet addiction and becomes estranged from his entire real world...within the fro yo store...within the internet...

"Shut up, Leonard. Nobody even knows what Roscoe's Wetsuit is. And what's the point of Because the Internet??" "You're talking about it."

If you witnessed the Because the Internet era and you notice what Bino was doing in real time, it was more than him dropping an album then going on tour. It was an experience.

as a teen in 2024, i think BTI is so much more relevant now. it really feels like that’s what we’re going through now, especially as young people.

BTI the album, the soundtrack, and the so-called BTIEU is all Bino's take on absurdism (the philosophical concept that human beings try to find meaning in a meaningless reality). That's why things like lack of plot direction and character growth are purposely built into the narrative. From The Boy's perspective, there is no point to anything, and so anything he does or experiences comes across as comedic nihilism or insanely random good fortuity. The various short skits, the music videos, the songs, the "script" (you're right in that it's basically inner monologue disguised as a script to give the feel of a "play") are all examples of the absurd at play. "Roscoe's Wetsuit" was just a phrase to give life to the inherent meaninglessness of reality, and The Boy's desire to figure out what the phrase meant was really a microcosm for The Boy trying to figure out his place and meaning in life. The fact that he has access to Rick Ross' fortune is really a backdrop of how futile human endeavour is even with sufficient funds to live lavishly-- in fact it could've aided in his lacklustre motivation to be his own person, precisely what he needed to escape the void of nihilism. The importance of the script/story is is not in overall direction, but in each moment and scene, how it stands on its own with no relation to past and future (there is only present). Since BTI, I look at Bino/Glover's work as attempts to create meaning where this none, except at this point he's content with the absurd, and would rather continue to live in the fallacy of free will if at least to gain satisfaction through creation, humanity's greatest FU to the universe.

“Glover wasn’t in the mcu” is casually in spider man homecoming

But if you will use Wu tang name generator to name your children who’s names will you base them on?

Interesting video and fair criticism. I think BTI’s chaotic universe reflects the complex and chaotic flow of informations in our age. I don’t think Glover read Baudrillard but I think BTI’s main purpose is to portray hyperreality: that’s why he created so many fake Twitter accounts, that’s why he acted like an amalgamation of himself and his character, that’s also why he tried to blend so many medias. He wanted to blur the line between virtuality, fiction and reality.

On 6:10 tho, about That Power, he wasn't trying to ask her out, he was just confessing how he felt about her, and then fell asleep, and by the time he woke up she was gone and turns out had told everybody and so they were laughing at him. He felt betrayed, humiliated and learned to never trust again... and in my opinion that shame he felt is the metaphor for the bus that he never got off of...

man said he was never able to get into flight of the navigator smh

I stopped paying attention when he didn't appreciate Donald's genius after summarizing the interactive Because the Internet experience

I didn’t even know that there was a whole movie and a script. The script sounds like a fanfiction or a leak that kind of adds to the overall theme.

You mention that the script was necessary to explain details like the pitch shifted voices and jazz solo, but those were just some of my favorite left turns of the album I didn't realize were in the screenplay

One of my favorite albums of all time, thank you for this.