MrBeast, the online persona of 26-year-old Jimmy Donaldson, is a master content creator. His elaborately staged philanthropic stunt videos have helped him amass almost 340 million subscribers on YouTube, making him the most-followed star on the platform. To his legion of fans, he’s sort of like the Oprah of the internet; he’s funded a surgical procedures and even gifted an island to one of his subscribers. His business empire includes a charitable organization, as well as his Feastables chocolate and snack brand, and he expects to pull in a reported $700 million in revenue this year.
Behind the glassy-eyed smile, however, lies an increasingly tempting target for detractors who see something inauthentic and kind of strange about his whole schtick. What’s especially brought out their knives is MrBeast’s new cringe- and chaos-filled reality competition series for Prime Video, Beast Games, which reportedly cost more than $100 million — making it the most expensive reality show ever made.
“There is a cruel ruthlessness to Beast Games that is truly unpalatable,” writes a reviewer for The Guardian, in what might just be the most savage commentary I’ve ever read about MrBeast or a project he’s connected to. “Overwhelmingly,” the writer continues, “the bulk of the challenges take the form of self-sacrifice, where groups of contestants are told that they can’t progress to the next round unless one of them willingly gives up their shot at the prize and leaves the show. The ugliness of these challenges is overbearing. There is endless pleading and crying and full-blown adult tantrums, and all for a jackpot they are statistically unlikely to win.
“Hand on heart, I can’t remember seeing a more undignified spectacle.”
The Prime Video show, a Squid Game wannabe which has an abysmal 20% critics’ score on Rotten Tomatoes, involves 1,000 players competing in a series of challenges for a chance to win a $5 million dollar cash prize. It’s very much an extension of MrBeast’s stunt-based charity of recent years, such as a recent video in which he paid for an operation that helped restore the vision of 1,000 blind people. Obviously, that surgery meant the world to those people — but, tone-wise, the video had MrBeast in full YouTuber mode. He giddily explains to the camera what’s about to happen, adding that “It’s gonna be crazy!!!”
On various platforms, you’ll find users debating notions like (on Reddit): “How Mr Beast’s Charity Content Grossly Exploits Poverty and Why Millionaire Charity Doesn’t Work.” And, via Quora, “Why do many people like Mr. Beast? Is he exploiting a psychological loophole that causes people to enjoy his content?”
It’s that Guardian review above, however, that fires one vicious broadside after another at the exploitative side of MrBeast and his content — also touching on the 54-page class action lawsuit filed by several contestants against MrBeast’s production company and Amazon, alleging mistreatment, inadequate compensation and “serious emotional distress.” Continues the review: Beast Games largely consists of the “unedifying sight of 1,000 attention seekers embarrassing themselves for the whims of not only a YouTuber, but a YouTuber given to shouting things like, “Everybody has a price!”…
“True, there is something weirdly compelling about Beast Games, but it is compelling in the same way that picking a scab is. It exists solely to show us the worst of the human condition, as obnoxiously as possible.”
