Endless Thread - You'll never believe what happens in our MrBeast explainer...

Episode Date: December 20, 2024

Jimmy Donaldson — AKA "MrBeast" — has taken YouTube by storm, racking up more than 330 million subscribers with his cleverly edited videos of stunts ranging from performative philanthropy to Fear Factor-esque challenges. Ryan Broderick, creator of the Garbage Day newsletter and host of the podcast Panic World, tells Ben and Amory about the awkward past, the controversial present, and the uncertain future of MrBeast. Show notes: Panic World's MrBeast episode with Ben and Amory Garbage Day, the newsletter "In the Belly of MrBeast" (Time) "Willing to Die for MrBeast (and $5 Million)" (The New York Times) "From baking to MrBeast: Meet the YouTuber taking on the platform’s biggest creator" (NBC News) Credits: This episode was produced by Amory Sivertson and Grant Irving. Mix and sound design by Paul Vaitkus. It was hosted by Ben Brock Johnson, Amory Sivertson, and Ryan Broderick.

Support for endless thread comes from MathWorks, creator of MATLAB and Simulink Software, to design and develop engineered systems, accelerating the pace of discovery in engineering and science. Learn more at Mathworks.com. Support for WBUR comes from Is Business Broken, a podcast from the Mayrotra Institute at Boston University that explores questions like, why is innovation in healthcare so hard? Is ESG just greenwashing? of course, is business broken? Listen, wherever you get your podcasts. WBUR Podcasts, Boston. A question for both of you. Who was the first influencer you were aware of? King Arthur? Does that count? King Arthur is it? Did you have a parissocial relationship with King Arthur? I don't know. This is already getting too deep and scary for me. I want to say like the NYSTAP brothers, maybe. Sure.

I'm going to say Elaine Benis. Elaine Benis is my OG. From Seinfeld. Yeah, yeah. Fascinating. Okay. Yeah, you did take that in direction of it. Not expecting.

That's fair. Just keeping you on your toes, Ryan. Ryan is Ryan Broderick. You've heard him on endless thread before in our music meme episode and in our series on crypto. Ryan runs the newsletter Garbage Day, which is all. about the internet and highly suggest you read it. But he also just launched a podcast called Panic World about panic worthy things born of the internet.

So it was really only a matter of time before we would collaborate on an episode. And Ryan had a beast of a topic for us. Oh. A modern day influencer, unlike our crusty millennial examples. I think mine were probably like MySpace emo bands. I feel like that was the first time where I was like, this teenager is famous on the internet. I want to be famous on the internet. I want to wear white studded belts.

Let's hear some names. Can we get some names? So many. I mean, like, I had the Panic of Disco demo CD before it was properly released. I think that's sort of the way that I think about a lot of influencer culture now, which is, like, they're just the famous teenagers online of this era. and they don't make music. They trap you in a box for a week and torture you for money.

And that's what we're going to be talking about today. We're talking about Mr. Beast. Mr. Beast is the biggest YouTuber in the world. And he's done that by turning himself into a human algorithm. He creates the most brand safe personality-free content you could possibly imagine. And iPad babies all over the world love him. He's also had a recent spat of controversy. Lots of weird and sort of confusing things are coming out of his productions, and we're going to be talking about all of that.

And trying to answer the most important question of the modern area, which is, should we be outraged by his existence? I'm Amory Sewardson. I'm Ben Brock Johnson, and you are listening to a special Collabo episode. Beur-Ber-Ber! Coming to you from the teams of Endless Thread. And Panic World. Today's episode, Mr. Beast. So Mr. Beast uploaded his first video to his YouTube channel at 13 years old in February 2012.

Back then, he was not Mr. Beast. He was Mr. Beast, which is honestly much cooler name, I think. And if you guys go to the chat on the corner of the screen here, you'll see a link to what we believe is his first video. He's someone who does scrub his archive quite often. All right. where am I? What just happened? Oh, oh man.

