Steve Burns is best known for the role he played as the original Steve from “Blue’s Clues.”
However, after leaving the hit kids’ cartoon in 2002 in pursuit of a music career, rumors began to swirl that Burns had died.
The death hoax took on a life of its own and circulated the internet for years, despite the fact that Burns is very much alive.
Now, Burns is opening up about that time in his life, telling The New York Times that the death hoax took its toll on him.
@hioutthereitsmesteve ♬ original sound – hioutthereitsmesteve
“Everyone though I was dead for a while,” he told The New York Times in an interview published Sept. 18. “That hurt, to be honest.”
“And it kind of messed me up because that was happening while the internet was just sort of beginning to internet. No one, including myself, was kind of prepared for the degree of consensus that it represented,” Burns explained.
As The Times reports, today, Burns lives a quiet life in the Catskills but uses social media to offer comfort to the now adults who grew up watching him help an animated dog named Blue find clues.
“They are deliberately simple,” Burns said of the videos he now shares on social media. “I try to do as little as possible on TikTok other than deeply listen.”
Admitting he didn’t expect the videos to “resonate at all,” Burns revealed the concept began “about three years ago, I did a little shout-out video for Nick Jr. celebrating the 25th anniversary of ‘Blue’s Clues,’ which I just improvised.”
So about that time Steve went off to college… #BluesClues25 pic.twitter.com/O8NOM2eRjy
— Nick Jr. (@nickjr) September 7, 2021
“I didn’t write it,” Burns shared with The Times. “I just kind of stood in front of the camera and said what was on my mind. The concept there was I wanted to continue the conversation that I started a zillion years ago with everyone. Let’s just scale it up, you know, now that we’re much more like peers.”
After learning what TikTok was, Burns said he used it as a “kind of social experiment in a way.”
“(I) said, I’ll just check in. I’ll just literally make it about you. And so I just said, “Hey, what’s up? How are you?” And I just listen for one minute.”
And now that his social media videos get millions of views, Burns said it’s quite the juxtaposition from people believing he was dead for more than a decade.
@hioutthereitsmesteve ♬ Awakening – SØLYS
“When a zillion, trillion people all think you’re dead for 15 years, it freaks you out,” he admitted. “I just kind of wondered, ‘Is it possible to use the internet backward? Instead of creating micro-harm in aggregate, that is actually corrosive, can we just use it in positive ways?’”
As it turns out, you can.
And although the vulnerable comments his videos often receive can “get pretty intense,” he gets a front row seat to the positive he hoped to create.
“My favorite thing about TikTok is that what I’m doing is incredibly simple. Everyone else is doing all the work,” Burns told The Times.
“And what really gets meis when someone posts something dark, something grim, and everyone else comments to support them. I think that’s really beautiful. And it’s happening just because some middle-aged bald dude in glasses is paying attention. I’m not doing anything that everyone else can’t do.”