Originally published at: MrBeast sues the kitchen making his disgusting branded hamburgers | Boing Boing
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6 Likes
Excellent primer on ghost kitchens if you’ve got 40 minutes or so
12 Likes
Burgers; they’re made of the best bits of the cow, honest!
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About 2 years ago when i lived in a different part of town i noticed that there was one of these operating out of a food trailer nearby, i had debated briefly that maybe i’d like to try one of these burgers but i quickly changed my mind when i noticed that the same food trailer was also making food for 5-6 other businesses. I don’t mind ghost kitchens once in a blue moon and the one i occasionally order from is out of a large building that rents out kitchen spaces to different businesses, and seeing this one where it’s all clustered in a small location just gave me a bad vibe.
6 Likes
I do not understand why this man is so popular. He’s not interesting to listen to, he says really dumb things, and has an eminently punchable face, at least in his video thumbnails. Oh, he gives away money and other things to people? And makes sappy videos about every single minute he’s doing it? Wow, what a humanitarian! Oh, you say these donations reap him multiple times the amount of money he gives away? He starts business relationships that he completely ignores until they cause him image problems? Huh, he doesn’t sound like such a great guy after all. Imagine that.
21 Likes
I guess that we are not the target audience. 
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Good video. Takes only 27 minutes to listen to if you play it on 1.5. Reminds me of the Simpsons where the food court food all comes from the same vat of anonymous chicken.
4 Likes
Sorry, did you say cow?
11 Likes
I don’t know enough about MrBeast to really justify my instinctive dislike for the man or his brand but if he’s anything like most internet celebrities I expect that will change soon enough.
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Largely because he has mastered manipulating the YouTube recommendation algorithm. Even YouTubers who make actual worthwhile content have learned a lot from Mr. Beast about running their YouTube channels, like Veritasium.
10 Likes
That video was indeed excellent. I had no idea this whole world exists.
The TL;DW is that that a corporation sets up a kitchen in an unmarked building, then creates 50 or so menu items that they can cook in it. Those 50 items are distributed across multiple fake restaurants which are listed in food delivery apps. The same items will be on multiple menus as well.
In the author’s area of LA, the same “virtual kitchen” company owned 77 of the slots on his Uber Eats view. Basically they are crowding out all the local businesses and being “ghost” kitchens they are of course skirting health inspections and all kinds of other nonsense.
It’s all really dark and terrible 
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His target audience is, I believe boys aged around 8-14. He’s on the low end of frustrating for prank oriented internet content mills. At least based on my limited exposure.
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Yeah, I haven’t watched much of his content, but compared to some other choices aimed at that demographic he’s tame.
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Ghost kitchens sound like a walking nightmare of health code violations; just on GP.
Then there’s the fact that they are crowding out actual small businesses.
11 Likes
If I ever order from a new restaurant on a delivery app I always make sure to give the name/address a quick search to make sure it’s an actual brick and mortar.
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The first time i saw a Mister Beast video he was using actual torture techniques on people who were gleefully begging for more. He was also changing the rules of the game they agreed to play (to win a lot of money of course) at will.
Comments were mostly people saying they’d give anything to be there being put in stress positions and deprived of sleep.
2 Likes
He used techniques from Guantanamo bay in his “stay in the circle” video.
Also he handed out iphones to kids too young to have them in a halloween video. The most stilted soulless, joyless video I have every seen. Real dumb stuff.
Also affiliated with dumb toy giveaway video where they gave kids toys of radically different values to open at the same time. These guys are weird and their performative “kindness” is done with a lack of real empathy.
Even in the cataract video there’s no questioning of why so many people have cureable blindness in the world’s richest country. It’s just a situation that can be used for content.
11 Likes
I think their intended purpose is to produce more ghosts…
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Sounds like he’s not nearly as innocuous as I was led to believe.
5 Likes
Good plan. I only ever used delivery app food for restaurants that I had been to (just because I know they’ll be good, not because I was suspicious of anything) so I guess I always got lucky. Now I live in a remote area where such things don’t exist but it was surprising to learn this was all happening under my nose while I lived in LA.
5 Likes