He's one of them Minecraft boys. Yes, it is a Minecraft video. It is extremely boring. And I think it is probably very hard for anyone born before the 21st century to imagine watching other children play Minecraft. But it is huge. And this is the world that Mr. Beast comes out of. For a long time, he was just a kid. goofing off on the internet. So there's a daily motion link I just sent you. And this is,

this is some of the stuff that he's tried to get rid of over the years. So this was a series he was doing called Worst Intros on YouTube. What's up guys? Welcome to Worst Intros on YouTube episode 20. This is actually episode 21, but I said the wrong number because that would be a bad intro. And it only makes sense to have a bad intro on the worst intro series. Get it. I'm so funny. And it was, you know, kind of like edgy, shitty, adolescent humor. some of the jokes that he would tell were he would keep joking about lying down in the street and getting run over by cars to kill himself.

He had a recurring bit where he pretended to be a parent walking in on their child watching one of his videos and like, you know, being disappointed. He would make jokes about drinking bleach. It was just like very teen boy. Yeah, I was going to say, this is like classic 13-year-old stuff, it feels like to me.

Yes. And part of the reason it's kind of like hard to parse this is because it is a parody of other YouTube videos. And this will be actually important when we talk about Mr. Beasts is that he is a child of YouTube. So like his earliest videos are making other kinds of videos that he's seeing, talking about other YouTubers he likes, and even parodying them. Seriously, why would you put that on the internet? Like, why would you ever upload that? But before we go any further, I have to show you guys something that is going to. going to blow your mind.

Does he ever identify himself or is he just, Mr. Beast, we don't know who this real person is? His name is Jimmy Donaldson. Jimmy D. I pegged him for a Chad looking at him. Maybe that's not sure. But his face says Chad. He's got Chad energy.

Yeah. Okay. Jimmy. Got it. Yeah, Jimmy D. By 2017, his channel has 100,000 subscribers, which kind of, you know, that's, you know, That's sort of the number that when you hit that, you become like a real YouTuber. You're not like big, but like you can probably start making some real money.

And people kind of think of you as a YouTuber. Do you guys have any sort of memories of like what YouTube was like in 2017? I know it's so far, you know, so, so long ago. There were fewer ads. So this is important. The YouTube adpocalypse, as it's called, happened in 2016. This is also when everyone decided that Pew Dai Pai was a Nazi. Yes.

So it's sort of, I think, an important year for YouTube because it's the year that YouTube transitions from something like Vine, you know, a social media platform to something like Netflix, a more sort of linear programming platform. And this is, I think, very important for thinking about the beginnings of Mr. Beas because he is learning how to use YouTube and how to optimize YouTube right at a moment when YouTube itself is becoming a much more serious entertainment player. It's trying to grow up. very purposefully and make money for Google in a way that it probably wasn't before, right?

Exactly. And in January 2017, he has his first big video. Can you take a guess what really blew him up? Like what his first big video was? Man, I'm going to fail at this, but I want to say like one of the viral challenges or like a thing that like everybody was doing and he did it too and it blew up. That's my guess. You're not wrong, actually. Yeah.

He made a video where he counted to 100,000. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, 26, six, nine, twenty, six, seventy, six, seventy, seven, twenty six, seven, one, 26, seven, two, twenty six, seven, can you guess how long this video is? I'm going to say, like, 28 hours. No, I have no idea. I literally have no idea. You're close. So the actual time on this video is 23 hours and 48 minutes. Damn.

But it opens with a disclaimer saying this year, the original video was 40 hours long, but Adobe caps it at 24 hours. So some parts are sped up to get it under 24 hours. Wow. Wow. 5,000766, 8,000,000, 8,000770. Wait, you know what's interesting to me about this? Like, to me, that fact, Ryan, jumps out because. it feels thematic to who he becomes.

This is sort of very indicative of what he will be known as is this person who will sort of do anything to go viral and to be the king of YouTube. So in 2017, he gets his first sponsorships. And this is the moment when he figures out what I believe is the fundamental core of the Mr. Beast project, which is how can you take money you make from YouTube, invest it back into YouTube to make more money to invest back into YouTube. A sort of perpetual ad dollar traffic machine. And he gets $10,000 and he gives it to a quote unquote random homeless person and films it. It's a series where I just, you know, be nice and just give people some help. So if you want to take it,

it's about $10,000. I'm not joking. It's real. There's something that gives me the ick about that when you are taping yourself doing it. Like if you're giving people money anonymously, great, I support you. If you are filming yourself doing that and filming the people you're giving money to,

not on board. It's the performativeness that seems to bother you. Yeah, it feels performative in a way that's like maybe taking advantage, even if you're handing out money. Hmm. He gets $10,000 from YouTube revenue, from ads? Yes, from his sponsorships and ads. So he collects the $10,000 and just gives a homeless guy 10 grand. And the video has 11 million views. So that generates a bunch more ad revenue and then he can pull some other stunt. That's exactly right. Now, how would you describe Mr. Beasts on-screen personality or lack thereof?

