Essay 1.4: The Gambino Doctrine
To find meaning in the age of the Internet, we need to form genuine connections with each other. For Essay 1.4, we looked at Donald Glover’s journey towards finding beauty in existential dread — you can watch the entire video above, as well as read the edited script below.
When artist, actor, and writer Donald Glover released his second studio album Because the Internet in 2013, he wanted to create more than just a collection of songs, developing a short film and a 72-page script that enhanced the experience.
In an interview leading up to BTI’s release, Glover told DJ Tim Westwood, "I don’t want to make albums anymore anyway…I feel like it’s just kinda silly, to make just albums. You gotta make worlds and lives.”
The project was loved by fans and critics alike, serving as a turning point in the artist's career. But just a year prior, Glover felt lost, and alone, waking up screaming at night. He even attempted to kill himself, before ultimately defining his purpose: by finding beauty in existential dread.
Part I: Optimistic Nihilism
In all of its zany glory, Douglas Adams’ cult classic novel, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, has managed to stay relevant for over four decades.
It’s a tale about a lot of things: prophetic dolphins, quirky aliens, and the mystical power of towels. But at the very core of Adams’ narrative is a central question: What’s the meaning to Life, the Universe, and Everything?
On the surface, it seems to be a pretty complicated question. In reality, however, the author’s intentions are more sarcastic and more crass — he is British, after all.
Douglas Adams’ novel aims to answer the Ultimate Question.
In the book, humans create a supercomputer named Deep Thought in order to answer the ultimate question. Their descendants wait 7.5 million years and learn that the answer is simply...the number Forty-Two.
This answer might’ve been satisfactory for some — Elon Musk included — but Adams’ characters are unimpressed. In response, the supercomputer informs them that they will need to build a superior machine in order to frame the question more clearly. The new supercomputer is so powerful that it resembles a planet. Over time, as it determines the question during a 10-million-year-span, life sprouts on the surface, and the computer collectively becomes known as “Earth.”
Nevertheless, just five minutes before the Earth is able to complete its program, an alien construction group blows up the planet in order to make way for an intergalactic highway.
It’s a cruel twist of fate, yet in the context of the book’s central themes, Adams’ message becomes clear: none of what we do matters, so our search for meaning might as well be explained away by a random number.
These ideas have been explored by many for years, bringing us the philosophy of “optimistic nihilism.” You may hear the term “nihilism” and think of people who don’t believe in anything, but there’s more to it. Kurzgesagt, the creative team that publishes explainer videos on a wide variety of topics, sums up this doctrine best:
“You only get one shot at life, which is scary. But it also sets you free.”
And in 2013, we received a similar decoding, delivered by an up-and-coming artist who — at the time — felt pigeon-holed into his career, lost and questioning his life’s purpose: Donald Glover, also known as Childish Gambino.
Part II: Getting Off the Bus
After graduating from New York University, Donald Glover’s rise through the entertainment industry was meteoric. He wrote for 30 Rock from 2006 to 2009 before landing the role of Troy Barnes on the hit show Community.
In between seasons, Glover performed stand-up comedy and released music as his alter ego, Childish Gambino, an alias he famously got from a Wu-Tang Name Generator. Glover would star on Community for four seasons, but it was abruptly announced in July 2013 that he was leaving the show.
Glover released a series of personal notes on his Instagram.
Later that year, he posted a series of notes on his Instagram page saying — among many things — that he felt like he was “letting everyone down” and that he was afraid “this is all an accident.” Glover also wrote that he worried this “whole thing would feel pretentious.”
Fans, concerned about Glover’s mental health, poured in support while questioning how he was doing. The artist answered them when he dove deeper in an interview with Vice not too long afterwards. Dealing with personal loss and a difficult breakup, Glover said he had been drifting through life without purpose, unsure of what to do.
When asked about whether or not he was spreading himself too thin between his acting, comedy, and music, the artist revealed that he broke down at one point during the tour for his debut studio album Camp. He had been “super depressed,” waking up screaming at night and even attempting to kill himself.
