Mr. Beast is one of the most successful Youtube creators, with a channel dedicated to making content that can only really be described as "content." He's known for outrageous, attention grabbing stunts like recreating the death games from "Squid Game" and giving away vast sums of money. He'll spend massive budgets to blow up expensive vehicles, organize extreme challenges, and commit acts of mass altruism. Famously, he's paid for sight and hearing correction surgery for thousands of people. The whole point of Mr. Beast is that he goes to extremes to make a spectacle - and it's made him wildly popular with a certain kind of viewer.
I'd heard of Mr. Beast but had seen only clips of his videos before now. They're not my idea of entertainment. Frankly, watching his videos feels a lot like someone with ADHD flipping through a bunch of different reality shows and game shows and fast-forwarding through the slow parts. I understand that the videos are designed this way to improve metrics. It's difficult to skip around in them, and each installment is easily broken down into smaller shorts and gifs, perfect for going viral on social media. Their appeal is also obvious. Reality television became such a mainstay in recent years because it's cheap and easy to produce. Mr. Beast videos are not cheap and clearly take a lot of effort behind the scenes. He's regularly spending the equivalent of blockbuster movie budgets on twelve minute videos with incredibly simple premises. Let's put a Lamborghini in a hydraulic press. Let's wreck someone's house and buy them a new one. Let's make the world's largest bowl of cereal. Let's randomly give away large sums of money to waitresses and homeless people.
The real talent of Mr. Beast, aka Jimmy Donaldson, is being a great showman and businessman, who has figured out a way to grow his audience and scale up his success to unprecedented levels. He's not especially creative or insightful - most of the videos are just more expensive, sped-up versions of reality show schtick, with shiny production values. Mr. Beast isn't even an especially good host, often relying on his "Jackass" style posse of buddies to cheerlead and keep the energy up. It's not surprising that the vast majority of Mr. Beast's audience is kids - the type of viewer who would be the most impressed with all of this maximalist chaos and instant gratification.
If you're not a kid, Mr. Beast's videos get dull in a hurry. All they really offer are easy doses of visceral spectacle or feel-good fuzzy feelings. There's almost no substance underneath all the flash. I felt compelled to write this post when I saw a recent Mr. Beast video about some car crash stunts with superficial similarities to "Mythbusters." In "Mythbusters," there were certainly wrecks and explosions, but there was also an admirable commitment to showing and explaining the scientific method. In the "Mr. Beast" video, the crash test dummies were just being destroyed for the fun of it. No accelerometers or shock measurement devices were in sight to show if it was actually possible to survive some of these situations. You just had a passel of dudebro guys crowing every time something went boom, and there'd be a quick edit to the next stunt.
There have been plenty of analysis pieces pointing out how disturbing the messaging is in some Mr. Beast videos, especially the way anything seems to be forgivable for the right amount of money. However, it's the style of the videos themselves that worry me more. They feel like a parody of reality television, so dumbed down and so attention deficit that part of me is still waiting for a punchline. Will Mike Judge please step out from behind the curtain, and reassure us that this was just an elaborate marketing campaign for "Idiocracy 2"?
As for Mr. Beast himself, I harbor no ill will towards him, despite the cult of personality he's been cultivating. He seems to be expending a lot of energy toward expanding his operations into branded food items like chocolate bars and burgers - a more stable long term business plan than running a Youtube channel. He's also demonstrated an admirable commitment to philanthropy and maintaining the appearance of a responsible human being. I may find his screen presence subpar, but from the interviews I've seen, Jimmy Donaldson seems to be a nice, sane, stable guy.
I hope that lasts.
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