MrBeast: Philanthropist or Secret Sadist?
MrBeast’s YouTube stunts continue blurring the line between philanthropy and psychological torture
The economic disparities of our modern age have given rise to a host of issues, but among the most unusual of all is the growing ubiquity and relatability of Squid Game and other various game shows — in which contestants are enthusiastic to swap certain dignities in exchange for cash.
Next to Elon Musk, there’s likely no man more emblematic of our crushing inequalities, or of the internet age itself, than MrBeast. As the proud owner of the most subscribed YouTube account in history, boasting a whopping 219 million subscribers — more than two-thirds the population of the United States — the figures MrBeast commands are simply staggering.
I remember being a child and reloading the page in repeated succession as the first video ticked its way into 7-digit territory with a whopping million views; I remember watching another youtuber, the famously high-voiced Fred, become the first to pass over the same benchmark with his jaw-dropping one million follower achievement.
It’s hard to believe we’ve so quickly reached the days of a billion-view videos and subscriber counts more than 200 times greater than the soaring heights a 13-year-old me found so mind-bendingly precipitous.
Jimmy Donaldson, or MrBeast — the YouTube moniker by which he’s more popularly known — is an interesting example of internet fame. Perhaps no content creator has ever so singularly devoted himself to attaining viral acclaim as the stubble-clad content creator. With videos boasting outrageous titles like “I Spent 7 Days Buried Alive,” “Last To Take Hand Off $1,000,000 Keeps It,” and “”Would You Swim With Sharks For $100,000?” his viral success was inevitable.
Like many children of the internet, the fame he has today was the outcome in mind from day one. He’s stated in multiple interviews that the madness behind his method stems from the childhood he spent meticulously studying what exactly it is that makes videos go viral. By the time he began posting sensationalist challenges onto his channel in 2017, that he would become the viral creator of a generation was practically etched in stone — or entrenched in binary, as the case may be.
But it’s not as though his fame has been used strictly to build colossal fireworks, fill pools with Orbeez, and create questionably well-realized recreations of dystopian Netflix shows. With great virality comes great responsibility, and some of his videos have embodied enough of that thinking that even Peter Parker would give him a kudos. Videos like “I Built 100 Wells In Africa,” “We’re Giving Away $30 Million In Free Food,” and “We Helped Paralyzed Dogs Run Again” make clear that he’s a force for good.
But that those philanthropic videos sit alongside ones like “$456,000 Squid Game In Real Life,” and “Survive 100 days Trapped, Win $500,000” have a way of blurring the picture. In the latter example, I couldn’t help but click on the video as I scrolled through my feed the other day. Though I can’t quite call myself a MrBeast fan and I’m anything but a subscriber, I can’t deny that he’s figured out the art of an enticing title to a bombastic, neon T.
In the video, he takes two strangers and (voluntarily) subjects them to 100 entire days of what could aptly be described as mild psychological torture. While the volunteering contestants are still given their basic amenities, the mind games, daylight deprivation, and blaring bulbs that glow incessantly through the night raise concerns about how much of this was truly necessary for entertainment purposes.
As more and more of his videos center around people subjecting themselves to great discomforts in exchange for Teslas and suitcases full of cash, I can’t help but see something oddly worrisome about this path.
Though the video isn’t quite what I would call sadistic, that his videos claim debatable victims at all no longer seems necessary. If he can build a million-dollar, eco-friendly firework or fill a bay full of gummy bears with the funds from his last video alone, what sense is there in locking people in confined spaces for entire seasons?
While the confinement amasses its luxuries throughout their 100 days in the enclosure in keeping with the video’s entertainment value, it’s clear there’s a torment that colors the creeping boredom of their time confined. And though at worst, the space is probably most akin to a Sweden-level prison in its docility, it still introduces enough unnecessary anguish into the equation to raise questions.
Though it’s difficult to discredit the gravity of his greater philanthropic endeavors, that they sit jarringly alongside these oddly macabre challenges and flagrant exploitations of economic disparity has a certain way of souring them. He represents both sides of the internet in equal measure: he’s the walking embodiment of our attention economy and an ever-present reminder that society is so sink or swim that these internet money challenges hold a broadening appeal. For those who watched Squid Game and casually said, “I’d do that before coping with another day in this economy,” MrBeast is a savior — a prophet on an e-pedestal.
But on the other side of that coin, MrBeast represents the unifying force that the internet can be when well-channeled, and the lasting ripple effects of kindness. He’s an eerie reminder that views are money and that each of his videos nets nearly enough of it that he can cure the blind en masse or eat $100,000 gold-encrusted ice cream cones on alternating days of the week. He’s a figure that represents the diametric ends of existence during these strange digital days.
He’s the manifestation of community and exorbitance in equal measure. He’s extravagant, benevolent, decadent, empathetic, excessive, magnanimous, and indulgent. The leaps between opposite ends of the influencer spectrum from video to video are something dizzying to behold. But despite the utter flamboyance of each new spectacle uploaded — for children who grew up umbilically attached to the phones in their pockets — they still find a relatable sort of friend in the stratospherically famous YouTube star.
Raised on the viral culture of early YouTube, MrBeast has spent years bathing in just what it is that his fans now expect. But YouTube was an inchoate force in those early years. It had a colossal sway even while its future was anyone’s best guess and the internet was still a newly built playground. In the years since its unveiling, an array of influencers, vloggers, and creators have erected a culture around each platform. Each has customs and standards of discourse considered correct.
Though these social media platforms are more giant than ever before — spare a few that have died out in a survival-for-the-fittest scramble — they’re deep-rooted, algorithmic and by and large too big to fail. They stand on stable grounds. They teeter less with gusts of winds and their peaks are more scalable. Content creators can learn from the failures of their predecessors. Social media platforms are each established entities.
On YouTube, people have learned the game at hand so well that they can beat it to a blood-red pulp without skewing the play button at its center. MrBeast honed what he needed in order to ascend the towers of our time. But virtue isn’t always what we value. Spectacle and clickability are the tools of his trade and he spent years cultivating the brave new skills it took to properly wield them.
While there’s no denying he’s a flawed figure, there are worse heroes to have in life than the ones curing people of crippling ailments while arranging world-record-breaking-sized games of dodgeball and launching trains into giant pits for the inglorious fuck of it. MrBeast is truly a sign of our times.