His channel made $54m from youtube in 2021, and probably a lot more from corporate sponsors. Make no mistake, this is big business - not charity.
And some of his side businesses are downright shady. His burger chain is run out of ghost kitchens which make food for multiple virtual chains like MrBeast's. The burgers are apparently a crapshoot - it depends on which ghost kitchen made your burger as to what you get. Quality control is zero. Yet they charge top dollar for the MrBeast name.
No, only the corrupted ones.
Therefore, mark my words: donate to the "X For A Cure" charities at your own peril, because the perverse incentives mean that they will move Heaven and Earth to avoid finding a cure for anything at all.
I don’t know about these foundations, maybe it is mostly funded by governments/EU funds, whatever instead, but there is good research out there.
Not sure how that's shady, sounds like it might be a bit egregious but its not like he isn't honest about this being a business based around his brand of philanthropy either.
Would you start a burger business without quality control? Would you let random companies put your name on crap? That’s shady.
Not sure I agree it’s shady, egregious maybe.
So if you see something with the kirkland brand, you have some expectation of quality. And if you have a problem Costco will fix it (or drop the product).
The MrBeast brand doesn’t really stand for anything. And he doesn’t correct quality problems.
The most common example is that Kirkland Vodka is widely reported to be Grey Goose, and it's speculated that Kirkland Mac & Cheese is just repackaged Kraft.
No Brand or Quality Control needed; mostly contract and supply chain control since you're dealing with brands that already do good QC.
When they say it takes money to make money, that's pretty much it. Reach a certain threshold and the interest on it will pay off any failures you make.
& because the general masses adore and love to watch rich people dance around screen, ofc his YT does well, he's got the money to do some crazy stuff. Everyone watches "who wants to be a millionaire", nobody watches "who wants to win 10 bucks".
He has a fast food restaurant chain that has grown insanely quickly by partnering with local restaurants. He has no kitchens yet dozens of these fast food restaurants operating solely on Uber/DoorDash.
that is is? that is a rounding error for almost any decent-sized tech company. We're talking a household name, and one of the most popular channels ever, which is on the front page of youtube by default. I would have thought it would be more.
yes, he made $54 million, but surely a lot of expenses too?
That's just his main channel, he has many other large channels (Beast Gaming, Beast Reacts) plus the other social platforms (TikTok, etc).
Then in the last 2 years he launched Beast Burger and Feastables (mostly chocolate bars currently). There are some public numbers about $10m revenue on feastables in the first few months and over $100m of revenue on beast burger orders sometime last year.
He spends a lot, talks about it a lot, $2-4 million per video on each main channel video. He has also talked a lot about re-investing everything back into the channel to grow and grow. Which seems evident by the growth rate if nothing else.
That's just snippets of info and I'm not remotely experienced enough in any of these spaces to make any attempt at a real number but between the increased views, feastables and beast burger I don't see how it's any less than 100s of millions of revenue at this point. My main point, though, is that he has grown a lot from 2021-2023 where that $54m number came from :)
But having said that.. he was still very popular and long on the front page of YouTube back in 2021 perhaps with those much more modest numbers.
Something like this is worth a watch. While I'm sure there is plenty he doesn't talk about, he talks about a lot publicly including money spent, strategies, statistics, etc: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WGrk7Mzm4uo
Google's YT algorithm is whatever it thinks makes Google the most money. "Doing YT right" is an oxymoronic statement, because YT doesn't care in the least about ethics.
MrBeast found a way to optimize algorithmic ranking, in a fairly altruistic and ethical way.
On the scale of "{Politician} hates {group}, see what to be outraged about" to "See what the drug companies don't want you to know, via this simple trick" YT optimization... MrBeast is comparatively saint-like.
Gross revenue is almost meaningless. Restaurants are known to have very low margins, so how much of that money was paid to the local restaurant, to the delivery service, _in taxes_?
Even once it reaches Mr Beast's company, the company has to pay for a lot of things before it ever reaches him.
I'm sure he's doing well, but he didn't personally pull in $54M in 2021; it's actively counter productive to discuss gross revenue without also discussing expenses, because it conflates "Mr Beast" the business with "Mr Beast" the nom de plume of an individual and likely misleads folks on how much money the individual actually earned.
Why not? To be able to "give" you first need to accumulate way beyond what you need to attend to your material needs. Accumulating such wealth means taking more resources than you need in the first place.
It's still fully within the scarcity and separation mindset of capitalism.
Giving time, care, an ear to listen is really valuable.
