The Dystopian Horror of MrBeast and the Lie of Celebrity Philanthropy

By Kayleigh Donaldson | Celebrity | August 6, 2024 |

By Kayleigh Donaldson | Celebrity | August 6, 2024 |

A recent report from The New York Times detailed how 2,000 contestants for an upcoming Amazon reality competition series were left to suffer with poor conditions regarding access to food, hygiene, and medication. ‘One contestant said she had initially been denied the food she required to take her medication and had been told by staff members that she didn’t actually need to eat,’ they wrote. ‘After asking repeatedly, she was given half a banana.’ The series in question is Beast Games, wherein hundreds of people will compete for what has been described as ‘the biggest single prize in the history of television and streaming’, $5 million.

The show is the brainchild of Jimmy Donaldson, best known to the world as MrBeast. You may know him as the guy who made a real-life Squid Game challenge, or for his many lucrative giveaways and lavish philanthropic gestures. MrBeast is currently the most subscribed channel on YouTube, with over 308 million subscribers (about 38 million more than its nearest competitor, the Indian music label T-Series.) Aside from YouTube, Donaldson also has his own line of chocolate bars, a ghost kitchen burger franchise, various brand deals (including a cryptocurrency one where a lot of his own fans lost money), and TV appearances. According to Forbes, he has an estimated net worth of $500 million. He is only 26 years old.

Donaldson (no relation) is of that generation where becoming a YouTube star first became an aspirational career. In a 2021 piece by The Detroit News, Donaldson admitted that he became obsessed with cracking the riddle of virality and what made certain videos catnip for the algorithm. He even dropped out of college to focus on YouTube when his channel only had about 30,000 subscribers. These ‘studies’ led him to make a video where he counted all the way to 100,000 in one sitting. It worked. That video exploded in views. From there, Donaldson continued with weird low-stakes stunts that evolved into his most notable brand: giving away tons of money,

Thanks to some savvy partnerships, a sharp understanding of memes, and plenty of to-the-moment pop culture references, Donaldson’s Willy Wonka act became bigger and more viral. He organized a battle royale with a cash prize of $200,000. A live stream of a rock, paper, scissors competition, with a prize of $250,000, became the platform’s most-watched live original event. There was that Squid Game recreation, plus a star-studded YouTuber fight for $1 million that became the most-viewed MrBeast video in less than one day. Some of these videos are so well-known that they have their own Wikipedia pages. His aw-shucks image, combined with expensive and well-produced videos, made him a megastar on YouTube, particularly with that profitable demographic of kids and tweens. That image has taken a hit lately, thanks to one of his regular collaborators being accused of grooming and sexting minors, as well as an alleged former MrBeast employee accusing him of multiple kinds of fraud. The latter is one that is hard for him to shake since even his most morally upright content seems built on the foundations of getting kids to click on his videos in the hopes of his richness rubbing off on them.

His other channel, Beast Philanthropy, is an expansion of that viral ethos. One video, viewed over 185 million times, had him pay for sight-restoring cataract surgery for a thousand people. The header image shows a smiling Donaldson with an old lady in a hospital gown and fake tears photo-shopped onto her face. This particular stunt, which was obviously a kind thing to do in a country with an evil healthcare system, received a lot of criticism for what was seen as an exploitation of vulnerable people. Some charities praised Donaldson for calling attention to the wider issue, however. It is weird and gross that it takes charity to fix this, but people felt queasy at an act of generosity being so evidently motivated by business-minded interests.

Effective altruism is a relatively recent social concept that advocates for making choices based on their maximum positive impact. It’s become popular with a lot of rich a-holes who want to stay rich but position themselves as generous to the common man. FTX founder and convicted fraudster Sam Bankman-Fried was a fan of this idea, believing that one’s ceaseless pursuit of endless billions could be justified if they chose to donate a lot of it to charity. Bankman-Fried is now in prison serving a 25-year sentence after being found guilty of fraud and money laundering. But the ethos remains, the twisted notion that the broken system that creates billionaires off the back of exploitation and bad laws is cool as long as you throw a few dollars towards some sick kids now and then. It’s notable that Jimmy Donaldson became rich and famous through his version of philanthropy, which was born from his ability to figure out the YouTube algorithm for his own betterment.

In a perfect world, charity would not exist because everyone’s needs would be provided for by a sturdy governmental structure and classism would not exist. Charitable work can often be a beautiful thing, a sign of genuine empathy and ferocious motivation that goes against an apathetic society. Yet it’s also tough to ignore how much philanthropy is expected by politicians to plug the gaps created by the starvation of public services. Food banks only exist because a group of people in suits made the choice to cut off the safety nets that were already in place with welfare and the like. It’s left us in this place where we’re supposed to be grateful when Elon Musk brags that he could fix the world’s ills with his obscene wealth, and that if we just ask him nicely, he’ll eventually do it. If we just dance as our feet are being shot at, perhaps we’ll be thrown a dime or two.

Maybe Donaldson will make a tangible impact on the planet and we can celebrate that, but I can’t get over the craven use of suffering people for #content. It’s hardly a new occurrence, but MrBeast certainly feels like the most logical conclusion of a dehumanizing system where the poor and marginalized are deemed wholly disposable by capitalism. It’s bad enough that so many people’s access to healthcare is dependent on whether or not their GoFundMe page will be appealing enough to go viral, but now it’s the stuff of Jeff Bezos-endorsed deals where everyone else gets to laugh at your desperation. It’s the worst mixture of poverty porn, exploitation, and the content-ification of everything. Smile for the camera or suffer, and all in the name of helping one guy get even richer. It’s greed with a shiny coat of paint and a serial killer grin.