This parody of Bo Burnham's 'Welcome to the internet' is better than it has any right to be

"You can make some Tracer porn or watch her do the Fortnite dance," 23 seconds in, was the first of several lines in "Welcome to 3D Software" that got an unexpected laugh out of me. The last time I used any 3D modeling software was a solid 15 years ago, so I went into this short video not really sure there'd be any jokes I'd connect with. But artist Savannah Shire's parody is almost as relatable as Bo Burnham's hit Welcome to the Internet for the terminally online. If you've played a videogame on a computer at any point in your life or ever used an Adobe product, there's something in here for you.

Burnham's song, from last year's incredible comedy special Inside, pairs a simple, jaunty piano melody with jokes about all the things our online hellscape has gifted us. "Would you like to fight for civil rights or tweet a racial slur? Here's a tip for straining pasta, here's a nine-year-old who died." And so on and so on—it's funny and bleak, like a lot of Burnham's comedy.

Shire's parody about 3D animation and related software is more specific and less likely to make you weep for the state of humanity, but it might make you flash back to some moment where you were screaming at an unresponsive Photoshop. Instead of "Obama sent the immigrants to vaccinate your kids" we've got lines like "Make a short film starring Master Chief or photoscan your dog."

I love that the short parody is such a spot-on representation of Burnham's staging, complete with the dark room and blue spotlight on the star pianist—except in this case it's a cutesy 3D rendering of Shire jamming out. A few manic close-ups also provide an excellent look at the texture work that went into the model. It's just charming as heck.

Wes Fenlon
Senior Editor

Wes has been covering games and hardware for more than 10 years, first at tech sites like The Wirecutter and Tested before joining the PC Gamer team in 2014. Wes plays a little bit of everything, but he'll always jump at the chance to cover emulation and Japanese games.


When he's not obsessively optimizing and re-optimizing a tangle of conveyor belts in Satisfactory (it's really becoming a problem), he's probably playing a 20-year-old Final Fantasy or some opaque ASCII roguelike. With a focus on writing and editing features, he seeks out personal stories and in-depth histories from the corners of PC gaming and its niche communities. 50% pizza by volume (deep dish, to be specific).