These things make big differences because it’s often what people pay money for too
Giving is not just for after earning lots of money.
Or... Produce way beyond...
The kleptocapitalism narrative as well as the neocapitalist narrative depend on using a myopic perspective. There is a fair debate about the negotiation over what to do with the excess between all parties involved and that can be a useful conversation. If you didn't mean to agitate in that way I apologize for being too sensitive.
And this Eddy Burback Video https://youtu.be/KkIkymh5Ayg on that rabbit hole. Also, seems like his Chocolate Brand is going to be in a ton of places now after seeing him announce the locations in his latest video (the cruise ship one)
That is not MrBeasts fault, it's the environment's. Say you see MrBeast give thousands of people help, and you have the same problem as these people - sure, you're happy for the other people but why didn't you get any help? The show is over, you're left alone, your problem is currently not interesting.
Edit: There is also the power gradient in all of this performance that this video[0] highlights well. Nobody can complain about how they're being treated or portrayed, because they are in need. That is taking away something from the people who receive something, this kind of charity treats them as less - they're extras on stage.
Nicely put. Some people claim that MrBeast's actions are better than nothing, but the money he's using are not growing on trees.
The same money could have been used to fund a fair health system, where people receive treatments based on their needs without their life becoming an exhibit for youtube.
Yes! How dare people choose where to spend their time and money? We should take it from them at the barrel of a gun and spend it for them! Stupid people are always spending their time and money on frivolities when there are smart people willing to spend it on purely benevolent things which never experience abuse or corruption.
Personally, I want someone to threaten me with violence if I don't give them money. It's how I know I'm doing my part.
no it could not. it would take a lot more than that to fund healthcare.
as it is MrBeast is doing the best he can with the means available to him.
in order to do anything better it would take every member of our community to push for a government will actually implement such changes. the problem is, i don't see many people pushing, and i see a lot of people pushing back. things won't get better until that changes.
> ... with the Nicaraguan capital expected to recover from the fallout within 200 years. That's it for the news tonight, up next is Mr. Beast with a big charitable payout of 150 000$ tonight, followed by It's Not My Problem!
> With that large a payout from Mr. Beast, you know what they say: I'd buy that for a dollar!
> Ha ha ha.
This is worlds better than casinos, sports betting, or any other form of gambling, IMO.
People are entertained through watching or participating and some are making big dollars.
My kids watch his videos because the algorithm feeds it to them and from what I’ve seen, I’d rather they be watching MrB than ads for DraftKings where they might believe that some day in the future their free $500 will make them rich. Or worse yet: state lotteries selling a dream for $2 and making millions off the stupidity of those who don’t understand basic stats because the education the lottery is supposedly funding doesn’t do a very good job.
YMMV.
It's not. Those things are bad too.
> My kids watch his videos because the algorithm feeds it to them and from what I’ve seen, I’d rather they be watching MrB than ads for DraftKings
I'm curious what your goal is here. It seems like you're disagreeing with me by saying "look, Mr. Beast is equivalent to/better than these other bad things, right?" I don't find your particular applications of whataboutism and false dichotomies terribly convincing or at all relevant to the discussion.
Like, you understand that "these other things are bad too" and "it's this or draftkings ads" are not substantive or relevant arguments, right?
No one's saying they're stupid for participating. If I was offered thousands of dollars for peeing in my pants in public for a video, I'd very probably take the offer and no one would think I was stupid for it; it would still be a demeaning and exploitative offer to make.
Nor did I say I'm the sole arbiter of what's demeaning. We both seem to agree at least that peeing oneself in public is demeaning, but some third person might not see it that way at all.
If they'd all get their equal share of money and could compete out of their own volition and quit anytime they'd want then this would be morally ok. But then nobody would watch it. And that there's exactly why this whole thing is morally wrong.
It's also not a topic that is easy to define as "right" or "wrong". Some game shows will be more empowering or enjoyable than others. Some contestants on the same show might find the experience more emotionally rewarding than other contestants. There's a very subjective, fuzzy, grey area here rather than a clear line in the sand defining what is morally good or bad.
From the odd Mr Beast video I've watched, it's felt like the driving factor was that the contestant didn't want to be there if it wasn't for the money. And that Mr Beast and his friends go out of their way to make the contestant want to leave. Mr Beast has all the power and makes his contestants perform like dancing monkeys to earn their prize. Now as long as the contestants do still find the overall experience more rewarding than demeaning (and that's for them to decide), then I'm fine with it being made as "entertainment". But like many of the others, I personally don't find it entertaining to watch -- I find it uneasy to watch. And that's fine too, people don't have to enjoy the same things. But it's hard not to claim that there is a massive imbalance of power in his videos. In fact that seems to be the point of his videos.
