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I'll be there interviewing guests about what love means to
them. Again, reserve your free spot
for the event at the link below. On October 11th, 2021, Jimmy
Donaldson took to TikTok with a proposal for his audience.
Help get this video to 10 million likes and he will
recreate the smash Netflix series Squid game in real life.
With a proposition like that, his TikTok quickly reached 10
million views and within a day Jimmy was on the hook for a
project that felt way too ambitious for any digital
creator. But luckily for viewers, Jimmy
is not just any digital creator. Jimmy Donaldson is the man
behind Mr. Beast, the biggest channel on YouTube by a single
person. And if there's one thing fans
know about Jimmy, it's that no idea is too big and no video is
too expensive for Mr. Beast. By mid-october, Jimmy and his
team got to work. They partnered with finished
video game developer Supercell to help fund the video, which
ultimately cost a whopping $3.5 million to produce.
The team recreated several sets from the show, like the
Contestants Bunk Room, the Tug of War Platform and the Indoor
playground, and Jimmy cast 456 contestants to compete in a
series of games for a $456,000 winning prize.
While players in the Netflix show were eliminated from the
game via death, Jimmy awarded his eliminated contestants with
a $2000 cash consolation prize, A classic Mr. Beast move, Mr.
Beast's Squid Game Challenge was released on his YouTube channel
just one month later on November 24th, 2021.
Within days, the video helped Jimmy break four major YouTube
records for a single creator, including the fastest video to
reach 100 million views and the most subscribers gained in one
day. At 1.4 million subscribers,
nearly every mainstream media outlet was covering Mr. Beast's
Squid game video. With such algorithmic success,
criticism was sure to follow. Many called his version
dystopian and felt that it completely missed the point of
the original series, barely scratching the surface of the
show's message about hyper capitalism and wealth disparity.
But despite the criticism, one thing was now for sure.
Mr. Beast had solidified himself as YouTube's most powerful
creator, and it only took him nine years to get there.
From Centennial World, I'm Lauren Meisner and this is
Infinite Scroll, a podcast about Internet culture, the creator
economy, and how social media is shaping Gen.
Zed. Welcome back to Infinite Scroll,
everyone. I wanted to take a minute to
thank all of you for all of your love and support on last week's
episode. I know the style is so different
now from before and I so appreciate you guys sticking
with me while I figure out how to perfect this and navigate the
addition of the music and the different editing style and all
of that. As you know, I do basically all
of this myself and Annabelle helps me research and put it all
together. It's just me, so it will take a
little while as I figure out you know how to do it properly.
So as always, Please remember to rate, review and subscribe.
It means so much to me when you guys leave reviews.
I got some great feedback last week and it just helps me grow.
It helps me keep going, you know?
And Please remember to sign up to our newsletter as well, also
called Infinite Scroll. On Wednesdays we send out a
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five biggest think pieces or opinion pieces on the Internet
that week. And also please join our Geneva
group. That is where you guys can chat
with other people who are also obsessed with Internet culture
and creator drama and tea. OK, I'm going to read some
reviews every week. Again, I'm still going to keep
this going because it brings me so much joy.
So here are just a few that I received this week, Tara says.
Found this one so interesting. Great EP Hottie, Rach says.
Honestly, perfection. I loved this episode on Apple,
one says. Well done Lauren.
Great kickoff to your new podcast format.
Look forward to seeing what else the podcast entails and then we
got some feedback in Geneva as well, Emily said.
Lauren, I just want to pop in and say that the episode was so
good for the first solo, Can't wait for next week's and Jessica
said agreed. Bravo Lauren, If I'm being fully
honest, so much of what I loved about The Pod where you and
Jordan's banter, but you brought the same energy solo with the
info provided in an entertaining nuance and thorough fashion.
Jordan will be missed and I look forward to her guest
appearances. But you totally got this.
That was so kind. You guys, thank you so much
truly for sticking with me through this transition.
Mr. Beast is far from an overnight success.
