[PhasmaFelis]

Bo Burnham on getting into showbiz: "Don't take advice from guys like me who've gotten very lucky. Taylor Swift telling you to follow your dreams is like a lottery winner saying 'Liquidize your assets! Buy Powerball tickets! It works!'"

(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q-JgG0ECp2U)

[UpshotKnothole]

Ah Taylor Swift, she didn’t really win the lottery though, or if she did, she was able to start off buying a loooooot of tickets. Her father worked for Merril Lynch, from three generations of bank presidents. Her mother worked in finance. When she was 14 her father moved the family to Nashville and worked for Merril Lynch there, and invested in a record label called Big Machine to the tune of $120,000. This was the company that first signed her.

She grew up rich, with the freedom to pursue her passion from the age of 10, when her mother would take her to karaoke contests. The ability to up stakes and move to Nashville, to have your father buy your way into a record label... well... it doesn’t overshadow her natural ability, but it helps to explain how she was able to leverage it so effectively.

[phakding]

You probably misunderstood the post you replied to.

[andrewaylett]

Even with all those advantages, success isn't guaranteed. I think you're reinforcing the parent's point, which I read that Taylor Swift was given the opportunity to follow her dreams and that worked out really well for her; that doesn't make it good advice for other people to follow, especially if they don't have the advantages she had.

[tomnipotent]

> She grew up rich

Exactly - she won the lottery being born into a rich white family in the U.S.

[UpshotKnothole]

She won more lotteries than that. She won the lottery of being born rich, white, and connected. And in a country like the US. She won the lottery of being beautiful, of having an excellent voice and musical talent, of having parents willing to use their money and power to further her career of choice. She won the lottery of not having any crippling mental illnesses or learning disabilities, of not being sexually assaulted, and more lotteries besides.

But Bo Burnham’s quote really isn’t about that, he’s talking about getting lucky and having your career take off. The truth is that many many lotteries typically need to be won before you can even enter that lottery. My point was that Taylor Swift didn’t just “take a chance” on music, she used all of her existing wins to stack the deck in her favor. If you look at a lot of CEO’s the same is true of them, and it’s not just the luck of their career taking off, but the luck of ever being in a position to have that happen.

[icebraining]

of not being sexually assaulted

Nitpick, but this isn't actually true (see lawsuit she won), and we don't really have any way to know if it was true even before she became famous. I agree with your general point, though.

[PhasmaFelis]

> But Bo Burnham’s quote really isn’t about that, he’s talking about getting lucky and having your career take off.

I think it was about both. Later in the clip he says to Conan O'Brien "We're tall white guys, we overcame nothing to get here."

[manigandham]

There is nothing wrong with leveraging your opportunities. Most people don't even do that and would be surprised at just how far they can get if they did.