Mr Beast is A Sick Fuck
And for $10,000 I would suck his [redacted]
Imagine this. You have been unable to see for years, perhaps decades. There is a corrective surgery to fix this, but because you are unfortunate enough to live in America where there is no socialized medicine and the “insurance system” is a scam wholly disconnected from any form of wellness and instead geared unilaterally towards profit, you are immensely grateful to win a sort of social lottery, i.e. be taken under the wing of a philanthropic YouTuber who will fund your healthcare out of the goodness of his heart, or for views. It simply doesn’t matter, because the surgery is being funded. It is a haunting scenario, in large part because you open your eyes, and you can see again, and the first thing you see is this face.
That’s right folks, I went down the MrBeast rabbit hole. (For this we can blame my agent, sorry to throw you under the bus but, it’s your fault.) Mr Beast got pushback for this video, for perhaps obvious reasons. And in recent weeks, it seems he’s broken through the YouTube realm and is starting to be discussed in other forums. The broad TLDR is that he makes “charitable” do-gooder videos in the style of most YouTube clickbait. People (as in, some tweets I saw) seem to either loathe Mr Beast and find him the worst emblem of a savior-type, while others absolutely adore the man and think he can do no wrong.
I propose a revolutionary and vital intervention, in this, the problem of our times. We must embrace Mr Beast neutrality. He is not demonic, nor is he Christ. Let us accept that this is simply a man, who is very good at YouTube, who is doing charitable things he shouldn’t have to do, and in doing so reaps the rewards of a broken system, that alas he did not personally break, nor can he single handedly fix. Is he making good content? I don’t think so but obviously he’s cracked the code of what goes viral and people love this shit. Is he making toxic, evil content? Maybe if we’re too zoomed in it might seem like it. But if we’re comparing him to the dreck that exists around him in the YouTube sphere, again: I plead for neutrality.
I think we know about this genre of content, for the most part. The sort of “feel good” spin to something that actually just lays bare the horrors of contemporary life under capitalism. The type that MSNBC Money writes up in an optimistic fashion? Hundreds of kids work together to build local man a wheelchair, because their tiny hands are perfect for this type of labor and the wheelchair is really expensive and not covered by insurance, isn’t that so touching! Etc. But is that what’s happening here? Many seem to think so, but I’m not convinced. Let’s investigate.
First of all: who the fuck is this guy??? Why do I know about him? Why do we care? 1) no clue, 2) Midas touch for cursed content and 3) we shouldn’t care but it’s interesting to explore. Onwards to his Wikipedia.
Wikipedia says that the MrBeast team is 30 people strong and that he was one of the 10 highest paid YouTubers in 2020. He started with mostly video game content, finding his way to “videos estimating the wealth of other YouTubers.” After going on to try other things he found his niche. His real breakthrough was when he did a recreation of Squid Game where almost 500 people competed for cash in a shockingly elaborate re-enactment. He has also fashioned a Willy Wonka chocolate factory. Now, is it grim that Mr Beast recreates scenes from famous media wherein a single man can decide the fate of one worthy and needy soul? Yes, undoubtable. Mr Beast do Snowpiercer!
His success on YouTube has spawned many spin-off merchandising endeavors, with a chocolate bar company and a Super Bowl spot to feature it.
I’m hesitant to think of him as this sort of evil mastermind, monocle on and cackling while he sits on piles of cash. To do that is to continue to obfuscate the structural problems that make him a success in the first place, not just the economic structure but also the algorithmic one that rewards this type of content. He seems more like a young dude who likely has not very articulated politics and is doing something he thinks is entertaining. Would I be shocked if he had like, a whole trove of racist tweets hidden away? I would not be shocked. Thou whomst appoints himself, even inadvertently, to a Christ-like role in his gamified YouTube world and thus becomes synonymous with being The Goodest Boy has the farthest to fall from grace. Ancient proverb. Amen.
In 2020, I wrote about a similar phenomenon called philanthrocapitalism,
I am not sure anyone is particularly surprised by the idea that people with unfathomable amounts of money can give away substantial portions of this, seem generous albeit giving what is likely the equivalent of a few pennies to them, and remain generally in good cultural esteem. The “well at least they are doing something” aspect of it all—and the sheer amount of money they give, and how hard it is to conceptualize that amount of resource hoarding—can make it difficult to talk about said resource hoarding without running into an Elon or Bezos or Zuck defender, eager to uphold their Boy Kings.