He looks like a college student in a dorm, like a college bro who plays lacrosse and no hate towards that. But he looks like his name is Chad and he has lacrosse practice later in the afternoon. And first he's just going to make a quick little video. He looks like an MPC in a video game set at a college. I think that's exactly right. Okay. And I think this is sort of one of the first big question marks for older people. who are discovering him, which is like, how can you be this uninteresting and have this

intensive a following? And the name Mr. Beast. I'm expecting so much more from a name like Mr. Beast. That's interesting that that's your read on it. Because like, so I'm in my mid-30s and I grew up with like AOL and Instant Messenger. So I'm of like the first screen name generation. Sure. And so when I saw Mr. Beast, I was like, oh, that's a username that he just like picked when he

was 13. Fair. But I guess, like, I would love to hear your takes on sort of the difference between idolizing someone like Mr. Beast or any kind of YouTuber versus idolizing an actor or a musician or or some sort of, you know, artist or entertainer. Like, do you find them to be similar mindsets or or do you think it's a totally different idea? Well, it's such a good question because like, I think we imagine one of these to be way more curated than the other in terms of how. this person is presented to us as consumers, right? Like I would imagine that like an actor or a musician or whatever, like the way that that person

is surfaced for me as a potential consumer that I will spend money on this person's personal brand, like that is like a very carefully curated presentation of a person. Whereas like we're now in this world where the appearance of curation is gone. It's just like, oh, no, this is just, this person's just like who they are. And they're, like, presenting themselves to me just, like, as they are. And so, like, that is, there's something about that change that feels meaningful to me. Yeah, I think when we see actors in a film or a TV show, we are trying to escape. And we are trying to enter a different world.

Whereas I think the YouTuber for me is more of just like, hey, you're just like me. You're just a regular person. I think that's right. I sort of compare them to, do you remember when you could like download like a little cartoon animal that would like hang out on your desktop and like infect your computer with spyware in the 90s? Yes. There's like a purple monkey you could get that would like dance around your lap's your screen. Yep. That's sort of what I think of when I think of influencers now.

Like they're a virtual friend that you spend time with. Yeah. But Mr. Beast doesn't stay in this sort of virtual friend zone, if you will, for very long. in 2018, he starts to get pulled into more YouTuber elite-level dramas. So he is a self-proclaimed massive student of PewDiePie Pie, the former king of YouTube. And he made a lot of videos early on where he's saying, you know, I'm studying how PewDie Pye does things. I am copying Pudai, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

He's raised a lot of money for charity and I think he's a good guy. And I want to support his charity stream. And he then asked to say, he. has to sort of turn his back on Mr. Pudai, sever that relationship in 2019. Can either of you tell me what happened with Pudai in 2019 because it's very dark? So like my recollection is Putei Piedai did something. The hint is he didn't do something. But he is unfortunately involved.

I don't know. I really, I don't. I honestly like shouldn't have turned this into a game show moment. I'm really sorry. It was the Christchurch shooter. No points. It was the Christchurch shooter who basically wrote subscribe to puty pie on his gun. Oh, yeah, that's right.

Sorry, I shouldn't have done that. That was actually really uncalled for. No, that's fine. That was a horrible thing. But it is an important moment in Mr. Beast's trajectory because this is when he sort of, I think, finally eliminates this idea from his brand that he is, Putei Piedi Pai's protege. Like he is the, he is the next Pito Pie. I think this is the moment where he stops defining himself by other sort of huge creators.

But it is also, I think, very indicative of how Mr. Beast will go on to deal with a lot of controversy, which is sort of just shutting it down, distancing himself, trying to remain squeaky clean. Yep. He is very busy during the pandemic. He starts a burger chain. He also launches a gaming channel. So this is sort of his, the beginning of his franchise era.