The 25 year old YouTube grew up in North Carolina where he was
raised by a single mother after his parents divorced in 2007.
In the documentary The Origin of Mr. Beast by Stream Curiosity,
Jimmy's mother said he would hyper fixate on projects from an
early age. His early obsessions included
Lego and baseball, but as he entered his preteen years, Jimmy
would find the thing that he would hyper fixate on for the
next decade to come. Though Jimmy loved watching
YouTube as a kid, he didn't consider it something for him.
That is, until he saw one of his favorite gaming creators quit
his job and go full time on the platform.
Jimmy was 12 at the time, and that's when he realized that
creating YouTube videos could be a job.
I have a memory of this one video I watched back then where
one of my favorite creators, Woody's Gamertag, quit his job
and went full time on YouTube. And this is like before, like a
lot of people didn't even know you could make money on YouTube.
Back then. I remember seeing that I was
like 12 and it kind of just clicked in my head.
I was like, wait a minute, you can make money doing this?
Jimmy created his first channel where he engaged in sub for sub.
This was a popular tactic in the early days of YouTube where
creators would subscribe to each other's channels to help their
sub counts grow. Jimmy quickly had over 7000
subscribers, but his video views were dismal, like less than 10
views of video. So he scrapped the channel and
started a new channel called Mr. Beast 6000, named after his
randomized Xbox gamer username. In February 2012, at thirteen
years old, Jimmy's early content was very 13 year old boy, as
Ryan Broderick put it in the Garbage Day newsletter.
He was quote a teenage PewDiePie fan making gameplay videos.
Some of the titles of his early videos include Best Minecraft
Castle Ever, How to Get Unlimited Diamonds, Minecraft
Brackets, X-ray, Most Epic Thing in Minecraft with a Million
exclamation Marks and Question Marks.
A close childhood friend of Jimmy's, Chris Tyson, helped him
start the Mr. Beast channel. She soon became an important
part of the Channel Co hosting and appearing in many of the Mr.
Beast YouTube videos. Note Chris now uses she her
pronouns but was using he him at the time that Jimmy started the
Mr. Beast channel. On the beginnings of Mr. Beast
Chris says quote, he started making commentary style YouTube
videos which is like you have somebody playing a video game
then you're just talking over giving your opinions about
stuff. He started doing that for a
while which kind of turned into a new series that he started
where he was talking about Youtubers and how much money
they make. Jimmy also tried his hand at
skits and comedic videos, but didn't find much success with
this style of content. He would later joke about his
attempt on the Colin and Samir show, saying he is not naturally
funny, which is why these videos, which were wildly
popular at the time, just didn't stick for him.
One of the most endearing things about Jimmy that I found in
researching this episode is his tenacity.
He did not have a fast track to YouTube success, but persevered
for years Despite that. Two years after starting his
channel, Jimmy posted a video revealing that it took him
75,000 views to make his first $100 off of YouTube.
He said quote I am making around $30.00 a month.
That is what I am averaging right now throughout high
school. Jimmy will launch two series
that helped his channel grow. One, as I mentioned before,
where he would talk about what he presumed other Youtubers were
making from Adsense, and another where he poked fun at the worst
YouTube video intros. In a March 2016 video that was
part of his worst video intro series, he opened up about
feeling the push and pull between doing YouTube for growth
or simply because he enjoys it. Jimmy finished high school later
that year in 2016 before starting college at East
Carolina University. Jimmy's mother was insistent on
him attending college if he was going to stay living under her
roof, and she wasn't yet aware of his double life as a YouTube.
So Jimmy went to college to appease his mom, but instead of
attending classes, Jimmy spent most of his time editing and
making videos. It was around this time when his
viewership started rising and his Adsense was finally enough
that he could afford to move out of his mom's house.
This growth was largely thanks to his switch to challenge based
videos like filming himself cutting a table in half with a
plastic knife quote. I just stopped going to classes
and I just didn't tell my mom I would film videos while I was at
college. But somehow when I got there,
maybe I got a big spark of motivation and went harder.