Now this is quite different to the Mr Beast scenario, in large part because he does not have Bezos Bucks, but also because he isn’t trying to be philanthropic really, he’s trying to entertain people. But he still benefits from the aura of “goodness” ascribed to those who are, for whatever motives, doing perceivably “good” things. He’s a brand, and brands do well to associate themselves with charity work.
But unlike corporations who try to paper over their war crimes with good deeds, in these videos philanthropy is not the point, the views are the point—I cannot stress this enough. Obviously the internet is not a place for nuance, but we get real dog shit understandings from both those who defend him and those who liken him to the devil, the sole embodiment of late stage capitalism, both of which make little sense. This reached a new fever pitch when he asked (tweeted) at his followers to help clean up his chocolate bar aisles. As Jezebel reports, “The directive set off an online firestorm of equal-parts mockery and fierce defense. Here was a multi-millionaire, his critics said, gleefully and unabashedly calling on supporters—many of whom are children—for free labor to sell more products. Some called it a new low for late-stage capitalism.”
If people want to clean up the candy bar aisle in hopes of getting attention and/or money from this cursed YouTube Wunderkind, that’s not unpaid labor. He is simply not their boss, and tweeting out a suggestion is not a mandate. Is it strange? Definitely. Does his aura of Goodness contribute to people’s willingness to help him? Yes. But people love this guy and rally around him: they want to help him clean up the chocolate bars, and yes, in large part because he has secured his image as a Good Guy, a philanthropic guy, a guy who is just trying to help. That’s a weird dynamic, certainly, but I’m not sure it reveals a new low for late-stage capitalism as much as a continuation of a landscape in which consumers and creators have a parasitic relationship that obscure many structural inequities, least of all the one where a guy tweets for help cleaning up his shitty candy bars.
In that same Jezebel piece, we get this description:
“This latest demonstration of supposed goodwill adequately sums up what makes him so controversial: Between white saviorism and doing anything to go viral, he embodies the worst and most obnoxious aspects of influencer capitalism. Other people’s lives, struggles, and poverty appear to be a playground for him, a means to a profitable end, all while raising his profile as a supposed societal benefactor. Yes, he’s “helping” people—but at the crux of it all, he’s profiting off of systemic inequities, making a viral show out of others’ suffering for his followers’ consumption, and doing so for his own enrichment.”
I was struck by this paragraph because so much of it makes a sort of sense, and one with logic that is deeply familiar to me, but it’s also confusing. What is influencer capitalism? Are we outraged at this man simply because he’s really good at understanding the attention economy? In this definition, couldn’t we classify the NYT, for instance, as making a viral show out of others’ suffering? Is the “others’ suffering” the people who choose to run around a mall with 10k and see if they can hide from Mr Beast? Is Mr Beast responsible for the conditions that would lead someone to play on a game show / reality show for money?
I ask these questions in hopes of problematizing the narrative around Mr Beast from those who are looking to understand why the videos feel icky. Because sure! They do! But if we zoom out and look at the nature of the media landscape, the attention economy, the actual economy, etc.—I think we would find a whole lot of things we consume function like this—this one just makes it quite obvious.
Would people watch these videos if after he gave out the cash he launched into a little tirade about why his handouts can never materially change the conditions he tries to improve? And in fact continues to funnel into? Mmmm, probably not. Expecting Mr Beast to articulate these things in the videos in which he must quickly and efficiently capture people’s attention is a longshot. It’s not why he’s here. He’s here to entertain, and I’d bet most people competing in the Mr Beast videos are well aware of this fact. In that sense, to assert the videos are exploitative is to misunderstand the nature of this entertainment, and people’s willingness to be part of it.
And here I again plead for a Mr Beast neutrality. We cannot blame Mr Beast for the world we live in. Nor can we expect him to fix it. I hesitate to ascribe too much meaning to his rise in popularity: it is near impossible to sort out people’s interest or desire to see a thing versus the relentless slog of man-made algorithms hell-bent on showing us the thing. Which is to say, we risk further obscuring societal problems here when we fixate on Mr Beast as an emblem of anything. He is a Brand, he is very good at being a brand, we can choose to eat his shitty chocolate or give him views at our own discretion. But being genuinely angry at this man—that’s a waste of time. There are much better directions in which to direct our understandable ire about the state of the world. Godspeed.
Bonus cartoon:
Anyways thanks for reading, subscribers to this dear newsletter will get a SECOND email this weekend (this one is too long) with links to what I’m reading and some vital musings on the Scandoval in the Vanderpump Rules universe.
Happy belated International Women’s Day to all of my lovely and perfect readers. Me (and clem) love you lots! Xo