He's trying to figure out like the, the limitations of the Mr. Bees brand, which it turns out there are none. He can do whatever he wants with him. So after this sort of franchising moment, there's basically one last piece of the why is Mr. Bees popular question to slot in here. In April 2021, I think you could argue that the only other person who could have maybe beaten Mr. Beast to the biggest person on YouTube. this sort of growing personality on the platform, David Dobrick was canceled for

unsafe, you know, unsafe behavior on his productions and inappropriate behavior with his cast and crew. And David Dobrick was sort of the only other person I can really see at this time period that could have maybe overtaken Mr. Beast. And he has effectively been chased off the internet. So now PewDie Pie is synonymous with neo-Nazism. David Dobrick is canceled. The world is Mr. Beast Oyster. And that's when, in November of 2021, he releases Squid Game in real life.

I recreated every single set from Squid Game in real life. And whichever one of these 456 people survives the longest wins 456 grand. So he personally funds a YouTube video where he recreates Squid Game in a warehouse. and he beats Netflix to it. And in fact, has argued over the years that he has more views on his Squid Game in real life than they did on their actual game show version of Squid Game. Wow.

670 million views. Oh, God. Red light. Oh, yo, they're dropping. Okay, now some people are getting out. You've got to get a better spot. Do you have any idea what that translates to in terms of money?

I mean, I'm sure that's very, like, secretive and proprietary, but 600 million views. It's a little complex because he has sponsorships in it. I mean, the thing about Mr. Beast videos is they are essentially rushing nesting dolls of advertising. I mean, there's

one video where he went to Antarctica and he branded a mountain in Antarctica for Shopify by sticking a Shopify flag at the top of the mountain. Wow. And now that we climb the mountain, we get to name it. I think we should name it Shopify. Because to be honest,

So he really will do anything for money. And because he's kind of created this cult of personality around, like, help me become the biggest YouTuber ever. I think his fans really like the idea that he is just sort of pure capitalism because that's what they're supporting. They're like, you know, we're going to help. It's almost like a stockholder in a company. That's how his fans, I think, operate. Weirdly MLM vibes to me. Like where it's like just invest in this idea that like we're going to take everything over and you're a part of it and like just like support me in this way that will like help me do this thing that like I'm not it's not really me it's just like me taking there's like a meta MLM level to it to me.

I feel like you're getting more you're going further down the MLM rabbit hole and again me as someone who really did not know anything about Mr. Beast coming into this I'm starting to think like. is he actually a genius? And the whole point is to shine a light on capitalism and how fake money is and how he can just multiply it. I got cut you off. No, he's like, he's notoriously dumb. Okay.

He does not seem to be a particularly deep thinker. Except I have watched him do videos about YouTube production. And I will say like he is someone who, clearly thinks very deeply about YouTube. And this is why it's such an interesting time to be, like right now, to be talking about mysteries because he is effectively one YouTube. He,

I often consider him a raw expression of YouTube's algorithm. He will do anything the algorithm wants him to do, and he's very open to that. And he has now sort of reached a point where everyone's copying him. He's not really growing the way he used to, and he's trying to branch out into like other forms of entertainment. Right. But he is not, he's not a performance artist in the least.

Okay. No, he's just a vessel, man. He's a vessel. I was trying to give him the benefit of the doubt. Oh, I think that would be super funny if he was just like this was all just a giant. This is a masterminded. This is my PhD project. Right.

Yeah, no, he's not. Genius or not. A lot of people are clicking play on a lot of Mr. Beast content. And they're staying put. Ryan Broderick explains why in a minute. At Radio Lab, we love nothing more than nerding out about science, neuroscience, chemistry. But we do also like to get into other kinds of stories, stories about policing or politics, country music, hockey, sex, of bugs. Regardless of whether we're looking at science or not science, we bring a rigorous curiosity to get you the answers.

and hopefully make you see the world anew. Radio Lab, Adventures on the Edge of what we think we know. Wherever you get your podcasts. There is something powerful about the sound of the human voice. Beautifully produced audio has the unique power to connect and inspire. Tell your organization's story with a custom podcast from City Space Productions, the creative studio from WBUR's Business Partnerships Team. Become a thought leader.