But that's when things actually clicked and my viewership did
start to go up quite a bit. After just a couple of weeks,
Jimmy told his mom he was dropping out of college and
would move out the next day. As his channel grew, Jimmy hired
four of his childhood friends, Chris, Chandler, Garrett, and
Jake. In January 2017, Jimmy had his
first breakthrough moment. Five years after starting the
Mr. Beast channel, he posted an almost 24 hour long video
counting to 100,000. Counting to 100,000 actually
took him 40 hours, but Jimmy had to keep the video under 24 hours
for editing purposes, so he speed up parts of the video.
This marked the beginning of the Mr. Beast we now know, a channel
specializing in insane challenges.
He went on to post videos like microwaving a microwave, reading
the entire B movie script, watching its everyday bro for 10
hours straight, and saying Logan Paul's name 100,000 times quote.
That's when I kind of just realized, like, if I go all in,
I really be creative and unique and I do things that just no one
else would do because they're so hard and take so much effort,
right? People have no choice but to
watch it because it's just so interesting.
While Jimmy embraced stunt based content at the beginning of
2017, the philanthropic twist to his videos came a few months
later. In mid 2017, Jimmy was offered
his first brand deal with the app Quid.
The brand offered him $5000, which he ended up turning down
instead. Jimmy asked for $10,000 so he
could give it to a homeless person and film the interaction
for YouTube. He said it took a lot of
convincing, but the brand finally agreed, so long as the
video went viral. On June 16th, 2017, Jimmy
released the video titled Giving a Random Homeless man $10,000,
marking a significant turning point in the Mr. Beast Channel
and in Jimmy's career. This is not clickbait.
I'm going to give a random homeless guy $10,000 today.
He went on to make several similar videos that year, like
others where he gave more money to homeless people and one where
he tipped pizza delivery drivers hundreds of dollars.
This started Jimmy's cycle of using the money he made from one
video to reinvest in the following video.
Not only did these videos do really well, but Jimmy later
said that once he saw the impact he could make through his
content, he realized he wanted to do more philanthropy.
Quote I want to use brands to allow me to help people.
By November 2017, Mr. Beast reached 1,000,000 subscribers.
Jimmy met Talent manager Reed Dusher in 2018, and they began
working together. When they met, Reed said Jimmy
was giving away basically all of the money he was making.
This earned Jimmy the title of YouTube's biggest
philanthropist, having given away over $1,000,000 in one year
of these charity videos. 2018 was also the first time when
Jimmy really flexed his wealth and influence during the
PewDiePie versus T Series rivalry, which was essentially a
competition between creator PewDiePie and an Indian record
label to become the first channel to reach 100 million
subscribers. Jimmy publicly and financially
backed PewDiePie, buying billboards and numerous
television and radio ads to promote Pewdiepie's channel.
During the Super Bowl that year, Jimmy also bought multiple seats
for himself and his team whose shirts spelled out sub to
PewDiePie. Though T Series ended up winning
the battle, Jimmy's ability to help the most popular single
YouTube creator in the world at the time gain millions of
subscribers was a wake up call to the YouTube world.
Mr. Beast was one of the most powerful people online.
He finished out 2018 with 13 million subscribers.
Jimmy took his philanthropy to the next level in October 2019
when he announced Team Trees, a fundraising challenge on YouTube
with the goal of reaching $20 million to plant 20 million
trees to celebrate 20 million subscribers on his channel by
January 1st, 2020, giving himself just two months to hit
that fundraising goal. Jimmy collaborated with NASA
Engineer and YouTube Mark Rober on this project.
Together they tapped into their network of influencer colleagues
and many promoted the initiative for them for free on their
channels. Notable business people like
Jack Dorsey, Elon Musk, and Susan Wojcicki also donated to
the cause. By December 19th, Team Trees had
raised $20 million, which they donated to the Arbor Foundation.
