Panic World - The rise and (maybe) fall of Mr. Beast (with Ben Brock Johnson & Amory Sivertson)

Episode Date: December 4, 2024

He’s conquered YouTube, but can he conquer traditional media? And also burgers and snack bars, for some reason. Ben Brock Johnson and Amory Sivertson of Endless Thread join the show to help us figure out how we should feel about Mr. Beast, and how much is simply too much to know about the influencers we love (and love to hate). Our guests Ben Brock Johnson and Amory Sivertson are the hosts of Endless Thread — the professional version of this podcast — where they dig into untold histories, unsolved mysteries, and other wild stories from online. Want even more Panic World content? Like ad-free episodes, bonus episodes, and access to the Garbage Day Discord? Sign up for a membership at: https://www.patreon.com/PanicWorld. Want to sponsor Panic World? Ad sales & marketing support by Multitude, hit them up here: ⁠http://multitude.productions⁠. Credits - Host: Ryan Broderick - Producer: Grant Irving - Researcher: Adam Bumas - Business Manager: Josh Fjelstad Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

A question for both of you. Who was the first influencer you were aware of? 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 a white studded belt. Let's hear some names.

Can we get some names? So many. I mean, like, I had the Panic of the Disco demo CD before it was properly released. 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 era, which is, should we be outraged by his existence? My name is Ryan Broderick. This is Panic World, a show about the viral freakouts. and moral panics bubbling up out of the weirdest corners of the internet. And today we are zooming out and zooming in on the career of Mr. Beast. He's conquered YouTube, but will he be able to conquer traditional entertainment? Joining me today are the hosts of endless thread, a wonderful podcast.

I would say a much more professional and better version of our podcast. I doubt that because my cat's already here making too much noise. Oh, fantastic. Should I go kick her out? I feel like I should kick her out. I mean, if she's got a good mic technique, she can stay. Ben Brock Johnson and Amory Sievertson, welcome. Hi.

Thank you very much. I want to start with your sort of gut reactions about Mr. Beast. How do you guys feel about this little Al Borland that controls the internet right now? Yeah, I mean, it's hard to answer this question like now as opposed to like a year ago, right? Like he's this weird person where like, depending on your age, people have like literally never heard of him or. like know way too much about him. Well, this is where I confess that I'm one of those people who knows nothing about Mr. Beast in part because Ben was, he had mentioned Mr. Beast and said, oh, maybe I want to,

maybe we'll do something where I tell you more about him. And so I intentionally stayed in the dark about Mr. Beast so that, so that I'm, I'm a fresh set of ears and eyes and I'm, I'm here to learn. imagine if you come out this episode and you're like I love anything could happen right anything could happen and unless thread broke up this week over a dispute about whether mr. beast was legitimate or not so well this is perfect then we can start at the very beginning so mr beast uh uploaded his first video to his youtube channel at 13 years old uh in february 2012 uh by back then he was not mr beast he was mr beast 6,000, which is honestly much cooler in a 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. But can you sort of describe what this video is, where it looks like? All right. Where am I? What just happened? Oh, oh, man.

He's one of them Minecraft boys. Before you can advance, you must flip every switch and kill all the monsters that come out. If you try to open the door without killing them, you will explode. Yes, it is a Minecraft video. It is extremely boring. 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.

he would eventually sort of become the mystery beast we know and love, but this is how he started. He started in the gaming world, specifically Minecraft. Yep. And 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 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.

So he's a teen when he's filming this, when he's filming these videos. and he's basically he's making fun of younger kids. That that's the joke here. Welcome to worst intros on YouTube. Your number one stop for cringe. When a kid and his friend went out in the middle of the night and performed a satanic ritual in my name, I thought that was all.

I thought that was as bad as it was going to get, you know? But no, you guys just continue to surprise me and just make me question what type of influence I'm having on the world. 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. He had a very problematic thing called the giant Asian sticker, which was a giant sticker of an Asian character on his wall that he would sort of animated with text to speech bubbles and stuff.

