>I feel like this article also falls into "attention grabber with nothing foundational to offer".
>I stopped watching anything I am not deliberately searching for on YouTube, as they all seem to be MrBeast copy-cats.
you seem to inadvertently understand the point of the article and are in fact a subject of the supposed shift away from the Mr. Beast era. I think the issue is the article focuses too much on Mr. Beast, who is more of a metaphor for the actual trend than the actual subject of interest. When you cut out the biography you end up with 2 core points:
1. the "high energy" style of videos that feel like it's trying to dangle keys at you is shifting towards more authentic experiences (which apparently tiktok does)
2. people in general are shifting from long form to short form content with #1 as a factor. I do know Tiktok's biggest appeal is that it's really good at highlighting smaller creators, which works opposite to most other kind of social media.
That could have been the focus instead of going over Beast's entire life story and thought process on how he makes videos. But Polygon is ironically in that same bus, knowing most people will click to focus on Beast instead of the actual "era" in question.