The earlier comparison with 80s cyberpunk seems quite apt. If you take away the fancy post production editing, there is something rather dystopian about the concept of his videos. Sure the stakes are significantly lower than, for example, Running Man, but the power imbalance isn't that dissimilar.
Like working at a sprocket factory? I think that somewhat fairly fits here. You could be describing how most of the world looks at their work. My point is that there might be deeper to look for the more "honest" objection.
Whereas it's not so clear cut, in my opinion at least, that contestants of Mr Beasts videos aren't being exploited. But as I said, the only people who can honestly answer that are the contestants themselves.
I haven't watched Mr Beast's videos to have an opinion. He popped up on my kid's screen once, we banned him and some associated channels and forgot him. It was clearly garbage content for us in our brief experience and not worth our time to identify why.
It's sort of like a recast economic version of colonial white savior ideology—"educate" the primitives—"donate" to the impoverished, all while ensuring the inequalities and social division persist.
I also find his videos uncomfortable to watch for many of the same reasons stated here, but I don't find them harmful, and I can appreciate how he's helped these people.
Who then would pay for their pimp-mobile and bling, and the upkeep of the ho's?
In doing good, Mr Beast bring to light the uncomfortable lack of support we provide as a society.
one time payments need to be used strategically, and we know from lottery winners that many don't know how to do that.
if we want to help people we need to work on changing systems that allow them to raise their income or lower their monthly expenses or carefully guide them to use one time payments to fix a problem in their life that will have a long term benefit.
Keep on working on fixing our system, but it doesn’t make sense to complain that others aren’t when you are extremely unlikely to succeed.
the question is not, who is doing more, but whether what anyone of us is doing has any lasting effects. so it matters how the money is used. most of what i have seen from MrBeast is giving random amounts of money to individuals, which sometimes can be helpful, but often only provides short term relief. his recent examples of paying for eye surgery or funding an orphanage are an improvement over that, and if that is where MrBeast's philanthropy is heading, then i am all for it.
The issue is if he was to instead start using money to tackle systemic issues then it moves beyond philanthropy and it becomes political. "I paid for 1000 people to have cataract surgery" as a video hits a lot differently to "I lobbied congress to make cataract surgery free"
Systemic change is hard and a lot of people won't want to engage with it. It is easy to look at an altruistic act and say "this is a good thing" a lot harder to question the underlying causes that necessitated the act.
There is a famous quote "When I give food to the poor they call me a saint. When I ask why they are poor they call me a communist."
We have agency. Anything could be promoted instead but instead we get this nonsense. Over time of course all this gets lost and we just pretend this is all organic.
As a kid I admired a lot of people/shows that I later wised up about. Probably harmless. In your place I might just every now and then watch it with them, play along with the better moments and shake my head at some of the stupider moments just to plant the mind-worm that what they see isn't "real life", but I'm also not sure how old your kids are or how they watch him.
I have believed for a long time that accurately assessing your chances of success on big bets is maladaptive. Ambitious projects (whether they be science, construction or mammoth hunting) could benefit society enough that on a societal level they're good even if a lot of them fail, but the benefit to the individuals taking on the risk could be low enough that it's not worth it for them (due to the diminishing returns of additional wealth on an individual level).
Gambling is just exploiting this mechanism to extract wealth.
https://twitter.com/pookleblinky/status/1309325764739858432?...
My nephew was obsessed with MrBeast. Every device we had was littered with search histories of Mr Beast, and it was infuriating because of how low-brow the content is. It's teaching kids to turn their brains off. People are talking about charity, but they need to actually watch a few videos before commenting... it's really not something you want your kids imitating.
Same.
I'm going to sound like an old-man-yelling-at-cloud, but the content is, well, just mindless drivel. There's a near-endless amount of informative content on youtube, but no, instead kids are drawn like a magnet to this kind of stuff. Not saying kids must spend all their screen time on Khan Academy or serious documentaries, but watching this drivel for hours on end can't be healthy for a developing brain either.
orphan crushing machine
It's the "system is so broken, that some guy can video charity acts to make money off of" that's icky.
Some people will go "Where's the harm in that? Those people do get some money, that's a good thing, isn't it?"
It's the normalizing of dependance on such charity / "acts of god", as opposed to having available decent jobs and health covered plus a government and a community support system.