While he loved working on Community, Glover contemplated whether he was prioritizing the right things, saying “…I knew I was gonna die. And if I knew that it was just like ‘this guy from Community died,’ I’d be really disappointed. I can’t live like that. I’d feel guilty that I didn’t do anything for us, for humans.”
In the pursuit of purpose after these traumatic experiences in his life, Glover was able to find meaning for himself through creation, renting out a mansion in Los Angeles — dubbed “The Temple” — and getting to work. By building this world intentionally as a means of saving himself, Glover was once again able to connect with the people he cared about -- such as his friends, his family, and his fans.
Which brings us to Because the Internet.
At the end of his previous album, Glover performs a spoken word poem from the perspective of a boy coming home on the bus from summer camp. After two months of pushing his boundaries, The Boy has learned an important lesson: to “make it all for everyone, always.”
Glover explained why he left Community to Vice.
Glover realized that while he can’t control how others react, being honest and vulnerable was the best way to connect with people on a deeper level. The notes he posted on Instagram embodied this concept in real life, as he shared that he had been scared to move on with his life, revealing just how lonely and afraid he truly was.
In his words from Camp, he had “still [been] on the bus”:
I wish I could say this was a story about how I got on the bus a boy /
And got off a man more cynical, hardened, and mature and shit /
But that’s not true. The truth is I got on the bus a boy. And I never got off the bus /
I still haven’t
Yet the process of interweaving his personal life with his art forced Glover to assume control over his life, accepting that if we’re all going to die one day, he might as well make the things he thought were dope.
Which is how an explosion of media converged to form Because the Internet, including a short film, 19 tracks, and a 72-page screenplay, the latter which started with a single line.
“You can’t live your life on a bus…”
Part III: Life’s the Biggest Troll
Because the Internet aims to answer two questions: Who Am I? and Why Try?.
Since it’s such an expansive project, I needed some help. So I called up Camden Ostrander, a co-writer from Season 7 of the musical analysis podcast Dissect.
We dove right in, starting with the question of identity. “The exploration of Who Am I begins with the face of the project, which is the album cover,” Cam told me.
The album cover of Because the Internet
As you look at the picture of Glover on the album cover, you start to notice something. It’s blurred, constantly moving, because it’s actually a GIF, showing us that the face of this project isn’t sitting still.
“There’s a lot of examination in the work of brand and identity and his life as a public figure, and his understanding of what it means to be Donald Glover or Childish Gambino,” Cam said. “And how different people will view him for different reasons, right?”
Now that The Boy has gotten off the bus from camp, we start to learn more about him and how he’s a reflection of Glover’s real-world personas. In the screenplay, he’s the son of rapper Rick Ross, a cheeky nod to how Ross built a career off of an exaggerated image.
Even as The Boy grows up wealthy, he doesn’t feel any purpose in life. He throws big parties and makes a living by trolling celebrities on the internet, but it’s not until an altercation he’s filming outside a nightclub turns violent — and someone dies in front of him — that he begins to deal with his existential crisis.
At points, The Boy learns how to open up and be more vulnerable; for example, he tells a friend that he feels like he’s “sleepwalking through life” after witnessing death up close during “Worldstar.”
However, not too long after, The Boy listens to Track 7, “Telegraph Avenue,” while driving up to visit an ex-girlfriend in Oakland. When the ex rejects his advances, he defaults back to his identity as the boastful yet insecure child we met at the beginning of the screenplay, stunting in an almost comedic fashion on Track 8, “Sweatpants.”
Cam’s interpretation of these events is that defining our identity is a somewhat circular path. “There’s a pattern of cycles here, where we get to that point over and over and have to build ourselves up from that point,” he said. “I believe it’s a continual process.”
Stuck in this loop, The Boy has an intense feeling of loneliness, underscored when his father passes away and an older man tells him he needs to grow up.
A billboard on the drive from L.A. to Oakland with BTI’s eponymous phrase
The Boy also sees an ambiguous phrase wherever he goes: “Roscoe’s Wetsuit.” No one seems to know what this means, yet the phrase continues to spread like wildfire.
Glover made this go viral in real life, too, when he put up the phrase on an actual billboard, prompting fans to work together on message boards and subreddits in an effort to try and decipher what it meant.