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 or 13 14 15 it's in that zone yes and and he is a child of youtube so like his earliest videos are making other kinds of videos that he's seeing talking about other youtubeers he likes and even parodying them um and so that's that's sort of the his earliest type of content Does he ever identify himself or is he just, Mr. Beast, we don't know who this real person is? Oh, his name is Jimmy Donaldson. Wow. Jimmy Dee.

I pegged him for a Chad looking at him. Maybe that's not fair. But his name says Chad. A strong chin. Yeah. Energy. By 2017, his channel has 100,000 subscribers, which kind of, 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.

Yeah. 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. 2017. 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 PewDie Pai was a Nazi.

Yes. So it's sort of, I think, 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. Yeah. And this is, I think, very important for thinking about the beginnings of Mr. Beast 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 like 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? Oh, man. Well, if it's January of 2017, is it Trump related?

Ice bucket. He stormed the Capitol. That's right. No, I'm going to. He was the first insurrectionist. Exactly. Man, I'm going to fail at this. but I want to say like something something like it was 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 a hundred thousand. Of course he did. How long was that? Let's see. I've got it right here. Who has the time? Can you guess how long this video is? Oh, that's a really good question. This is like this is like the how many marbles are in the digital? One, two, three, four, five, I'm going to say like 28 hours. Eight, no, I have no idea. You're close. 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. Did he take bathroom breaks? Okay. I mean, at that point, you should just be sitting on a toilet bowl.

Just easier. For efficiency sake. 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. Or some of the controversy. I think that's right. And for our listeners, by the way, I'm scanning through this. I'm not going to watch all 23 hours of this.

But he is seemingly in the same chair and in the same clothes for the whole thing. Wow. Um, 90,000, 5,000, 56, 90,000, yeah, but I think you're exactly right where

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, uh, and to be the king of YouTube. But also maybe cut some corners in some areas where he's supposed to not be cut in corners or at least so the accusations go. We'll get there. We're going to get there.

Don't worry. All right. Sorry. Um, so in 2017, he gets his first sponsorships. And he, this is, 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.

This is not clickbait. I'm going to give a random homeless guy $10,000 today. He gets $10,000. Quote, you say. From YouTube revenue from ads? Okay. Yes, from his sponsorships and ads. So he collects the $10,000.

He then films himself going to like a highway median next to a Sonic and just gives a homeless guy 10 grand. And the video has 11 million views. Like, I mean, you want to take a lot? to tell me? I mean, dude, I moved here from Wilmington. Mm-hmm. I got some job because I'm in the family. So you don't really have much?

No. Well, I'm a YouTuber. I mean, you can see the camera. So I'm just, 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. Yeah, right, man. It's real.

So. I got enough shit about my stuff. Please don't mind. I promise. Well, that's kind of weird, but Finky promise. Yeah, like I said, I'm a YouTuber and I'm just going around doing some good. So that generates a bunch more ad revenue and then he can pull some other stunt. Exactly.

And you can start to see him figure this idea out, which is like for every million views I make, I spend X amount of dollars to create Y amount of Z about, you know, like, yeah, I'm not very good at math. But you understand what I'm saying. He's doing P&Ls. He's in the P&L world. He's making budgets. He's like figuring it out. He's like gaming the system in a way that is probably smart.

That's exactly right. Now, do you think the, like, how would you describe Mr. Beast's on-screen personality or lack thereof? He looks like a college student in a dorm, like a college bro who plays lacrosse. and no which you know no no hate towards that but he looks like 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 yes he looks like an mpc in a video game set at a college i think that's exactly right um 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 of follow 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 I so I'm in I'm in my mid 30s and I grew up with like AOL instant messenger so I 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. He chopped off the good part. He chopped off the cool part.

Yeah, he was over 6,000 before and now he's just the Mr. Beast. 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 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. That's the key difference, right? Like Mr. Beast is he's just himself. He's just being himself, man. Or at least that's what I'm led to believe. Right.

