It’s not his real name, if that’s what’s confusing you.
That has pissed me off. A TV show gets ONE season per calendar year.
ETA: I’m also not too thrilled about the “no naked” bit.
I’ve heard of him because I teach middle schoolers.
Yeah. Another thing I just remembered from the video is that his big thing is trying to find staying power. He has a massive audience, but they tend to age out, rather than stick with him, unlike with all the YouTubers he invited along with Olson.
There WAS a guy on the first season of “Survivor” who went naked at every opportunity, but most of the participants do wear clothes.
He won, iirc. And then went to jail because he didn’t pay taxes on his winnings.
I’ve seen him mentioned through other YT videos, mainly complaining about his moldy Lunchable knock-offs. I have a vague sort of idea on the content he makes through general internet osmosis. So I guess I’d say “I know who he is” if he was on a show I was watching but I wouldn’t be especially interested, impressed or excited.
It’s just a pretty common occurrence on a message board full of old people (myself included) to proudly say they never heard of someone or something that’s insanely famous. It’s like old people in 1964 saying “Beatles? Never heard of them.” And yeah I know there will be push back on that statement but I don’t think I’m exaggerating much. He’s currently the most subscribed YouTuber with the amount of subscribers significantly larger than the entire population of the United States. And that’s just people who chose to subscribe and not people who view his videos. Random videos of his routinely get as many views as the final episode of MASH.
There’s nothing wrong with being out of touch with popular culture but it’s not really anything to take pride in. We’ve become our parents get used to it.
He first popped up on my radar when he paid for 1,000 blind people to have eye surgery. It seemed like he was taking an awful lot of criticism for doing something that was actually pretty decent, but I didn’t investigate it too closely. Since then, he’s kind of remained on the periphery of my awareness as that guy who does crazy giveaways and contests and seems all right but will almost certainly be revealed to be evil or something one day.
Doea he do all of these crazy giveaways and contests anonymously or are they done as part of the content he is creating for YouTube?
It’s all for content. He is giving away millions though, I honestly don’t understand how youtube money can be good enough to afford spending so much money on a single video. I doubt Rhett and Link or Smosh are spending millions on each of their videos.
He has something like 480 million subscribers on YouTube. Plus he has various businesses that appeal to his audience. All of the so-called philanthropy is a cost of doing business. Does anyone think that a game show like Jeopardy! Is giving money away just out of kindness?
Everything about him is fake. One thing he does is use CGI to make buildings and other environments look more decrepit so that his philanthropy seems meaningful. Many of his stunts also use deceptive CGI.
I am not proud of the fact I’ve never heard of him. I didn’t suggest or hint at that. I understand (now) how popular he is. Despite that, and despite the fact that I spend a lot of time scrolling social media, until he was a guest on a show I do like, Survivor, he had flown under my radar.
I find that interesting. A little discussion broke out in the Survivor 50 thread about him. Rather than hijack that thread I just thought I’d bring the discussion here. This isn’t intended to be a ‘get off my lawn’ thread. The internet is a big, deep place and no matter how popular someone is, there will be a portion of the population that the algorithm will ignore.
It’s just an informal, little poll. I’m not here to brag about my Luddite-ism. It’s equally annoying being told how dumb it is to be proud of ignorance… especially since it’s misplaced.
Before reading this thread, I thought Mr. Beast was a website.
I have heard the name. I have never seen him or heard him speak. He host YouTube videos I think.
I wasn’t pointing directly at you. I’m not going back to see if there is even a hint of that attitude in your posts. I’ll assume there isn’t. In general I’ve seen a lot of that attitude here and ran into it on a few occasions. The “I haven’t heard of it so it must not be a thing” attitude. Even when shown how much of a thing it is they wave it off. I guess it’s hard for some to admit they are out of touch. Others are proud to be out of touch. I don’t quite understand the attitude. I know there are gaps in my knowledge of the world around me. It’s not a point of pride.
I’ve been reading the SD while it was still in the Sun-Times, and have been reading it since it launched into the digital format. That attitude has been there from the very beginning… it’s nothing new. I’m sure everyone reading this is aware of that phenomenon.
But that’s for a different thread. 
I’ve never really watched Donaldson’s full videos. They are filmed in a frenzied corybantic style purportedly appealing to the attention deficit youngsters where something dramatic happens every few seconds.
He is one of the early experts on how to film and market Internet videos; and his success implies he knows a lot about this. His early work featured some impressive generosity - restoring sight to dozens of people simultaneously. And stuff that seemed to reach, filming his mom’s reaction when he gave her a million bucks.
I don’t have any personal animus. He tried some business projects - “the world’s best chocolate” (originally four bucks a bar in Canada; I guessed the world’s best chocolate is not typically sold in gas stations), ghost kitchen burgers, and an ambitious reality show where people claimed they had to remain in stadium crowds unfed for many hours. Movie extras are often treated poorly; I have no knowledge his thing was much worse than most. He has become ridiculously wealthy. This might have led to bad behaviour, but not necessarily so. Don’t know enough to judge.
He did a video in which a man and a woman did a $100,000 Challenge - stay in the same large room with minimal niceties for 100 days. Every 10 days, you’d get the chance to buy something.
Mr. Beast’s crew left them to their own devices when a storm hit and the facility was without power for like 2 or 3 days. I thought that was nice of him. NOT.