Recruit new talent. Reach new audiences. Whatever your goal, we can. help. Discover how the magic is made at WBUR.org slash creative studio. Ryan Broderick of the Garbage Day Newsletter and the new podcast, Panic World, will be the first to admit. I love making fun of Mr. Beast. There's nothing that gives me more perverse thrill than just like writing absolute barn burner takedowns of this guy. But he'll also admit that some of Mr. Beast's videos, especially the more recent ones, Ryan says, are pretty

fun to watch. And he has a favorite. Which is train versus giant pit. And it is literally what you think it is. He just drives a train into a giant pit. And it's great. I just bought this train and it is currently barely full speed towards that giant pit over there. We're also crashing countless cars, blowing up thousands of sticks of real dynamite and even putting 10 jet engines on a car just to show you the most insane experiments of all time. Starting with filling a house Just talk us through the editing style, because I think this is a really good video to sort of use as an example of his editing style, which is, by the way, referred to as retention editing. That's the term for how he edits his videos. Okay, this is like a high velocity video.

Everything is coming at you. The train goes down into the hole, and then it hits the bus, and then it super cuts to an explosion, and now there are... Oh, my God. It's only been like 20 seconds, and now there are people on the ground, and there's a house, and there's a guy in the tub, and I can't. tell what the hell is going on. Yeah. It's chaotic. It's chaotic.

Three, two, one. I've often described as videos as a trailer for a TV show that doesn't exist. Ooh, that's good. I've also heard it described as like intergalactic cable. You know, it's like, it's just, there's just stuff exploding and people are screaming. To me, it also, like, weirdly has, like, almost like a Mr. Show vibe. Like, did you guys ever watch that show? Like, it's the kind of thing that, like, if you were tripping acid and you, like, happened upon this, you would feel like you were, like, seeing the Matrix, I feel like.

Does that make any sense? Yeah, it's like Tim and Eric. It's like Tim and Eric Awesome Show. Great job. Yes. Exactly. Exactly. If you skip further in the video before they get to the train, they tie two school buses to a tank with the rope going across the pit and then they make them drive in opposite directions.

see which one ends up in the pit. Oh my gosh! What is the budget? How did he do this? Well, he has a lot of money. A lot of money. At this point, this video has 239 million views. And honestly, it should because it's titled Train versus Giant Pit.

Who wouldn't want to watch that? Here it goes. This is undeniable that you want to watch this. Like, you don't want to stop watching this. And there's been some research into like exactly how good his editing is. is he has an audience retention rate around 76%, which is insane for YouTube. That's 76% of the people who press, start, finish it. That's amazing.

In January 2022, he launches his chocolate bar company, which is called Feastables. And by the end of that year, his company is looking for $150 million in investments with a $1.5 billion valuation. Wow. Yes. I did not see all of these. directions coming. Burgers, chocolate.

1.5 billion dollar valuation for this YouTuber who used to just like do Minecraft videos. Exactly. This gives my son a lot of hope. Yes, that is right. And then he's fully launched a philanthropy group

called Beast Philanthropy, which I looked into earlier this year, and it's run by like a South African real estate agent who doesn't seem to have any expertise or experience running running a philanthropy group, but I do know from doing that kind of research that they have two production facilities, one in North Carolina where all of Mr. Beast videos are shot and another one in South Africa.

And they basically have a team that goes back and forth to make philanthropy videos. I think the philanthropy videos are probably what you guys have seen before, but we'll get there in just a second. It is at this point in time when he starts to get known for his Fear Factor-esque videos. So, like, he has one where he covered somebody in a thousand spiders. Release the spiders. He has another one where he, like, spent seven days in solitary. He made a guy live in a house for, like, 150 days, and then, like, destroyed the house where the guy was in it.

Now we did. Can you confirm? Is that broken? It looks broken. It felt broken? Yep. All right. Like, this is where things are getting really out of control because the thing about YouTube is that you have to keep.

up in the ante. Yes. So by this point, he has to top himself every time. Oh, man. I mean, fear factor. Fear factor has given us Joe Rogan, and now we get Mr. Beast out of the deal. Two great personalities. That's right.

Two cool guys. Two cool guys. Yep. And if he can successfully face all of the fears, he will win $800,000. I'm not going to lie. This was way more gnarly than I thought it would be. Three. What?

This is messed up. What is it? Stand up. Stand up. Oh, no. No. No, no, no. All right.

