I Recreated Bo Burnham's 'White Woman's Instagram'

Everyone's been obsessed with Bo Burnham's comedy special Inside in one way or another. Now that the billionaire space race is afoot, I've seen several TikToks featuring "Bezos I" and "Bezos II" to commemorate Jeff's flight. I was in a production of Midsummer Night's Dream back in June and early July, and one of my castmates would play "That Funny Feeling" on his acoustic guitar whenever we had downtime during rehearsals. I even wrote a Top 10 list of Bo Burnham songs for my job because I couldn't stop thinking about Inside.

While "Welcome to the Internet" is my personal favorite song from the Netflix special, there was one song in particular that couldn't get out of my head. Not just because of its catchiness, but because of how true it is.

That song is "White Woman's Instagram."

Okay yes: maybe it's a diss track against the "basic bitch" stereotype and women should be able to post whatever they want on social media without shame. But as a white woman myself who enjoys laughing at the weird eccentricities of white girl culture...this song is kinda genius. Plus, it's not all one-dimensional. In the bridge of the song, Burnham sings about a caption on the woman's Instagram that talks about her deceased mother. Like on every other Inside song, this tune has its dark moments.

In college, I studied digital media and had some experience doing online art projects of sorts. Because I was bored to death and needed a hobby to keep my anxious mind occupied back in early June, I decided to do an interactive adaptation of the lyrics in "White Woman's Instagram."

In other words, I made an Instagram account with pictures of all the objects Burnham lists in his song.

You may think finding photos of fuzzy comfy socks and latte foam art is a job that can be done in one day. But creating @justawhitewomansinstgram actually took a fair amount of planning and preparation from early June until the end of July. For those of you curious, here's how I got started, how I found photos for very specific lyrics, and how the writing platform we all know and love - Vocal - is actually tied into my creation.

Getting Started

By far the hardest part of this art project was making the account itself. I wasn't the first person to come up with the idea of an interactive white woman's Instagram. There are several fan accounts on the social media app, all with similar handles to mine, that only show stills of Burnham from the "White Woman's Instagram" music video. Every variation of the name is taken.

It took me several tries to type in an unclaimed handle before Instagram finally accepted my account. You'll notice my username, @justawhitewomansinstgram, is actually missing the 'a' in 'instagram' because misspelling the word was the only way I could get my project up and running.

While most "White Woman's Instagram" accounts featured cheeky pictures of Burnham from Inside, I did find one account with the same concept as mine. Because I didn't want to completely copy this person's Instagram, there were three key choices I made to differentiate my project from existing and future ones:

1. To go along with the theme of the song, I gave my account an "aesthetically pleasing" look. Every picture appears photogenic or professional in some way.
2. I included Burnham's "is this heaven?" lyrics into the collage of pictures as a joke.
3. When you scroll through the account, you'll notice the objects on the Instagram are listed in the same order as they are listed in Burnham's song. This meant I had to post "backwards": starting from the end of the song and posting my way up to the first lyric of "White Woman's Instagram."

Because I considered this project a hobby, I didn't give myself any concrete deadlines. I looked for photos and posted whenever I got the time.

Finding Photos

I'd like to thank Vocal here for preparing me for my white woman's Instagram, because a good portion of the photos on the account - I'd say around 85% of them - came from Unsplash.

Why Unsplash? Because all the photos on the site are royalty free and very high quality. Perfect for my aesthetically-pleasing art ho parody account. If you aren't using Unsplash for your Vocal cover photos, I highly recommend you take advantage of it. You can find some great stuff for free: like this wonderful picture of tiny pumpkins I found.

One photo came from another royalty-free picture site called Depositphotos. A few - like the bobblehead of Ruth Bader Ginsburg and the needlepoint of a fox - had to be found through Google Images due to how specific they were.

Three photos were originally taken or created by yours truly. The vintage neon sign is actually from a famous coffee shop near my alma mater's campus. The woman attached to the "favorite photo of her mom" post? Yup, that's my actual mom. (Don't worry, she's not dead.) And my favorite upload, "Some random quote from Lord of the Rings incorrectly attributed to Martin Luther King" was a photo of MLK from Unsplash I stuck into Canva and edited. I'm so happy with how it turned out.

Last but not least, one photo on the Instagram is actually a re-post from another Instagram user. Finding a golden retriever in a flower crown seemed to be an impossible feat...until I looked through the Instagram community for help.

Pet accounts are a dime a dozen on Instagram, and fortunately, there was one account with a pretty golden retriever that had such beautiful photos, I couldn't not use one for my Bo Burnham art project. The account is called @livingthatgoldenlife, and it features Rufio the therapy dog. Definitely look through the photos if it's a gloomy day and you need some cheering up.

Anyways, there were several cute photos of Rufio proudly wearing flower crowns. One of them became my "golden retriever in a flower crown," and I made sure to give @livingthatgoldenlife proper credit through tagging.

Reception

Did I take Instagram by storm and become a meme celebrity? Well...no. My account only has 21 followers and an average of 2-5 likes on each post.

But did it entertain people and make them laugh? Absolutely! A few of my college buddies / fellow Bo Burnham fans followed the account. It was fun being able to talk to them about the creative process.

Another person who followed me? Vocal's very own content managing celebrity, Joshua Johnson. He didn't just leave likes on my photos. He mentioned my account ON HIS INSTAGRAM STORY. And gave it a 10/10 rating! I still can't believe it, folks. The fangirl in me feels so blessed.

Perhaps my Bo Burnham art project wasn't the most valuable piece of content on the internet...but at least daddy made some, right? Okay, sorry: not-so-wonderfully placed reference there. Joshua does the reference on his Insta story better than I can.

But in all seriousness, creating @justawhitewomansinstgram did make my lonely summer days a bit brighter, despite how trivial the end result may be. If you're a fan of something, don't be afraid to create some kind of art around your interests. Inspiration - even inspiration from a fandom - isn't cringy: it's beautiful.

Even art made on a smaller scale is beautiful, too. Don't believe me? Just watch Inside.

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If you enjoyed this white woman's Vocal piece, make sure to check out @justawhitewomansinstgram! And if you'd like to see my personal Instagram, go look up @katyisaladybug.

Thanks so much for reading. I know this was short and stupid, but well...so am I. Just kidding. I'm not short. I'm fun-sized.

Until next time.

-Katy