I know of him, though lately his videos have been showing up on my FB feed. The two I watched were very Squid Gamey, without the actual danger of course. He does give away a shit ton of money, the two videos I watched were half a million to stay in a room 100 days and 800k to run a ninja warrior style course. He does look very creepy though, he has a psycho smile.
Same. But i haven’t done anything to actively avoid him. I’m obviously off in a different corner of YouTube, and his videos have never been recommended to me.
And I’ve heard both the good (he raises a lot of money for charities, gives stuff away) and the bad (he’s incompetent at organizing larger events and is sleazy.) I have to assume he’s entertaining to watch.
My grandson, who is in his mid-20s now, used to watch PewDiePie videos when he was in his early teens. That’s the only reason I’m familiar with that name. Wasn’t he an early gaming streamer? Maybe I’m thinking of someone else.
I’ve heard of MrBeast and am aware that his productions are something of a train wreck but I’ve never watched any of his content and don’t plan to.
I’ve barely heard of Pewdiepie, and don’t know the other two.
I’ve seen the word PewDiePie (is it pronounced pyoo-dee-pie or pyoo-dai-pie? I’ve never heard it spoken aloud). I was vaguely aware it had something to do with YouTube, and was not aware until now that it referred to a person.
I came across Mr. Beast somewhere on this very message board, in reference to Bill Mahar defending Mr. Beast from some “ridiculous” criticism that turned out to actually be entirely valid. I thought that it was somewhere in that massive Bill Mahar thread, but I don’t find it there on a cursory look. Other than that, I know nothing whatever about him.
I’m not so sure about this. I’m not saying he’s a creative genius who deserves every cent of his money, but I think there is an element of “everything the kids are into that I don’t understand is a symptom of a decaying capitalist oligarchy” here.
It’s not like the light entertainment celebrities of our youth were all sophisticated protlatarian luminaries making deep and philosophical statements on the nature of society (other than Timmy Mallet he totally was 
)
Of course I’ve heard of Mr Beast by virtue of being on planet Earth and having access to media these last few years. I don’t really watch any of his stuff (although I did watch the first episode of his game show on Prime). He’s not really in my kid’s circle of YouTube creators they watch.
I can understand the draw of Jackass-style pranks and stunts. I don’t understand the economics of how the market turns so many of these creators into multi-millionaires or how it selects which ones become successful. I understand that it’s mostly based on ad revenue and brand sponsorship.
Isn’t that just a bunch of children’s playground games then?
I know him cuz my teenaged kids liked him a couple years ago. They still might, but they talk about him less now.
I know him as the “world’s biggest youtuber” – whether that’s true or not.
On a new google account with no watch history, at least one of the suggested videos will be Mr Beast – a grinning, bearded dude and the video will be some kind of grand spectacle, like a person trying to swim in a pool filled entirely with burgers (not a real example). I’ve never been remotely tempted to click on any of them.
No, it was squid gamey in that there was a life changing amount of money on the line. He literally had the dalgona candy cut out competition as part of one of his challenges.
I take it for granted that I’ll never be able to keep up, so I don’t worry about it. If something like this comes up, my reaction is “Oh, really?” and then I turn back to whatever I had been doing that interests me more. I scoff at FOMO (fear of missing out) and in its place I propose OKAMO (OK about missing out).
The Internet is a firehose aimed at the teacup of your brain. I first read that metaphor back in 1997. How much more so now.
I wouldn’t say I worry about it. I just like being reasonably up on things. These are all things that still interest me genuinely. And it works great for me, as a lot of my work involves socializing with people of all age groups and interests, so the more general knowledge I have to draw from, the better. I can bullshit about the NHL playoffs, which of Taylor Swift’s albums are the best, Stoic philosophy, data science, music theory, art history, card games, Roblox, some anime/manga, etc. Now, most of it is very surface-level knowledge, but it’s enough to sustain a conversation and break the ice with people. I’m fucked with stuff like Game of Thrones or Tolkien or Real Housewives, though.
I know about Mark via his brother, who does TwoKinds.
I’ve seen one video of his - he challenged a pilot to live in a plane for 100 days. if the pilot did he would get the plane plus operating costs. Mr Beast would offer various items (IIRC in exchange for longer stay. ) I very well be misremembering some aspects, but I found the video interesting, and Mr Beast didn’t seem TOO evil, though certainly there was some exploitation involved.
Brian
I’ve watched several videos (including the one @BigT linked) and read several articles about Mr. Beast’s content over the years, but never watched any of his content. I think I just don’t have the right age makeup to withstand it.
I do see his candy at the gas station and it always catches my eye and I always pass it over after giving it a good internal scoff, because I’m a grown-ass lady. Harumpf.
Same.
A lot of the stuff I remember watching was more performative altruism than challenges. Stuff like tipping pizza drivers crazy tips, or giving homeless people money, opening up his own food bank, etc. It’s this uneasy tension of “poverty porn,” in a way, exploiting people in rough times for clicks, but also monetarily helping them out, often substantially so. While I didn’t mind him in that era, I always felt a bit conflicted about the dynamic of “hey, he’s helping people out,” with “he’s also doing this for clicks.”
I’m reading the Wikipedia article on the guy. One bit reads, “In January 2017, Donaldson published an almost day-long video of himself counting to 100,000, which became his breakthrough viral video.” It also says, “In April 2020, Donaldson hosted a $250,000 rock, paper, scissors tournament featuring 32 influencers. The event became YouTube’s most-watched live Original at the time, peaking at 662,000 concurrent viewers.”
In other words, much of this is so ridiculous I would never have tried it myself.
I know he got some attention years ago on YouTube by doing something ridiculous like counting to a million out loud, or something. Who watches that rubbish?
Then he began doing things like ‘you’ve got five minutes to grab as much stuff as you can off the shelves and balance it on top of each other within this square marked on the floor, then you get to keep it’. Again, no idea why this would be so popular, but this stuff gets millions upon millions of views and he must make a load of money off it.
Lately there has been debate about whether he just exploits people or is genuinely trying to do some good. He’s done things like buy medication or operations for people who can’t afford them or don’t have access to them. It could come across as very cynical but then the debate is, if people really do get the benefit, is it in fact a good thing to do?
The last I heard, people were suing him for his Squid Game style gameshow because the conditions for the contestants were so bad.
This thread has been an eye opener for me because I genuinely thought more people on here would’ve heard of him. But then maybe the self-selecting nature of this thread has attracted more people who haven’t heard of him (I’d expect it to be the other way round actually, but who knows).
This seems a tad harsh. I live on planet earth and scroll a lot internet media daily and I’d never heard of him until he popped up on Survivor.