What are your general thoughts about the Mr. B's story so far? How are you feeling? I think you were right, Ryan, in describing him as kind of like the personification of the YouTube algorithm. Like, I think that makes sense to me. I don't feel great about that. But also, like, you look at this, like, train versus pit. That's undeniable, man. Like that, like that, like, that, like, that connects to something deep inside me that is like hundreds of thousands of years old.

Like, for some reason, that's like, that's like, that's like what I feel when I see fire. Do you know what I mean? Like, it's like something primordial, but also totally off the rails, as it were. So that's right. That's how I feel. Amory, what about you? Yeah, what are you thinking? Oh, boy.

I just, I want to ask Mr. Beast, where do you see yourself in five years? You want to interview him for a job? I think he's quite nervous about where he's going to be in five years because he's currently, I think, 26, which is usually the age that YouTubers can't really grow past. Really? From what I've seen, if you start on YouTube really young and you build an audience, when you're really young and your audience is young with you, 25, 26, seems, to be the moment where they're no longer growing with you because now they associate you with

their childhood. Yeah. And a lot of YouTubers, I think, become very frustrated because they discover one day, they wake up one day and discover they're a children's show host. And this was part of, I think, why the Miranda Singh's controversy happened, where she realized that, wait a minute, like, I'm blues clues. What do you mean? I thought I was, like, cool.

And my theory is that a lot of sort of the escalation of the last couple years of Mr. Beast brand into many different directions is because. he's terrified of waking up one day and just being like Elmo. He's got to make that Miley Cyrus, Christina Aguilera jump, man. He's got to make dirty. He's got to get nasty. Yeah, he'll be a nasty beast.

Yeah, nasty beast. Either that or just something is going to go horribly wrong in one of these videos, and he's going to die young, and he'll go up and smoke, and it'll be like the end of Thelma and Louise, you know? You're right. We can all hope that he dies. That's true. I'm just saying, I think that's a very real possibility.

And that might be how the Mr. Beast story will just say, if this were a major motion picture, that is how it would end. Well, that's a fantastic transition into the darker era of Mr. Beast, which is what we're going to be talking about now. So Mr. Beast in July of 2023, basically sues the burger franchise and they sue him back. there's a whole bunch of litigation around Mr. Beesburger. In 2024, he does a profile with Time magazine that kind of, I think somewhat unfairly, makes him kind of like the poster boy for YouTube rotting people's brains and like children's attention spans. And I only sort of like want to soften that just because like I don't find Mr. Beast

to be singular or unique in any way. If Mr. Beast didn't exist, there would be another. Mr. Beast because YouTube created Mr. Beast. And he's very open about allowing YouTube to create him. And so I think that's an easy way to sort of like pass the blame off of YouTube. I agree with that. I totally agree with that. I think like we, we all love to like pile on something that we don't understand and think

is bad and find like the person who's like the most popular and like destroy them. Right. And this year is when we start to finally get the drum be. of there's been a lot behind the scenes that we didn't know. So we start to find out that members of his staff are having inappropriate relationships with his fans and Discord channels. There's been allegations of racist content

being shared in his official employee telegram group. There are numerous reports of unsafe filming procedures happening. And a lot of this starts to come out when he announces a new venture with Amazon, which will be called Beast Games. They've been filming it all year. And the on-site reports of Beast games are kind of horrifying. One contestant recalled being asked, this is from a New York Times piece,

one contestant recalled being asked if she would be able to swim to shore if thrown overboard from a boat. 2,000 contestants were brought to a stadium and they didn't have their phones with them. They didn't have anywhere to sleep. Contestants couldn't get access to clean underwear. or feminine hygiene products. They were basically just like treated like they were in a refugee camp by the Mr. Beast production team

for days on end. It's a good way to kill someone inadvertently with sepsis or something like, you know, it's not good. And I think the major sort of takeaway here is sort of I understand it, is that Mr. Beast grew in barely five or six years

from a kid farting around on the internet to a 1.5.5. billion dollar evaluated company right and that i think no matter what is going to create a structure and an incentive system where you're just flying by the seat of your pants all the time yep you're just you know there's no moment where an adult steps in uh and says like we need to do this right yep this last couple months things have really escalated when another YouTuber named rosanna pansino emerged basically saying that she had been edited in one of the videos that she participated in with Mr. Beast to look bad and it made it look like she lost the game that she was in. And she has sort of waged a one woman war against Mr. Beast ever since.

