Originally published at: Mr Beast sued over "culture of misogyny and sexism" in workplace - Boing Boing
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This is my surprised face.
No matter how much philanthropic giving he does, a social media “influencer” doesn’t build an empire like this without being or becoming an abusive arsehole to one degree or another. Even when they put in extreme effort not to be arseholes, they still attract arseholes as staff members or fans.
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I have no context for this article or person and am happy about it. Very tough to parse what is happening. Also a little nervous that I am slipping behind.
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I’ve never watched a Mr. Beast video and wouldn’t recognize the guy if I met him in real life but I have been instinctively wary of him for years based soley on the fans he’s attracted and the way they’ve talked about him.
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Also not surprised. Especially after I read this
@ycleptShawn not sure you are missing out on much or slipping. I only know about this guy because I have a kid and he is, unfortunately, very popular with children aged 8+. He is like Roblox in his ubiquitousness. Luckily, my kid doesn’t seem to care for him
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@anon23281680 thanks for the context. My son is 20 now, so I don’t have that conduit of info.
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OK, I read the linked articles (the Salon one above being great), and it sounds like this all boils down to a poorly planned reality show production. Which is crappy, but I’ve read WAY worse things about other reality show productions!
Like everyone else in this thread, my knowledge of Mr Beast’s oeuvre is pretty limited and mainly comes from things my kids have told me (they’re not major fans, but they watch his videos sometimes and made me buy one of his chocolate bars once) and from mainstream news articles in places like the NYT. And despite my deep skepticism that a youtuber with this kind of mass appeal could actually be a good guy… it actually seems like he might actually be a good guy?
For example, I assumed the chocolate was garbage rebranded chocolate from some global megacorp, but it’s among the best chocolates I’ve had at its price point (which is surprisingly cheap), and from what I’ve been able to find online it seems like he actually built his own factory in Peru where he uses fair trade cacao and pays decent wages to the workers.
He’s clearly not perfect. I’ve seen plenty of valid criticism about how his philanthropy is often exploitative (see the Salon article above), and it seems he’s occasionally had some bad folks in his organization. But if the worst they have to throw at him is that his mega-giant reality show was poorly planned, I’m actually kind of impressed.
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I wanted to write a book titled The Joy of Missing Out but was beaten to it
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The delightful new philanthropist everyone loves, Dr. Monster! In his latest video with his crew mate Uncle Monitor.
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I can not stand performative charity. If you aren’t willing to donate/help anonymously it’s not really charity. It’s something altogether different and I don’t trust it.
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I only learned about the term JOMO a couple of months ago (appropriately enough), but have been practising it for a few years. I can attest that, if one embraces it, it’s one of the few true pleasures of getting older.
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And rightly so. For context, he makes videos that kids seem to obsess over. Like Baby Shark but for slightly older kids. I think around a billion people watch his videos, so it’s not just American kids that have bad taste. (I had bad taste at that age too).
I think adults like to keep tabs on Mr Beast because he’s talking to kids more most parents are.
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It is clear from watching any of his videos that he isn’t “nice”.
The first one I saw (a few years ago) involved interrogation techniques I first saw in a documentary about Guantamo bay.
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You should watch the interview with the guy who was kept solitary confinement for a video and see if he sounds nice. Or the guy who was invted for a “trial” as a writer and had his ideas taken for no pay and no job offer.
Real nice guy.
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Mr Beast also teaches his staff to be arseholes who think that everybody else is an arsehole throwing obstacles in their way.
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Is that how he was perceived? I have never watched any of his work, but just the nature of it always felt creepy and exploitative to me. Certainly not “nice”
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Same basic narrative mechanism as sanewashing, etc. The reporter maybe wrote (or thought) “he posed himself as the world’s nicest man” but it ended up a simpler story with a simpler character, “the world’s nicest man.”
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“Nice” probably isn’t the right term. He’s clearly a very aggressive business guy and happy to exploit others’ misfortune and/or fame-hounding for his own gain, no question. But the solitary confinement guy volunteered for the gig, even if it was ill-conceived and exploitative… My sympathy for him is similar to my sympathy for the fame-hounds who go on mainstream reality TV programs. Which isn’t to say I don’t have sympathy for them. I do! But that sympathy is tempered by the choices the victims make.
And by the standards of internet stars (which I guess is a low bar…) Mr. Beast stands out for at least trying to have a positive message most of the time. He doesn’t seem to prioritize ethics very highly, but he’s also not trafficking in the misogyny, racism, Islamophobia, antisemitism, etc. that pop up in so many other youtubers’ work.
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Any philanthropy is just a side effect. The point is to drive views, the philanthropy is just a means to achieve that. It is still a version of corporate greed, they just calculated that the side effects seem slightly more palatable than dumping toxic waste or other usual outcomes of having profit-driven motives.
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I tell my oldest nephew (a webmasters) that I’m the cool aunt who knows all the meemies
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