If I'm thinking about like some sort of character, I don't know, like Tom Cruise, like that's a person who's like a public persona is very carefully curated for me. Why? What's the, what's the tea on Tom Cruise? What's his deal? It's another episode, I'm afraid. Yeah, I think I hear that. He's tall. That's the secret as Tom Cruise is tall.

I thought he was really short. He is. He is very, he's very, he's a. little teeth man. And his teeth don't line up with his lip, right? That's the other thing I know. That's also true, yeah. He's got one middle tooth. Right. He has the middle tooth. Exactly. 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. And we don't, we don't expect them to be. polished and you know 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 yeah but mr. Beast doesn't stay in this sort of virtual friend zone, if you will, for very long. In 2018 is when he finally chops off the 6,000 from his username, RIP, and he starts to get pulled into more YouTuber elite level dramas. So how he made this transition from regular guy to algorithmic cartoon character and, you know, amateur torturer, that's all right after the break. he was he is a he is a self-proclaimed massive student of pew die pie the former king of

youtube and he made a lot of videos early on where he's saying you know i i'm studying how pew die pie does things i am copying peanut pie blah blah blah blah blah and he then asked to he has to sort of turn his back i'm mr pew die pie sever that relationship in 2019 uh can either of you tell me what happened with pew die pie in 2019 because it's very dark Oh, man, this is like so much. You're like, I feel like we're really going to fail at this because you were like, you guys are internet experts. And like without Googling this, I am not going to remember this.

This is what I do to all of our guests. You're the most incredible expert. You know everything. And then we're just asking questions you don't know for an hour. Yeah. Let me ask you. It's a sick mind game that I play with our guests. Let me ask you like one of the biggest moments in internet history and you can fail at

answering. I want to say this is 2019. Yeah, 2019. So like my record. collection is Putei Pai did something. I honestly, like, shouldn't have turned this into a game show moment. I'm really sorry. It was the Christchurch shooter.

No points. Oh, the Christchurch shooter. It was the Christchurch shooter who basically wrote subscribe to PewDie Pyeye on his go. Oh, yeah, that's right. Sorry, I should have done that. That was actually really uncalled for. No, that was a horrible thing.

But it was a big deal, I think. We don't forgive Ryan for that. That was fucked up. That was not okay. For new listeners, that's our producer Grant's telling me that I've taken the bit too far. I had to work that day. It was a rough day. No, 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 Pewtie Pie's protege.

Like, he is the next PewDie Pie. I think this is the moment where he stops defining himself by other sort of huge creators. and he puts a lot of distance between him and Pewad Pie after this because at this point, no one really understands, like, it would take, I think, many weeks and many months for, for the media to kind of like pull apart like what the troll of that idea was and sure. Pew Di Pi's lack of connection to the whole thing. 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. He is very busy. during the pandemic. He starts a burger chain. Have you guys ever had Mr. Beest burger? So this is, this was like actually the first time I discovered Mr. Beast was I like I feel like I read,

I read an article. It might have been like a New Yorker talk of the town or like, which is pretending that I'm smarter than I am because I could never, I've literally never finished a New Yorker. But like, talk of the town is at the beginning. So if you made it that far. Yeah, that's, yeah, get a couple pages in and then I'm like, is this in the physical copy of the New Yorker?

Correct. Yes. Okay. Yes. And it was it's these little like vignettes that they do at the very beginning. But basically it was about the release of the Mr. Beastburger. And it was like this like very evocative description of this mall in New Jersey. Yes. That was like filled to the gills with like, again, 11 to like 14 year old boys and their parents, maybe girls too who had dragged their parents to this place to get in line for the Mr. Beastburger. and it basically like shut down the entire mall and like it was this like huge deal and I was like I read it and I was like what is I don't get the big deal like it's like a hamburger that this guy launched like I was so confused yeah that is that that is Mr. Beasburger this is when that all starts he also launches a gaming channel and what will be very important for later in our story a nonprofit for planting trees so this is sort of his the beginning of his franchise era he's trying to figure out like the the limitations of of the Mr. Beast brand, which it turns out there are none. He can do whatever he wants with it. Basically, like, it's not that he was, like, launching a new chain of restaurant that would serve this burger. He was launching the burger itself, and there were these places, there are these places that will make the Mr. Beast burger that you can order from, but it's not like a Mr.