She got access to like tens of thousands of messages from his internal Discord group and leaked them. Wow. She bought Mr. Beast's new food product lunchly, which is kind of like a lunchable company that he started with Logan Paul and opened it on a stream. and discovered it was moldy. She's the Edward Snowden of Mr. Beast. Yeah, I know. She's literally, she's very upfront that she has a massive vendetta against him. She also reported him to the FBI because she got access to his telegram group and was

claimed and has claimed that there were illicit, possibly illegal content being shared in it by employees. What I think is interesting from what I have seen about the controversy around Mr. Beast is a lot of the stuff exposing him, like the investigative journalism effectively that is like exposing Mr. Beast is also like made by YouTubers, which I find really interesting. And I also, but some of it seems to focus on like one of his employees or former employees who I believe was maybe trans. And that this person was like engaging in this lollicon. There's like a lollicon layer to this. Does any of that ring true, or have you seen any of that stuff?

Yeah. So the controversy that you're referring to is a childhood best friend of Mr. Beast. She goes by Ava Chris Tyson now. And younger fans came forward earlier this year, alleging that she had been inappropriate with them sharing content of a sexual nature, things like that. Mr. Beast and his team been investigated. and decided that the two should part ways. And a lot of the initial questions

that were emerging about Mr. Bees' internal structure were because of this. And the reason it's been so confusing to follow is because there are a lot of people who watch YouTube and are hateful bigots that wanted to seize on the idea of a trans woman possibly being sexually inappropriate with minors. Of course.

And that made things much, I think, much more confusing for outsiders to follow, myself included. It took me weeks to kind of be like, okay, like, what's real here and what isn't? Yep. And what's especially sad about this is that Mr. Beast is not like a very political person. I mean, he sort of said like, I'll run for president one day, but I sort of put him in the same category as like the rock. Like, I don't really think of him as like a deep thinker. I mean, it's not like you need to be a deep thinker to run for president or to be president. But up until this stuff with Tyson, he was very vocal. about defending her transition.

Okay. And I think, you know, it's unfortunate that this happened. But he, because, you know, pick the wrong trans woman to support, perhaps. But it is unfortunate because Mr. Beast is this massive role model at this very politically, you know, delicate time for the trans community and all of this is happening. And so it made things very, very complicated, I think, especially for, like, real reporters who wanted to figure out what was going on. because YouTube citizen journalism is just, it's awful to watch.

It's a slug. It doesn't make any sense. It's not done by people who know what they're doing half the time. And it's not really made for audiences over the age of 30 anyways. So it's confusing, to say the least. What does his audience do with all of this? You know, like, where do they go from here? Are they like, oh, yeah, forget this guy.

Are they going to discard Mr. Beast as he would any of his other, like, problematic associations from the past? Or are they defending him? Like what, what's happening amongst his audience right now, do you think? So I track YouTube growth of all the major channels month to month that we've been, my researcher Adam and I've been doing it for about a year and a half now, two years. And he has stopped growing as fast, but he is still the biggest channel on YouTube. I've not seen any evidence that any of this has really changed that. I don't, don't think his audience cares because that's not what the people who like him care about. Yeah, it's so disconnected from his actual content that it's like, why is that relevant?

Like if there was something that came out that like he was like faking the giveaways, maybe that could freak people out. But I think for the most part, because there's nothing there, there's nothing to cancel. Like, it would really have to come down to, like, video evidence of him saying hate speech. And even then, I'm not even sure it would, like, really matter because I don't think Mr. Beast fans want an ethical Mr. Beast. They just want to watch a train go in a pit. This is, I know we're talking so specifically about Mr. Beast, but this is hitting on us, given the election we just had in the country. I feel like this is hitting so hard. Wait, what do you mean?

What happened? It's hitting so hard because, you know, some people take. If you do not agree with Donald Trump as a human being, there are a lot of people who just take that and say, well, how could you support XYZ, ABC after that? And we do tend to kind of compartmentalize things in our brain, whether it's Mr. Beast or Donald Trump or any other kind of major figure and influencer where people, you know, they'll take the racism with the economic policy. They'll take the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the. bigotry with the retention videos, you know, with the train and the pit, it doesn't seem to matter enough, you know? I think that's exactly right. I don't think it matters, which is an incredible place to end this. The last hour doesn't matter.

