Watch Kirby Sybert Delightfully Skewer The Entire TED Talk Format

BY JOEY SWEENEY | Though we can’t be sure, it does feel like we are now safely on the other side of the TED Talk era. What was once a juggernaut in how TED gave people a new way to share ideas — many of which were great, and have certainly influenced the times we now live in — has become, over time, a series of memes, gestures, and a shorthand. As such, they’re ripe for comedy. 

And though many have poked fun, the Philly singer-songwriter Kirby Sybert’s clip for his song “Better Than I Was” does so in a way that feels defining. The song is a deep, ominous cut on Sybert’s (excellent) new LP, Happy People Make Happy Things; the video is a symphony of gestures. 

Recorded “live in Toronto” and directed by Mike Gallagher, the clip takes Sybert’s brooding and stormy track — with its refrain, what do I have to do? — and turns it on its head to become a darkly comic motivational speech. Green-screened into an alternate dimension of ecstatic TED-ness, Sybert becomes our turtlenecked guru. He does the “I’m gonna level with you” hand work. He mimes the “everybody knows X, but what if Y?” With his whole body, he makes all the signature moves: he “lets you in on the secret”; he “brings it down”; he gets huge laughs from the “audience.” Ultimately, he cuts to the screen above him, where we see his test subject, which, as it happens, is a different Kirby Sybert, cloaked in darkness. In what amounts to a feat of physicality that any actor would be proud of, Sybert lays bare every physical tell, every tired “storyteller” trope of the entire Bullshit Economy. 

And maybe this is why Sybert’s clip feels like the last word on this. Whether you liked or disliked [raises hand] the TED format, its central tenet has infiltrated the culture: Ideas can be rock stars, too. 

Thank you for coming to my TED Talk.