So not only your chance of winning a lottery is remote, even if you somehow win a lottery it is unlikely to make you happy. Interviews of people who won a lottery show it.
I also think people have very distorted perception of where success comes from. People think it is a matter of chance and luck that somebody made this or that decision at a particular point in time. But my understanding is that luck only plays small part of it, much bigger part is the preparation to increase your luck and to be able to risk it and to be able to make something with it and to be able to avoid bad luck.
All that comes from usually hard work and a certain mindset of being honest with yourself rather than playing a victim on every possible occasion. I have never heard about a person who would be constantly complaining about their bad luck and then got successful.
Your children are more likely to resent you when they grow up incapable of hard work and with no sense of delayed gratification because their parents were terrified of ever imposing any rules or expectations on them for fear of causing "resentment".
No child is going to suffer socially because they don't watch Mr Beast. It's literally one thing. A child might conceivably suffer socially if they're cut off from all leisure activities, but not being able to watch a YouTube channel is so minuscule as to be laughable. I didn't watch Saturday morning cartoons as a child, as my parents didn't like having the TV on in the morning. Did I suffer socially? Not remotely.
you're talking about it to this very day in a way that seems like you can't wait to enforce these rules on your own children.
i can't recall a single thing my parents did along these lines. this is just not how they operated - by just laying down restriction after restriction. seems kind of shitty, honestly.
also my parents didn't teach me how to sit in front of a computer for 20 hours until i got a program to compile without errors. did they MAKE you do stuff like that? lol in fact i remember my parents complaining that i was wasting time on the internet.
joke's on them though, now they spend all their time glued to their devices.
What negative long run consequence could possibly be created by not being able to watch noisy, annoying, brain-mush kids TV? I'm glad I was discouraged from watching TV on a saturday morning. I didn't miss it at the time either. I did more interesting things, and half the time I had swimming lessons or sports on a Sat morning anyway.
And how is it "dickish"? It's their house. It's their TV. They paid for it, they own it, they control it. That's how the world works, and will always work, and should always work. The idea that they have some sort of obligation to put up with obnoxious screeching American cartoons is just... I don't even know what to say to that. It's just so backwards I can't even put it into words.
>you're talking about it to this very day in a way that seems like you can't wait to enforce these rules on your own children.
I brought it up because it was relevant to the conversation, It's not like I'm sitting here thinking about it all the time. I probably haven't thought about it once in the last.. 15 years?
>i can't recall a single thing my parents did along these lines. this is just not how they operated - by just laying down restriction after restriction. seems kind of shitty, honestly.
Restriction after restriction? I mentioned one thing, mate. Relax a bit please. I really don't understand your mindset though. Should parents not set boundaries? People talk all the time about how it should be parents that set boundaries for their children and not the state. Then people like you turn around and suggest that if they actually do that, they're somehow stifling their children and will breed resentment for their whole life.
>also my parents didn't teach me how to sit in front of a computer for 20 hours until i got a program to compile without errors. did they MAKE you do stuff like that? lol in fact i remember my parents complaining that i was wasting time on the internet.
Of course they didn't "teach" me how to do that, but their parenting influenced by development, because that's what parenting does.
now in my home, there is no TV either, but there are computers and internet which provide plenty of entertainment. and yes, MrBeast was popular for a while.
i think the problem is not which restrictions are in place but how they are introduced and enforced.
And where do you get "No boundaries at all" from "perhaps you should let your kid watch Mr Beast because it's relatively harmless and allows them to connect with their peers"? You seem to have a very binary mindset.
If letting your kids watch Mr Beast is the deciding factor that makes them incapable of hard work then you're a horrible parent.
Any parent who goes to war with their kid over the mere watching of Mr Beast really needs to consider their priorities in life, and if they're just taking out their insecurities on their kid.
If you think that certain media is imparting negative morals on your child, then it's on you to control that. On the other hand if you think it's unusual, but ultimately harmless, then it's also your prerogative as a parent to allow them to watch it.
But the whole stance of "I can't control what my kids are doing because they'll resent me if I do" just sounds like an excuse to deny your own agency over the situation.
"There's a guy on YouTube and he just gives people money. That's how I'm going to get money!"
"I don't think that's a great strategy because (broad discussion)."
"But he might choose me!"
"I don't think your odds are great."
"But it's possible. You didn't say it was impossible!"
"I think we need to discuss this when I'm not also trying to drive in peak-hour school traffic."
I think the idea that "parents won't let kids watch X" is somehow damaging to a kid's social health is a bit silly.