Team Trees later led to Team CS, a similar initiative by the two
Youtubers, with the goal to raise $30 million to clean
30,000,000 lbs of trash out of the ocean.
The project was in collaboration with Ocean Cleanup, and this
partnership was highly controversial, as Molly Taft
writes for Gizmodo Quote. But before the team sees
campaign even began, it was a source of controversy with some
scientists in the YouTuber community.
That's because it's being done in partnership with the Ocean
Clean Up, a group that has come under widespread criticism by
scientists for its techniques to scoop up plastic from the open
ocean. In September 2020, Jimmy doubled
down on his Do Gooder reputation and launched a new YouTube
channel called Beast Philanthropy.
It was through this channel that he would raise more than $1
million in supplies for food banks to help service those
around the country who suffered during COVID.
In the Curiosity Stream documentary, Jimmy describes
Beast Philanthropy as a food bank funded by YouTube channel.
Following the success of his new career launch, Jimmy dabbled in
other business ventures outside of YouTube like Mr. Beast Burger
and festivals. Launching IN2020IN partnership
with Virtual Dining Concepts Mr., Beast Burger was initially
a delivery only American style fast food chain offering
burgers, sandwiches and fries. The first two years were a
massive success for the YouTuber with Mr. Beast Burger opening
over 300 delivery only locations across the United States and
selling over 1,000,000 burgers and less than three months.
As Alicia Kelso writes for Forbes Quote, within its first
quarter Mr., Beast Burger launched in partnership with
Virtual Dining Concepts, had about 300 locations available on
digital marketplaces, and hit its one millionth burger sold
milestone. The brand swiftly became the
most downloaded app on both iTunes and Google Play and was
one of the top five most popular Google searches worldwide.
Mr. Beast Burger instantly proved it could find success
without a prominent storefront or convenient drive through or
hefty marketing budget leverage by many of its global burger
peers. Soon the YouTube proved that
their delivery model wasn't the only path to success.
Opening the first brick and mortar Mr. Beast Burger store in
Rutherford, NJ last year, the store was an instant hit with
Mr. Beast Burger, breaking the record for, quote the most
burger sold in a single day by a single restaurant.
Jimmy has since distanced himself from Mr. Beast Burger
after noting issues with quality control in a deleted tweet from
June last year. Jimmy wrote quote.
I started Mr. Beast Burger to help restaurants make more money
during the pandemic and it worked.
But sadly, when working with 2000 restaurants that I don't
own, it's impossible to guarantee the order quality.
When asked if he plans to retire Mr. Beast Burger and close
specific locations, the influencers shared that due to
contractual obligations, he has limited control over the future
of the business. Festivals, on the other hand,
which is Mr. B's brand of chocolate bars that launched in
2022, has been a success. The Chocolate bars are sold in
grocery and department stores worldwide, and in 2023, Jimmy
announced that festivals had teamed up with the Charlotte
Hornets to debut a new logo and become their official jersey
patch sponsor of the 2023-2024 NBA season.
Now, it wouldn't be the story of Mr. Beast if I didn't cover the
criticism and questions around his philanthropic content.
So if you're a Mr. Beast simp, I suggest you click out now.
Despite his success on YouTube for years Jimmy struggled to
break into the mainstream. His audience was largely made-up
of preteen boys who like to play video games and other creators
who admired his dedication to the craft.
His 2021 Squid Game video changed all of that, but with
more notoriety amongst people who had fully developed
prefrontal cortexes, Jimmy started to face a level of
criticism he was not previously used to.
And this criticism has shown the cracks in the Mr. Beast facade.
The criticism against Jimmy actually starts at the root of
what he claims to care about most philanthropy.
Now, whenever somebody questions Jimmy's intentions, that person
is met with a gaggle of fans who say, undoubtedly that charity
equals good. So if Mr. Beast is doing
charity, no matter how he does it, it must be a good thing.
And if charity work is a good thing, then Mr. Beast must be a
good person. And if you're criticizing Mr.