This search for meaning among The Boy and Glover’s fans is intended to mirror the artist’s own odyssey. Roscoe’s Wetsuit doesn’t actually mean anything; instead, the message is that purpose is found through the connections we make as we explore life with each other.
“...it’s never going to be final, we’re always going to be constantly seeking together,” Cam said in reference to Roscoe’s Wetsuit. “And so that’s why we’re here, is to be together in that process and experience.”
By the album’s penultimate track,The Boy is with a woman he cares about, but before he’s able to make a sustainable connection with her, the script implies that he meets a tragic death. The song, titled “Earth: The Oldest Computer,” is a not-so-subtle reference to the ironic fate of the Earth in The Hitchhikers’ Guide to the Galaxy, blowing up mere moments before it could accomplish its goal.
The Boy is reflective as he hurdles towards his doom. Glover raps how "progress is the only thing that will last,” hopeful that we can code a better future by helping each other rather than indulge in the selfish and shallow lifestyle that The Boy represents.
Glover, pictured on a Ferriss wheel in the music video for “3005,” shows that we’re constantly reinventing ourselves in life, going through cycles.
To conclude, the artist knows he is a product of the Internet — without it, his career probably wouldn't exist. Yet he still thinks we can do a better job of embracing our flaws and being truthful with each other on the web. With the line “to be alone is alive,” Glover reminds us that loneliness is part of the human condition, and the vulnerability he’s presented online is meant to connect us through our shared fears.
The album ends with the sound of pages being flicked through, looping right back into the first track of the album. Therefore, Glover has given his take on the project’s main questions: Identity is a constant reinvention, while purpose is found in that reinvention and the connections we make along the way.
So how has the meaning of Because the Internet changed over the last decade, as the worldwide web has only become more and more omnipresent in our lives?
Part IV: The Internet is Evolving
If you were to trace Donald Glover's career, it’d probably play out like a non-linear episode of Atlanta. You might even see a squiggly line — a Jeremy Bearimy of sorts.
Even as a fan who's grown up with the artist's work, I still get lost searching through Glover's back catalog of mixtapes, comedy shows, and Community reruns.
Glover in the music video for “This is America,” which went viral in 2018.
What's clear, however, is that Because the Internet served as an inflection point in his career, opening him up to more mainstream audiences and celebrated creatives. Jordan Peele's Get Out wouldn't be the same without Glover's chilling "Redbone" setting the mood from the jump, and "This is America" captivated the country in 2018.
But I do want to make something clear: just because Glover has succeeded with this principle in mind does not mean it’s repeatable — or healthy — for everyone. Therefore, you should treat this essay less of an endorsement and more of an exploration.
As I talked about in Essay 2, “The Weirdos Are Winning,” we can’t all just make what we think is dope and expect everything to figure itself out. Glover is aware of the faults in his logic, too — in one interview, he admitted that not everyone has the same luck he’s experienced or freedom to pursue what they want:
“I don’t want to be the guy on camera saying, ‘You should be following your dreams!’ And then people are like, ‘I have 5 kids.’”
The legacy of BTI to me, however, is how Glover was able to build this world that fans keep coming back to, discovering more about this project — and themselves.
While Glover has continued to evolve as a creative, so too has the internet. BTI’s meaning will continuously change as terms like “Web 3” and the “metaverse” become more common, water cooler talk, and our online identities that we carefully craft and shape only become more intertwined with our day-to-day lives.
I’ve been creating for a s long as I can remember, but I never knew how exactly I fit into this $104 billion dollar “creator economy.” A year ago, though, as I listened to Dissect’s breakdown of BTI over the course of a 14-hour road trip, something clicked for me.
This passion of mine for creating has always come back to a desire for building evergreen worlds, worlds that stand the test of time. Worlds that people can immerse themselves in and constantly redefine their relationship with.
Glover once said that he only wants fans who are going to dig deeper, because those are the ones who end up staying. So how do we build these types of worlds for our community members — and hope they don’t get blown up in favor of intergalactic highways?
More on that in Essay 5, “An Introduction to World-Building.”
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