Bo Burnham

He started posting comedy songs from his bedroom in Massachusetts at 16, before YouTube had any real influencer infrastructure. The songs were dark, self-aware, and specifically uncomfortable, which is exactly why they spread. Comedy Central signed him at 17. What followed was a decade of specials, tours, and slowly collapsing onstage. His first panic attack hit at Edinburgh in 2013. He quit live performance after 'Make Happy' in 2016, and eventually turned the breakdown into the material.

Inside (2021) was filmed entirely alone in his guest house in Los Angeles during COVID, Burnham serving as writer, director, cinematographer, editor, and performer. It won three Emmys, a Peabody Award, and a Grammy, and the album hit top ten in the U.S., Canada, and the UK. Since then, he's essentially gone dark. No Instagram posts, no performances, no public profile. He made a special explicitly about creative burnout and then disappeared, which is either the most on-brand exit imaginable or something more serious.

He directed Eighth Grade (2018) at 27, a film about a 13-year-old girl navigating middle school anxiety. He's said the character's anxiety came from his own stage panic attacks in his early 20s, transposed onto a 13-year-old girl. He grew up in Hamilton, Massachusetts, and posted his first songs to YouTube from his childhood bedroom because his older brother had moved away and he wanted to show him the songs he'd written. His biggest artistic choices, the YouTube bedroom, Inside alone in a guest house, Eighth Grade about a child, all share the same logic: the further he gets from a live crowd, the better the work.