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Comment by psyclobe | Hacker News Reader

Never seen a single Mr. Beast video; what's the big deal?

Mr Beast targets and is very successful in the children (think pre-teen/teen) demographic. His videos often feature giving away a large sum of money or other prize via an elaborate contest/challenge, and he's the YouTuber that can be largely credited with popularizing this style of content.

He's also recently been implicated in several controversies - including (all allegedly) hiring and protecting a misogynist/pedofile CEO, promting and then dumping various scam cryptocurrencies, and very poor conditions for contestants in his recent "Beast Games" (a spin on the hit move Squid Game).

HN isn't the drama place, but a lot of DogPack's accusations have been debunked :)

search soggy cereal on YouTube for more info

There was also a HN submission earlier that year talking about a leaked (or "leaked" who knows) employee manual (which looked plausible) that shared some insights into the inner working of his company.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41549649

I agree regarding the age of his viewers. Every single under-15 is know watches him.

Which makes it interesting to see just who sponsors him. What nine year old is investing in crypto? What eight year old is buying VPN products?

None, but many 15 year olds do. And it sticks to their 18.

Because he is also quite popular amongst 18-35 males too (it tends to drop with age), and some of them are NEETs with comfortable parents who either buy into crypto, or want in on the rugpull and try to snipe it (don't snipe unless you want to make the scammers sad. Nowadays they put high fees on early exchange so they can still make millions, but that makes their position much more uncomfortable)

I wrote this article and as part of my analysis I found that he also has sponsors like TurboTax and Equifax in some of his latest videos. I don't know how the brands justify it but I'll probably write more about this in the near future after doing more research.

I'm in my 30s and have watched some of his videos - including the squid games recreation (not beast games). I like them. They're whacky and over the top but there's nothing wrong with that.

Was about to comment something to the same effect. He's got 341 million subscribers on youtube (on his english channel). If we imagine that there's 1,35 billion english speakers worldwide (the figure that came up on Google when I searched), that means that 25% of english speakes actively follow him on Youtube.

While I agree that a 13 y.o. is probably more likely to follow him than a 30 y.o., his reach is anything but limited to the teens & children segment.

Chamath Palihapitiya have have worn Mr. Beast merch on multiple occasions on the All In pod as well - which I find kinda funny :D

> on his english channel

That there's no separation anymore. YouTube added support for multiple audio tracks and since then everything goes to one channel again. The channels in other languages even redirect to the main channel.

They are big budget, very well produced videos with rapid cuts, that always target "teen male" demographic.

"We get cars and throw them in a hole!" "10 thousand people battle for 1000 dollars!" "I survived 10 days in a hole!"

stuff like that. They are always quite stupid but very well produced. MrBeast always shouts "isn't this awesome" "isn't this cool" etc. Very easy viewing, especially if you're a teen male, never challenging in any way

He's the biggest creator on YouTube. Each one of his videos gets more views than the Superbowl.

I don't know who they were or who they were targeting. I only remember their #TeamTrees annoying nonsense from 2019 and the popular Youtubers who fell all over themselves trying to celebrate this greenwashing nonsense without using their brains first.[0]

0. TeamTrees vs REALITY!! https://youtu.be/gqht2bIQXIY

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