The way I explained it to my mother-in-law, who’d also never heard of him, is like her parents asking her, “who is this Paul McCartney guy, anyway?”
I certainly don’t expect everyone to know who any particular celebrity is, but Mr. Beast is absolutely huge, and not knowing him really only means you’re not in his target demographic. We’ve had plenty of threads about people not knowing celebrities with much more in depth discussion of how someone with 500 million followers can be completely unknown to us.
Yeah but the Beatles were on Television (Ed Sullivan!) and the news- constantly. You had to be living in a cave to not know who they were. I do watch Youtube, but never run across him. He apparently does stunts and extreme challenges- which are not my cup of tea. I tend to listen/watch music and educational stuff.
He technically has a tv show, “Beast Games,” on Amazon Prime. Not broadcast television, of course, but still.
Like you, I’m a youtube watcher who has never seen any of his videos, but oddly stunts and extreme challenges are my cup of tea. You’d think I would have.
I chalk it up to there being a whole giant world online that I’m blissfully unaware of. For example, I’ve heard the name PewDiePie as being a popular youtuber but never seen any of his content. Turns out he was the most viewed youtuber in history until Mr Beast surpassed him. Heard both names, yet I’m completely unfamiliar with either of their stuff.
Pretty much the same thing can be said for Mr. Beast. I’m not trying to throw it out as some kind of value judgement you don’t know who he is. He’s on all the tubes and toks and instas and Xs, and I think I’ve watched only one video of his, because he drove a train into a hole, but then I saw maybe it was all CGI, and I didn’t care to research it to find out.
To put it into some perspective, the Super Bowl this year had something like 125 million viewers. One of Mr. Beast’s videos he released 12 days ago has 111 million views so far. Sure, lots of issues comparing TV viewership ratings to YouTube views, but those are Taylor Swift numbers.
To keep it on topic, when Mr. Beast and Jeff Probst are on stage together, one of them is a much bigger celebrity, and he’s also taller and younger.
I’m 47 and can confirm, Jimmy Donaldson(Mr. Beast) is probably in the top 200 most famous people in America right now. If we talk about under-30s, he is probably in the top 50…I guess if we exclude sports stars.
He’s super famous and I don’t watch or subscribe to his channel.
I should say, though, that I watched Beast Games. It was fun.
I think it’s probably higher than that if you go younger. It’s pretty hard to quantify something like that, but if you polled a random middle or high school I would imagine that Mr Beast and Taylor Swift are probably the two closest to 100% name recognition. At least with athletes there will be someone that doesn’t know LeBron or Ronaldo or Messi.
I would say with the under-20 crowd Mr Beast is top-5 in name recognition.
I was traveling for three weeks, and just finished catching up on Survivor. So much good stuff in the last few episodes!
I still can’t believe anyone bought Devens’ fake tribal council idol gambit. He sold it brilliantly, and it kept him around for at least two votes. And a good move eventually owning up to the ruse, IMO.
Glad we’re done with Coach’s bullshit. He was entertaining up to a point, but the shtick got old fast. Chrissy was collateral damage, but I didn’t care about her one way or the other.
The way Christian went out was brutal, but also damned entertaining.
I’d definitely heard of Mr. Beast, and knew what his claim to fame was, but I’d never actually seen him before. I was surprised that he seemed like a humble, soft-spoken sort of guy; I expected some brash loudmouth. I may check out some of his videos now.
I could definitely imagine the whole coin-flip thing going badly: nobody wanting to do it, drawing rocks, getting the call wrong, and someone is ousted without a vote and half the tribe is angry about it.
But Devens’ gleeful abandon, along with outcome of the toss, transformed it into a moment of joy for the whole tribe. I loved watching that!
I think that episode is one of the most memorable overall in a few years. The production so wanted the coin to land on “double it” because of how great that makes the drama.
My wife and I pointed out right away, though. The previous All-Star season set the amount to $2 million right away.
He has suffered a lot of blowback online lately. People tearing him down, saying he seems fake.
I don’t believe anything is based on any real problems or true rumors. It’s a natural blowback that happens when someone reaches huge popularity.
We like him. Wife is 45. I’m 47. His videos are fun. We haven’t watched in awhile, but he seems like a good guy to us. He includes his high-school friends in the fun(and money) and that’s cool.
Only thing I remember was one of his friends came out as a transgender girl. Recently, she has not been in videos, I heard? I don’t remember any new of him firing her, though. He seemed supportive right when she transitioned from male->female.
I find someone like Jimmy Donaldson(Mr. Beast) and Doug Walker(Nostalgia Critic) are more enjoyable when you tune out any noise or blowback around them.
Yeah, I think the producers got extremely lucky with how this played out. As you point out, having nobody want to do it and going to rocks would have been awful if whoever drew the odd rock missed the call.
But they did at least sweeten the pot quite a bit by offering both immunity at this tribal and an idol. So basically it’s a coin flip to make Final 8. For a player on the outs that’s a pretty big deal, especially compared to the Shot in the Dark (one-in-six chance with no idol attached).
Certainly this twist was much more balanced than the Jimmy Fallon one where the reward was not remotely close to worth the risk.
Not really too sad to see Stephanie go - she just isn’t a good enough liar to play this game. Even when she’s telling the truth she seems like she’s lying.
Pretty interesting situation with the tribe now. I’m trying to figure out how these Final 9 break down. I think we have a few groups that are playing together, but it all feels a bit fluid.
Jonathan and Joe seem aligned. As do Ozzy, Rizo, and Cirie. I guess Emily, Rick, and Aubry might be working together? Is Tiff with Cirie’s group, or with Aubry? Everybody voted for Steph, so that doesn’t help, and if we go back a week it looks like everybody (except Emily) was voting together as well (with Rick and Christian the split-vote targets).
Lots of very big targets left too - Ozzy, Cirie, Joe, Jonathan, Rick (perhaps). Feels like all of those go in the “possible winner” bucket and will be targeted by the others.
This annoys me, and it is not you, it’s Jeff. Look, it is the Final 4 and maybe final 5. Not final 8, or 7 or 6. Next thing you know it will be the final 23 after one player leaves.
Yeah, not much real drama anymore with the votes, they have been pretty unanimous.
Lol. I get it, but I’m not sure how else to refer to it. Can we come up with other names like the NCAA does? Elite 8. Notorious 9? Terrific 10? Select 7 and Serious 6?
I actually think that may be a sign of some pretty advanced game play. No reason to rock the boat as long as it isn’t you or your close ally. Jonathon was perfectly fine cutting Stephenie once that became the plan. Try not to give away who your strongest partners are, or who you aren’t willing to work with.
Jonathan did have a bit of a tell when he flat out told Emily she was “full of it” during Tribal. But I don’t think Emily is dumb enough to think Jonathan was her ally. I also think Cirie is being a bit too obvious the extent to which she is protecting Ozzy - that could backfire on her.
But the point is that Devin’s is guaranteed to make to the final 8. Is saying “Devin’s is guaranteed to make it until there are only 8 players left” somehow better?