I fully intend to give my kids the tools and access they need to relate to other kids, with the understanding that I don't always get to decide what that is. I might draw the line at something particularly egregious, like an R rated movie when they're 9 or something, but if my kid and their friends want to watch Power Rangers Mega-Samurai-Viking-Cosmic-Super-Force, I'm not going to ban it because I find it mildly annoying and eye-rolly.
My approach is to allow exposure but to maintain dialogue around it. They know I accept them watching it, I don’t criticize them for it, but I encourage them to be critical about it themselves and wonder about why it’s popular and so on. At least seeding the idea that they should observe themselves and their peers can hopefully lead to making better decisions later.
Sort of a “let them make their own mistakes” thing, with fairly manageable stakes.
Why ‘no’ for the third one? Mostly because it’s just intellectual sawdust. Nobody learns anything from a Mr. Beast video or engages with any new concept. It’s just the same ridiculous kinds of jokes and contests and clickbait churned out over and over again. He has literally no reason to stop making the exact same video 500 times over when people will still watch it. His video titles
Obviously up to you and your wife/husband if you want to continue letting them watch it.
*His video titles and thumbnails have set a new standard for low-quality, eye-catching, bottom-of-the-barrel hogwash and he is dragging the rest of YouTube down with him as people try to emulate his success.
His content is a direct display of our economic system at the limit, at which point it becomes absurd. When you recognize that this is quite literally the system under which the majority of the world's economics are organized it becomes deeply serious and deeply uncomfortable.
There's also the plain psychological elements surrounding the fact that the content takes something that used to be valued for its moral goodness (generosity, charity) and transforms it into something valued strictly for its economic fruitfulness (means for generating capital) but this is capitalism's totalizing effect at work: because money is such a pure abstraction it's possible to monetize anything thereby killing off the more humane and traditional values that used to make certain pursuits meaningful to humans.
The same uncomfortablenesses would arise if this were videos of some govt leader going around granting early retirement to people.
I'm sorry but to watch Mr Beast's videos and turn around and say "it has nothing to do with capitalism" stinks to me of the worst kind of kool-aid drinking and willful ignorance. This isn't an either/or game. You can remain a capitalist and still be aware of the inherent flaws of the approach when it lacks proper guardrails, acknowledge the real problems we have, and level critiques to try and make the system more equitable. People get so dogmatic about it, it's practically a religion.
The social systems you talk about are the biggest they’ve ever been, and the US is going to need to raise tax revenues by 30% just to break even on the current ones.
At no time in history have social nets been so strong in the west, yet it’s never enough.
I don’t know what the solution is, but saying social nets are the solution and we need more of them are about as black and white and unnuanced views as saying we need to abolish them. Neither is true.
Capitalism isn't just some abstract Platonic definition, we are living it, it evolves in time. Just as the feudalism before it was a lived system that evolved in time, that eventually collapsed, giving way to a new mode (capitalism), the same will happen under this economic system.
a benevolent, yet idiotic in his ways entrepreneur or
a calculating one.
Neither one is good.
This miracle making is very very very bad for the average person imho. People need to learn that they shape their life by working on it, not waiting for some tooth fairy to give them a thousand dollars. Plus there should be institutions for those who are in need and health related services should be available to everyone.
Mr Beast cannot fulfill these roles, no matter how hard he tries.
Hell, the more I have been paid, the less I have had to work and use my brain. The same applies to each of my friends. I have never come across a person in the opposite scenario in my life.
To what you say should be available: There is a state in the USA that has an overwhelmingly single party government which has overwhelming amounts of money (towering many entire countries). Their homeless population is ranked #2.
MrBeast is substantially better for the poor than each person in this state who votes to keep things as they are. He's better than anyone who has conducted even slight amounts of NIMBYISM.
It's unsurprising that HN has a negative view of the guy doing a better job than they are.
Your downvotes don't matter to me.
It's just mind boggling to see how people do not give a flying fuck about others and only care about their very surroundings and well being.
MrBeast comes into this equation who earns his money by doing these stunts, but seemingly also gives back... I have ambivalent, but lopsided, feelings about creators who do videos about vulnerable people and playing the white knight in armor for who knows why. Anyway, it would be an interesting study how it affects those that are in need and I mean those who watch his videos and daydream away their life in hope for a better life.
Your are supposed to educate them and give them values, not be a victime of some random youtuber hit videos.
Not to juge but as a parent you can have so much positive influence...
Is that the standard by which you judge all leisure activities?
It's all about repugnant materialism and self-promotion
Now apply same standard to literally any other Youtube channel