Beast restaurant. And some of them are, like, completely unaffiliated. They're separate restaurants that will just make the Mr. Beast burger, correct? Isn't that? Yeah. Yeah, so there is, there are about a thousand physical Mr. Beasburger locations across the world. Whoa. But, which is a lot as of right now.

But the majority of people who are experienced Mr. Beasburger are experiencing it through ghost kitchens. This is so hard to describe. It really is. It's super weird. So like, it's, I don't know if you've ever seen like a ghost kitchen facility. But, you know, for our listeners who may be not, like there's a big building and you'll know because it's all the delivery drivers around it. and there's like kiosks that you like open a door and your food's there because there's like one central kitchen making everything and that's where you can get the mr beast burger yes is there anything remarkable about the burger itself since this is just i mean i don't know if he's if he's gonna have a burger how inconsistent it is it made of magic let's see let's see what's on the menu for mr beast burger um oh i can get the mr beast burger app so i can i can buy mr beast burger burger even faster.

Okay, so there's a, there's a beast style burger, which is American cheese, pickles, dice, onion, mayo, ketchup, and brown mustard. Okay. There's a Chandler style, which I think is like another person that appears in his videos. Two smashed crispy beef patties with hot, so it's a smash burger again. Then there's the Carl's Deluxe, which is a patty melts of some kind. There's some very hideous looking fries covered in pizza. that don't look very good.

Wow. Yeah. It's like him. It's completely unremarkable. It looks fine, but like whatever. It feels multi-level marketing to me. I don't know why, but there's some aspect of it to me that feels like it feels, again, like I just, I don't know. It gives me the hebie-jee-jeebies for some reason where I'm like, the Mr.

Beesburger is just an idea, man. It's just an idea. You don't want to franchise out Mr. Beasberger? I don't think so, man, but I don't... If podcasting doesn't work, clearly I'm not... Yeah, exactly. That's sure. We should all open a Mr. Beesburger location together.

So after this sort of franchising moment, there's basically one last piece of the why is Mr. Beast popular question to slot in here. In April 2021, I think that you could argue that the only other person who could have maybe beaten Mr. Beast to the title of biggest person on YouTube, this sort of growing personality on the platform was probably David Dobrick, who was canceled for alleged unsafe behavior in productions in an allegedly inappropriate behavior with his casting crew. And Dobrick was, I mean, really the only other person I could see at this time period who could have overtaken Mr. Beast. And now he's been effectively chased off the internet. So now PewDiePie 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. Are you familiar with this video? No. Oh, okay. Amazing. So this is great. The horrors keep piling on.

Okay. This is great. 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. Whoa. And do people, no, people don't die.

What, what are the stakes? He doesn't execute you now. He is Mr. Beast. You win money. You win money. You win a lot of money. And it's 456 players. And the video has 670 million views.

Damn. I recreated every single set from Squid Game in real life. And whichever one of these 456 people survives the longest, wins 456 grand. And as you can see, every single player has a device strapped to them that when they're eliminated, it pops. Do you have any idea what that translates to in terms of money? I mean, I'm sure that's very secretive and proprietary, but... 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. 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 stock, like a stockholder in a company. That's how his fans, I think, operate. Again, like weirdly MLM vibes to me. Yeah, I think so. 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. Beas 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 and...

I got cut you off. No, he's like... He's notoriously done. Okay. Like 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.

talking about mysteries because he is effectively one YouTube. He, I often consider him a, 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's not a performance artist in, in the least.