No, but I would love to sort of hear you guys sort of final thoughts and Mr. Beast and sort of what he means. I mean, first, I guess, let's try to answer the question we pose. the top, which is, do you think Mr. Beast is worth freaking out about, panicking about? Do you think that this is really all that bad, all that new, all that different from anything we've seen before? Can it be like a both and? Like, can I, can I say like, yes and me. Let's do this. It's no different. Like, Mr. Beast is not a new crisis. And also we should panic about Mr. Beast. Like, that's kind of like where I come to this, where it's like, Mr. Beast has come to represent.

a lot of things that we already know about ourselves and like the tech platforms that we've created. And at the same time, like, we should have fire in the belly about the things that he is representing about like the way our society is coming to work and the way that like people are showing up and interacting with the platforms that we interact with and how it's like impacting young people. That's my let's my get off my lawn take. I think that's a very reasonable take. Thank you, man. I'd say my classic Amory old lady take

would be that I don't think our heads and hearts can keep up with the pace that Mr. Beast is running at. I don't think he can keep up with the pace that he's currently operating at. So I'm going to optimistically say

that he's just going to get tired at a certain point. Or... Die. Give Mr. Beast a blanket. Give Mr. Beast a blanket. Or die. horrifically. Or die horrifically. Or we will get tired because we actually do need to, you know, touch grass literally and on the internet. And we do need to slow down a little bit if we're going to survive as a species. So I don't think any of us can keep up with what Mr. Beast is trying to condition us to keep up with. Maybe that's a totally naive take. But I'm going to say he's got a fizzle coming in five years or less.

I love how pessimistic that is actually. That's great. I truly don't think anyone is really like, I haven't read anything good on someone being like, he's probably cooked. And I think you're, I think you're not incorrect because I think his desperation to continue to top himself and also sort of expand beyond YouTube and possibly be unable to do so. I mean, we'll find out if his Amazon show is a hit or not.

But if he can't make it work, if he can't find a way out of it. YouTube, I do think it's over. I think already his YouTube reign has come to an end to a degree. And this is the last, I think, important point to end on here, which is that YouTube has a history of treating its most powerful creators like a virus eventually. The type of content they create become so uniform and so stolen by other creators that it starts to manifest as spam. And I think Mr. Beach as a child of YouTube knows that that algorithmic change is coming. YouTube will not allow every single account to be making the same kinds of videos. It's bad for YouTube.

So now that everyone knows how to be Mr. Beast, no one can be Mr. Beast. Wow. That's right. Do you like that? That was pretty good, right? That was good. Before we go, right after we had this excellent discussion with Ryan Broderick, Mr. Beast finally went public with a response to various allegations.

about his business dealings and his organization. He spoke with a fellow YouTuber, of course, for this sit-down interview, against a very YouTubey backdrop of mood colors and a cozy fire. In speaking with YouTuber Umpaville, Mr. Beast stood by his lunchly products. He didn't say much about his Beast games because the lawsuit is in progress, but he suggested it had all been blown out of proportion. The YouTube interview with the biggest guy on YouTube, regarding whether or not he operates his businesses and his workplace above board.

At the time of this writing, it's only got 2.6 million views. Ryan Broderick is the man behind the newsletter Garbage Day and the host of the new podcast, Panic World. Find it wherever you listen to us. Endless Threat is a production of WBUR in Boston. This episode was co-hosted by me, Ben Brock Johnson. And Amory Severson and Ryan Broderick. Big thanks to him, Grant Irving, and the rest of the Panic World team.

Mix and sound design by our production manager, Paul Vikis. Our managing producer is Sumitajoshi. The rest of our team is Grace Tatter, Emily Jankowski, Dean Russell, and Mr. No, never mind. If you have an untold history, an unsolved mystery, or another influencer that you want us to do a deep dive on, hit us up, endless thread at WBUR.org. Also, if you want to like pit two things against each other, like train versus pit, like if you have an idea and you want us to do like baseball bat versus watermelon or like TNT versus Legos or what's another? Just tell us where you're filming and when.

We will be there. I'll bring some snacks. See you next week.