Beast, you must be a bad person. So while yes, the money that
Jimmy has given away and the work that Beast Philanthropy has
done has no doubt changed lives, let's zoom out for a minute and
consider the problems with philanthropy as an industry.
Private philanthropy has increased dramatically in the
past 20 years, with nearly 3/4 of the world's philanthropic
foundations being established during that time.
British journalist Paul Vallely reports that between all of
them, these foundations control more than 1.5 trillion USD.
One of the main issues with private philanthropy is that
it's always an quote expression of power.
It's a super rich individual picking and choosing the causes
that matter to them, as opposed to, say, paying their fair share
of taxes. It lets the Super rich live out
their God complex. They believe the answer to the
world's problems is private philanthropy because they
believe that they know where the money should go, that they know
better than governments or local members of that society.
This can sometimes contradict or undermine the priorities of a
community. David Callahan, the founder and
editor of Inside Philanthropy, puts it this way.
Quote When donors hold views we detest, we tend to see them as
unfairly tilting policy debates with their money.
Yet when we like their causes, we often view them as heroically
stepping forward to level the playing field against powerful
special interests or backward public majorities.
These sort of a la carte reactions don't make a lot of
sense. Really.
The question should be whether we think it's OK overall for any
philanthropist to have so much power to advance their own
vision of a better society. We see this God complex
mentality through Mr. Beast's content and we also see those a
la carte reactions to Mr. Beast's content from his
audience. Jimmy doesn't ever address wider
systemic issues at play in his videos, and he absolutely always
centers himself in the videos. His videos are about him giving
back, not about the issues that he's covering in his videos.
YouTube The Tabernacle puts it like this quote.
Mr. Beast uses poverty as a backdrop to make himself look
better. He'll show himself giving money
to homeless people, tipping minimum wage workers, hundreds
of dollars, giving people free food at his food bank, paying
for medical procedures for people.
But he doesn't touch on why these people, most who live in
America, the richest country in the world, need a millionaire
YouTube to help them afford basic necessities.
He says one of his biggest motivators is helping people.
But one off handouts from a millionaire on camera doesn't do
anything to help society as a whole long term.
And his audience plays into this.
There are several videos on the Mr. Beast channel that take us
through people's living conditions, show us their car,
paint a picture of vulnerability, poverty and
desperation, and then to make us feel better about Americans
living in these conditions, Jimmy swoops in and saves them
by handing them a wad of cash or an iPad or something.
And as viewers, we connect with the struggle of these people, so
it's easier for us to see Mr. Beast, as Callahan put it,
heroically stepping forward to level the playing field.
But this general acceptance of Mr. Beast?
Charity porn, It feels so opposite of what we accept from
other people. It wasn't that long ago that a
TikTok creator basically got run off the platform for filming
herself handing a sleeping homeless man some food.
So why do we accept this from Mr. Beast?
Two other major issues with private philanthropy are the tax
incentives and the threat it poses to democracy.
Nicholas Lemon for The New Yorker writes, quote, donations
to nonprofit organizations are tax deductible, and only people
who itemize their deductions, that is, affluent people get
this advantage. Foundation endowments are not
taxed. What's more, donors often try to
leverage their gifts to influence the direction of much
larger flows of government spending.
So while Jimmy claims to, you know, give all of his money away
and that he loses money on every video, there have long been
questions about his tax breaks and his business write offs,
especially following the formation of Beast Philanthropy.
Now you might be thinking, well, Mr. Beast Philanthropy is at an
individual level. He's giving away lots of money
to individual people, as opposed to writing donations for bigger
causes that could influence government spending or public
policies. So that must be less insidious,
right? Well, let's look at his most
controversial video to date and his reaction to that
controversy, because how he responded to the backlash really
showed his cards. In January 2023, Jimmy posted a
video quote UN quote curing blindness in 1000 people.
In the video he paid for 1000 surgeries for blind patients
where the surgery is not available or accessible,
including the US, Mexico, Indonesia, Brazil, Vietnam,
Kenya and Jamaica. In this video, he also gave away
$10,000 to select patients, $50,000 to someone about to
start college, and a Tesla to a patient who always wanted a car.