He's, he's, he's kind of, he's just a vessel, man. 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, like very... This is my PhD project and... Right, right. Like, you guys are paying to do anything. Jokes on you. By 2023, after the Squid Game video is out, he is now kind of expected to be operating on a much higher level.

And this is when you're getting my personal favorite video of his, 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 mean, I mean, to me, that's like the best. Sign me up for that. Yeah. I'm down for that.

I, okay, first of all, 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 I also think like his videos, especially in his later period, are very fun to watch. In fact, like here, I'll send you guys a link to the train giant pit one because I think it's the best one. I do want to watch that. I just bought this train and it is currently barely full speed towards that. Giant pit over there.

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 video. Oh, boy. 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.

It's chaotic. It's chaotic. I've often described as videos as a trailer for a TV show that doesn't exist. Ooh, that's good. Yeah. This is in the future when our attention spans are actually only a fraction of a second because we will have broken our brain so thoroughly with the internet that this is the only way that we can process information.

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, with the rope going across the pit, and then they make them drive in opposite directions to see which one ends up in the pit. Okay. What is the budget? What? How did he do this?

Well, he has a lot of money because his videos at this point are this video has 239 million views. And honestly, it should because it's titled Train versus Giant Pit. Agreed. Who wouldn't want to watch that? Agreed. This is undeniable that you want to watch this. Like you don't want to stop watching this. Yes.

And there's been some, there's been some research into like exactly how good his editing is. He, he has a, uh, an audience retention rate around 76. which is insane for YouTube. That's 76% of the people who press, start, finish it. Wow. That's amazing. He's also a master at thumbnails. So like he has a team that he says are spending hours and hours, like hundreds of hours a week,

trying to figure out like exact calibrations of thumbnails for A-B testing to make you want to click on this stuff. They're like, no, no, the cyan, like we need to like a different kind of science, like a deeper cyan in the, in the, in the, text to make sure people click on it. Right. Exactly. That level of detail. He famously decided at one point that he was no longer going to smile in thumbnails. And now he was going to frown.

Wow. And they did like months of A-B testing to figure out like which one would do better. And this is this is most likely his peak around 2020, 2023. In January 2020, he launches his chocolate bar company, which is called feastables. And by the end of that year, he, uh, his company, uh, his company, uh,

is looking for $150 million in investments with a $1.5 billion evaluation. Wow. I did not see all of these directions coming. Burgers, chocolate. $1.5 billion 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. So he's pretty much indestructible. But as this rise is happening, there are controversies starting with his charity organization, which is beginning to cause some issues for him. So in October of 2020, he launches Beast Philanthropy, which I've looked into on and off over the last couple of years. And it's essentially run by like a South African

real estate agent who doesn't seem to have any expertise with running a nonprofit. Seems legit. Wait. Is any actual philanthropy happening? Yes. But, um, It's complicated. There's one video in particular that Beast Philanthropy puts out that upsets basically the whole internet. And this video, we're hearing a thousand people's blindness. One in one thousand people cure. Oh, God, I hate this. I hate it.

Now he's wearing scrubs. He's wearing scrubs all of a sudden. And a baseball hat. He's interviewing a surgeon. Oh, yeah. And they're just like, Isn't this just like what glaucoma is or something or what cataracts are? He's just giving a bunch of people cataract surgery.

And he gives her 10,000. He gives a lady $10,000. Okay. My first question is maybe a boring one, which is just why this? Who, who, why this problem? Why was this the problem that he wanted to tackle with his many, many thousands, millions? of dollars. So I'm going to send you guys a link to what his non-profits page looks like now. It'll give you a good taste of the kinds of stunts that he's putting over on this channel.

All right. The titles of some of these videos are Empowering Girls in India. We funded a gym for adaptive athletes, saving endangered animals from extinction. We rebuilt a village. It's a fire hose of charitable quote-unquote stunts that are largely based. based on a before and after, something that's visually appealing for YouTube audiences. So you're not going to see him, you know, quietly building water filtration systems. It's, I'm going to fix everybody's eyes and have a counter on the bottom of the screen that's like, look how many eyes I fixed.

