As a content creator Mr Beast only acts as a conduit for what we, the audience, are willing to pay for. It's not he who is the monster but us.
Yes Mr. Beast is just following incentives that youtube + attention economy + other factors created for him.
But also: he chose to do that. I've personally walked away from good gigs when I was eating rice and beans because they didn't align with my values. He doesn't seem to realise or care. And maybe that's because of his situation, which should the also be addressed. But there still remains some personal responsibility for choosing to make money (lots of money) this way
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Who_Wants_to_Be_a_Millionaire%...
First, what was also mentioned in the linked blog post, Mr Beast's videos lack a certain level of fairness, winners of his competitions are often decided by luck, not merit.
Second, maybe there's an added benefit for both competitors and audience when watching Who Wants To Be a Millionare. I'm not sure if that's measurable metric, but it's definitely present. I can learn something new, or test my own knowledge, maybe even decide to sign up.
So just like real life?
There are, in fact, quiz shows that add torture elements. Rob Lowe hosts Mental Samurai, which is a quiz show where participants are put through physical disorientation[0]. This might be a closer parallel to what you are highlighting, but even still there are coherent and easily articulated ways in which this is not torture.
There are a great many reality programs that do actually involve a sort of physical depravation which is closer to torture. Big Brother and Survivor both involve not just physical challenges, but also punishments that are centered around depriving people of the sorts of creature comforts they are accustomed to in normal life. Even then you don't have torture, because again the vast majority of the experience involves being treated with comfort and dignity, the punishments that are small in scale and support systems in place to ensure they do not present real threat. So, for instance, you might have someone being awoken in the middle of the night as a part of a challenge, but they will be informed of that in advance, given additional time to sleep later, and the disruption will be minimal.
Mr. Beast's stuff has more in common with challenges like the Hands on a Hardbody challenge[1], where poor people go to a car dealership and have to touch a truck for an extended period of time to win the truck.[1] The contestant pool are mostly people who are quite poor, some of whom seem to be mentally ill, the willingness to do it for the prize almost surely implies they have inadequate access to transportation, and it's extremely undignified. But even this has hourly breaks.
It seems like a bit of feigned ignorance to respond to someone criticizing the Mr. Beast stuff by suggesting it is difficult or impossible to draw a coherent line in the sand, and then offering such a patently absurd example as something you think would have to be definitionally included. It comes off as playing language games rather than seriously engaging the substance of the criticism.
[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O3gglCEsvGg [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hands_on_a_Hardbody:_The_Docum...
That's a lazy analysis. His creation is expanding a small audience into a larger one.
Let’s look at it from another angle to bring my point home. If a person gets assaulted and the assault gets recorded by CCTV cameras and then shown on BBC news then lots of people click the article and view the video, but nobody (or mostly nobody) would pay the BBC to assault another person and film it and then stream it. Do you see the difference?
but the kids are not the ones paying. if we had to start paying for it, the result would be an argument between parents and kids.
Not sure who "we" you are talking but his fans buy lot of merch from his store which brings in lot of profit.
But overall i disagree that anyone is monster here. No one forces these people to be a part of these challenges.