This video was a turning point in the public perception of Mr.
Beast. Twitter user at LOL Overruled
shared a screenshot of the video writing.
There is something so demonic about this and I can't even
articulate what it is. That tweet went viral and
thousands of people quote tweeted it, sharing their own
thoughts on Mr. Beast's charity for views brand of content.
Many said that Mister Beast's content can be exploitative for
those involved. Others noted that his altruism
is both publicized and monetized, often making millions
of dollars from these videos, whether he personally pockets
the money or not. Quote, if he was doing this out
of the goodness of his heart, he wouldn't publicize it.
The fact that he's clearly doing this for content gives me the
feeling that he is involved in some truly evil shit, wrote at
Kaiser Beams. Alex Kranz, managing Editor at
The Verge, compared Mr. Beast to an early 2010's Elon Musk
because quote, he's a wealthy man who loves to market his
altruism as entertainment to build himself more wealth.
This comparison to Elon Musk is something Jimmy gets a lot, but
he himself is an admitted fan of Elon Musk, or at least used to
be, so I doubt he takes this comparison as a bad thing.
Tech journalist Steven Aquino said that as a blind person
himself, the video rubbed him the wrong way.
Quote. There's a new video out from a
highly prominent YouTube on curing blindness that really
rubs me the wrong way. It's literally a bunch of abled
people effectively shouting that having a disability is bad and
less than This is your problem, abled friends.
You keep conflating altruism with ableism, and we get let's
cure people like your Jesus. The video didn't address any
larger problem, like what factors may lead to this type of
blindness, or the systemic issues that prevent people from
affording this very quick, simple surgery.
A surgery that is covered by universal healthcare in many
countries, as Twitch streamer Amy C3 put it.
Quote If your content revolves around you proving that you are
a good person by finding people who are incredibly vulnerable,
exploiting them, and then humiliating them in front of
millions of people, I don't think that you are really
spearheading any real movement other than your own goals of
advancement. And about those random prizes
that Jimmy gives people throughout the video, in
addition to paying for the eye surgery.
That is a calculated move to increase retention on his
videos, which he openly discussed on the Colin and Samir
podcast. As his video faced increasing
criticism online, Jimmy took to Twitter in what journalist Ryan
Broderick called a charity tantrum.
Jimmy wrote Twitter Rich people should help others with their
money. Me.
OK, I'll use my money to help people.
And I promise to give away all my money before I die.
Every single penny. Twitter Mr. Beast bad Despite
millions of comments of people praising him for helping these
1000 people see again, Jimmy could not handle that there was
a subset of people online who were critical of his video and
skeptical of his intentions. This is a bizarre reaction to
have given. Mr. Beast is now the largest
YouTube channel on the platform by a single creator with over
237,000,000 subscribers. It should not be controversial
to critique and question the influence of the largest digital
creator of our time. Not to mention, two things can
be true at once. Jimmy can be changing lives
while also exploiting those same people's lives.
He can be changing lives while also feeding his own ego and
building his own wealth because his philanthropy comes with
strings attached. You have to agree to be in a Mr.
Beast video. You have to agree to open
yourself and your circumstances up to millions of people for
consumption and judgment. Jimmy is not giving a homeless
person $10,000 cash without filming it.
One day after he threw his charity tantrum quote, UN quote,
on Twitter, he tweeted a poll. Would you vote for me if I ran
for president? Yes or no?
Jimmy's reaction to the backlash was incredibly telling.
Not only did it solidify that he does have political aspirations,
and therefore his philanthropy is meant to sway public opinion
on him and does extend beyond an individual level, but it also
gave us insight into what actually motivates Mr. Beast.
Jimmy's motivation is one of the most contentious topics online.
That's because he regurgitates the same two talking points.
When asked about why he creates videos and what his end goal is,
he says number one, that all he cares about is helping people,
and #2, that he loses money on every video.