Sure, sure. Well, I'm instantly, I mean, maybe I don't know what this says that this is the first thing that I think about. But, you know, he's not the first influencer, so to speak, to do this. He's doing this on YouTube, but I mean, think about Ellen DeGeneres and think about Oprah and why is it, I get that this looks icky because it is performative, but are Oprah and Ellen DeGeneres any less performative about their charitable acts? Or is it just a different medium, different age group, different audience? I don't know. I think that's really right. Nothing is inherently wrong with the stuff that.

he's doing, morally. The aesthetics are bad because they're aesthetics that were created for internet content. And I think that's what makes a lot of people over the age of, let's say, 25, feel uncomfortable about this because it's not a TV show like, what would you do, right? It's not like Oprah. It's ugly because the internet is ugly. And I think that's really what bothers people about all this stuff. Right, right.

Because I love writing takedowns about him, like I get a perverse. thrill from it. I'll read one that I put together recently, which I think kind of succinctly puts all this together. There are much, much worse things you can do to go viral. But like every rich guy now, Donaldson wants us to thank him for it and tell him he's a good person. But he's just a guy that's spent a really long time figuring out how much traffic costs online. And it just happens to also help people sometimes. We shouldn't blame him for everything. But like, He definitely is a symptom of a lot of what's wrong. So like it's kind of this weird thing where it's like, like I said, I still, I still don't like the cut of his jib at all.

And also, you know, it's not all his fault. So it's complicated. What tells us that he is like hungry for the, the space? It's just the way like, I feel like just the way he talks about stuff. He's like, I just solved this. I just helped these people. do this. And so like the way that he's talking about the things he is doing to me sounds like he expects a pat on the back. Like the way he frames that stuff is very, um, please, you know,

please clap. Yeah. And you can see it in the edit. Like they always leave in shots of him like pretending to have human feelings while he hugs them and like gets thanked by them. Uh, there's just a, there's a, there's a void inside of him that leaks through the screen. and you can feel it. And all of this is causing him some hiccups, but they're not like real controversies. These are not, like, people were like kind of disgusted about the eye surgery video,

but it's not like it's a bad video. It's just gross looking. But there are controversies coming. But before I go to break, I do think it's worth pointing out that while he's doing all these, like, feel good videos, he's also doing a bunch of weird fear factor videos where he's torturing people.

And his videos are getting more extreme. And this tension is going to become a problem. You have to survive 10 minutes with a thousand spiders to move up. I'm going to attempt to spend the next seven days in solitary confinement. I just bought this entire grocery store. And then I decided to trap this random guy inside. He made a guy live in a house for like 150 days and then like destroyed the house where the guy was in it. Like this is where things are getting really out of control because the thing about YouTube is that you have to keep up

the ante. 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. So there's some complaints, but he's still only gaining steam. But after the break, in the words of every YouTube ever, after the rise comes the fall. 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 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 still like something primordial, but also totally off the rails, as it were. 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 five years because he's currently I think 26

which is usually the age that YouTubers can't really grow past. Interesting. 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.

And a lot of things, YouTubers, I think, become very frustrated because they discover one day, they wake up one day and discover they're a child performer. Or, they wake up one day and discover they're a children 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 he's got to make dirty. And then he'll be fun. Yeah, he's got to get nasty. He's got to be a 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? And he's just 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, we'll 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 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. Beastburger. So he didn't own it. It was a partnership. A lot of these things were kind of franchises.

franchisee setups. 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 Mr. I don't 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 totally agree with that. I think like we we love a scapegoat.

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 drumbeat 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 that are happening at his filming locations. And a lot of this finally starts to come out when he announces a new venture with Amazon, which is called Beast Games.

They've been filming it pretty much all year. And the stuff that is coming out of these productions is pretty horrifying. The New York Times reported that one contestant recall being asked if she would be able to swim to shore, if she was thrown overboard from a boat, which I guess is like normal reality show stuff, kind of, but the major issue with Beast games has been the logistics. 2000 contestants were brought to a stadium and they didn't have their phones with them. They didn't have anywhere to sleep. New York Times story continues.

