Fans Accuse Bill Burr’s ‘Hired PR Shills’ of Defending Him on Reddit

When Bill Burr showed up on Conan O’Brien’s podcast this week, he accused bots of stirring up fake outrage about his appearance at the Riyadh Comedy Festival. Blaming fake social media accounts for his troubles seemed like a reach, but now Redditors are accusing Burr of essentially the same strategy. 

“To Bill Burr’s hired PR shills in here, I say what’s up,” began a thread in the r/conan subreddit. “You’re not fooling anybody.”

“Noticed them in burr’s subreddit this morning,” replied another user. “Clankers everywhere.”

The theory makes sense — in theory. Any competent management company would try to mitigate damage done to its comedian client, even if that damage was largely self-inflicted. Could that reputation repair include creating social media accounts to defend that comedian? It wouldn’t be the most ethical strategy, but sure, it could be done.

Over in r/BillBurr, positive comments are hard to find these days. Still, there are a few contrarians. “I’m a massive Bill Burr fan, and I couldn’t give a fuck that he played a show in a country with an atrocious civil rights record,” wrote one user. “He’s a comedian feeding his family. It’s none of my business how he earns his money.”

A PR shill? Maybe, but that Redditor has racked up nearly 16,000 comment karma over the past six years — it’s a hell of a cover-up job if all of those comments on the guitar pedalboard threads were in preparation for this moment. 

A more likely candidate is an account created last month with no public posts to its name. This “user” posts a pretty spirited defense of Burr, using suspiciously advanced spelling and grammar for a random Redditor:

“People don’t realize this wasn’t for money. Bill could make that much doing 3 shows in Vegas without traveling across the world. I totally understand the concerns and I’m not denying the serious issues that still exist in SA especially around women’s rights and free expression. But I think it’s more nuanced than the public is willing to see. What I’m trying to say is that things like a comedy festival might not be revolutionary on their own but they can be signs of gradual cultural change. Especially in a country that was completely closed off just a few years ago. Even if it’s state funded. A lesbian made gay jokes and that is shocking for SA. Acknowledging that doesn’t mean endorsing the government or forgetting the past. I think it means recognizing that progress is often uneven and sometimes messy. I think it’s possible to hold both truths that serious human rights issues exist AND may be changing in some areas.”

Suspicious! If that’s a social media pro posing as a Burr fan, they should dumb it up a little to fit in. 

It doesn’t really matter, since an overwhelming majority of Redditors in comedy threads are ready to ride Burr out of town, even angrier over the comedian’s justifications than his playing Riyadh in the first place. Positive comments are being shouted down by contests to come up with a new nickname for Burr. Currently, Billy Bonesaw, Billy Burqa and Old Billy Bloodmoney are the frontrunners.