Jimmy has managed to convince his audience, and thus the
greater online community, since his audience is so large that
he's YouTube's Robin Hood. He's this heroic outlaw who
stayed in his hometown instead of moving to LA.
He uses rich corporations that fund his videos to give money to
poor or sick or vulnerable people.
And he wants nothing in return. But when you pay closer
attention to how Jimmy talks about his career in interviews,
documentaries, and even on his own social media, you'll notice
there is one message he pushes even more than helping people
that all he really cares about is making the best videos
possible. But what does that mean?
The best videos possible is such a subjective metric.
Well, to research Mr. Beast is to discover how deep his
hyperfixation on virality is. His goal from the start, back
when he was just thirteen years old and 1st learned that you
could actually make money on YouTube has been to game the
algorithm. And despite some mixed
messaging, Jimmy hasn't been so coy about his motivations.
When asked about his goals on the Colin and Samir podcast, he
said frankly quote, what's the point of making a video if no
one watches it? As mentioned above, he also told
the duo he gives away random money and prizes throughout his
videos, not because he's the most selfless philanthropist,
but as a type of subplot to hold viewer attention and ensure his
retention rate is always above 70%.
On this same podcast and throughout other interviews I
watched, Jimmy openly discusses his first kind of charity porn
video when he gave a homeless man $10,000 as part of a brand
collaboration, a sentence that feels so disturbing to say out
loud. He doesn't speak about that
moment, saying that he was motivated to give back or help
someone out. He speaks about that video in
relation to its success, as in he promised the brand that if
they gave him $10,000 instead of $5000, the video would go viral.
Mr. Beast measures his success based on views, engagement and
virality. His idea of the best video
possible does not include artistic expression,
storytelling or a greater creative purpose, motivations
that are typically the backbone of a creator's vision.
In fact, he did note in a recent interview that he has been
working on his storytelling purely because of audience
feedback. So while Jimmy might not be
personally pocketing all of the money he makes from viral
philanthropy or his challenge videos where he's giving away
money, his content is feeding the Mr. Beast ego.
Because what motivates Mr. Beast at the end of the day is
virality, and he and his team have not tried to hide that from
us. His manager Reid, told producers
for the Curiosity Stream documentary that when they met
Jimmy, Quote was going to do whatever he could to be a
successful digital creator. He didn't say that Jimmy was
going to do whatever he could to be a successful philanthropist
and he didn't say that Jimmy was going to do whatever he could to
build a community of engaged followers that appreciate his
content. As Ryan Broderick wrote for
Garbage Day Quote, being unnaturally viral is all Mr.
Beast really is at this point and it tarnishes everything he
does. And it's most notable with his
charity work. Most likely because at this
point we all know that making purely viral content and chasing
audience agnostic mass appeal as Mr. Beast does requires in some
sense being a complete sociopath with no concept of what it means
to artistically or creatively express something.
Which is why most creators that go viral eventually settle into
a baseline. They find an audience and start
figuring out what their niche is beyond traffic.
But Mr. Beast never did that, because traffic is all he seems
to want or care about. If he truly cared about
philanthropy, for instance, why not just do it and never film
it? Well, that's because
philanthropy is just another type of viral content for him.
And based on how touchy he gets every time he tries and fails to
be taken seriously, he's clearly aware of how limiting this has
become for him. Yes, he dominates YouTube, but
he also can't figure out how to cobble together enough lowest
common denominator content to escape it.
At his core, Mr. Beast is not a creator, Mr. Beast is not a
philanthropist, and Mr. Beast is not objectively the best video
maker in the world. At his core, Mr. Beast is a
marketer who found that gifting people, prizes and large sums of
money on camera will get him the virality and influence he's been
desperately chasing since he was 13 years old.
Infinite Scroll is a podcast written, produced, edited and
presented by me, Lauren Meisner for Centennial World.
Additional research and reporting is by Annabelle Ben
David, Thank you so much for listening.
I love you guys so much and I will talk to you next week.