They were given cold oatmeal, one hard-boiled egg and a few pieces of raw vegetables. Same to be honest. That's my childhood right there. Yeah, no, that's great. I wish they'd just give them Mr. Beast burgers. Exactly. They were also being, like, forced to eat food that they were. they were allergic to, like, they didn't check, you know, people's, like, food allergy.

This is, this one is very horrifying. So, um, contestants couldn't get access to clean underwear or feminine hygiene products. Um, 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, the major sort of take. way 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 billion 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 and says, like, we need to do this right. Yep. And, and, And I think that's happened to a lot of creators who grow really fast, but we're just talking about the biggest creator of all, the biggest influencer of all time. Does it surprise you that after people almost got trampled

during the making of the Amazon show and all of the other mundane problems, the fire festival of it all, that one, the show is going forward. And two, as far as we can tell, all of the participants who made it to the next round are going, seem to be continuing on to the next round. Right.

So like I guess like to me it's not out till it's out. But I am surprised that like the controversy so far has not sunk the ship, so to speak. And I also, I'm not surprised that the people who have advanced are sticking with it because like when you create this like craven atmosphere where people are like competing for money. Like the people who are advancing are not going to tap out. Like, why would they tap out? That makes, you know, there's no reason for the people who might win big to tap out. You'd have to be, like, incredibly committed to identifying the thing that is wrong with all of this to say, you know what? I don't want the money, even though I'm still in it.

Well, it just shows how much money was probably poured into the show that the bar has to be pretty high. The budget has to be pretty high, and thus the bar has to be pretty high to stop that train from trying to reach its destination. That's the fuck to tell you. Like, yeah, they're just going to do it. Yeah, he'll be fine. Amazon will be fine. The children eating his chocolate bars will be fine until climate change ruins their lives. And then he can go fix up there, like, post-apocalyptic village for YouTube traffic.

And none of that is Mr. Beast's fault, really. Yeah, I mean, someone's, I. I don't know what the bar is, but I'm just picturing Spider-Man the Broadway musical, and someone had to literally plummet almost to their death to stop that. So what is the Spider-Man actor plummeting almost to their death of this equation? I don't know. And also, that was a much smaller budget. Maybe that wouldn't even do it.

That's right. Yeah. I'm curious how many people work for him. Do you know how big the company is? It's shockingly small, I would say. That's my impression. I think it is. I've tried to contact them, but if you email them, they send you an auto-generator response

written in comic sands. I've tried to sort of like dig around their corporate structure. I was particularly interested in their philanthropy group because I was able to, I was able to confirm that they were receiving money from an organization affiliated with the Koch brothers to make videos basically making private schools look better than public schools. Very cool, very normal stuff. Yes. So journalists have been trying to figure out what exactly is actually happening with Mr. Beast and how bad it is.

But a lot of this stuff is being covered by YouTubers. The major character here that's leading all of this right now is Rosanna Pansino. She became popular in 2014 for making, like, fun cakes and, like, being really bubbly. This is a kind of a good snapshot of her whole deal. Welcome to another nerdy novice. Want to combine two things that I really love. Baking and video games. So, thank you.

And she's kind of a funny character in all this, not just because she looks like Polly Pocket. but because she was on one of Mr. Beast's videos. She was in one of his contests, and he had edited her in the video to make her look bad and make it look like she actually lost the game. And this apparently was so egregious for Miss Pancino that she has waged a one-woman war against Mr. Beast ever since, which honestly I love. I love spite. I love pettiness.

I'm really happy for her. and this has manifested recently in her posting videos where she is essentially just like running a pro-publica about beast games and like leaking horrifying contestant reports from the production of the show. Food would run out and people would fight over steal and hoard food. Water was scarce and kept running out as well. I had to sit with a bloody pad for two days before I could get undergarments and my reusable. pads. We were also sleep deprived, only allowed three to four hours. We all slept on the floor in the stadium in a $10 sleeping bag. She's doing real investigative work. She has access to tens of thousands of leaked messages from his internal discord and telegram, which she has even reported

to the FBI because of some of the inappropriate content that was in there. 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 cheese, although cheese was moldy in there. She's the origin of the luncheon moldy cheese. Yes. Wow. Great.

Good for her. She's the Edward Snowden of Mr. Beast. She's very upfront that she has a massive vendetta against him. What I think is interesting from what I have seen about the controversy around Mr. Beast is a lot of the stuff that, you know, a lot of the stuff exposed. him like the investigative journalism effectively that is like exposing Mr. Beast is also like made by YouTubers, um, 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. Um, and that this person was like

engaging in this lolly con. There's like a lollicon layer to this. Does any of that ring true or have you seen any of that stuff? Yeah. So we, thank you very much. This is this is sort of the, the, the, the, the, the, no, no, sorry. Sorry. And, and, and you are right, though, because this stuff is really confusing because it is largely being done by other YouTubers. Um, because we're talking about a demographic that just doesn't read. It's like a post-literate society, right? So, you know, anyone, anyone under the age of 27, like, isn't reading words on the internet anymore. They're watching YouTube. 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 then 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 categories like the rock. Like I don't really think of him as like a deep thinker. But up until this stuff with Tyson, he was very vocal about defending her transition. Okay. And very sort of like, yeah, Chris is my friend. And it's as simple as that.

And I always sort of, I always sort of give him more credit. 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 an 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. It feels complicated. I assume by this point you're still trying to figure out if Mr. Bees is just sloppy or predatory. And unfortunately, it's kind of difficult because not only is he very tight-lipped, about how he's doing things.

The people that are coming forward are not exactly the most trustworthy because they're going straight to YouTube. So when they do these sort of reports, they have the same incentives to sensationalize or outright lie than Mr. Beast would. One of these cases is a video by a man named Jake Weddle who claimed that he was offered

to do a solitary confinement challenge for Mr. Beast and basically alleges that there was psychological abuse. throughout. And here's why you should take this with a bit of a grain of salt, because they have never aired this video. He claims they paid him out. And is it believable? Sort of. But once again, we have not, we don't have a lot to go on here. Yeah. Is there an HR department at Beast Incorporated? Based on my understanding of the corporate structure of Mr. Beast, Inc., there are people doing job but those people either have never done those particular jobs before or their friends of Mr. Beast that sort of got swept up in the machine. I don't get the sense that there is like a massive media company behind this.

It is just sort of his friends, his family, and people that he's met along the way. What does his audience do with all of this? You know, like what 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 audience? 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 uh youtube growth of all the major channels month to month that we my researcher adam and i've been doing it for about a year and a half now two years and um

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. There's no correlation between like growth and controversies when they emerge. I don't think his audience cares. I think it would take a lot more to move the needle. You know, if he's at like a ditty party, like maybe. But as of right now, like I think a lot of this is so it doesn't really matter because that's not what the people who like him care about.

So disconnected from his actual content that it's like, why is that relevant? Exactly. Like, I don't think Mr. Beast fans want an ethical Mr. Beast. They just want to watch a train go in a 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.

Oh, no. Hold on. I want to tweak this a little bit. So I think what it is is that Mr. Beast is trying desperately to get out of the YouTube box. He's very terrified of being trapped in YouTube world. To get out of YouTube world, he needs traditional media partners, whether that's New York Times profiles, Time Magazine profiles, Amazon money, because he knows that he's about to age out. I don't think any of the controversies will affect his audience on YouTube because they're all deranged

little iPad videos. But he, I think, is quite concerned about being as above board as possible right now because it's like the last chopper out of nom. Like, if he doesn't get this right now, he is done. And I think that's the, that's the, the missing link there where it's like, it's not changing his YouTube trajectory, but it might eliminate his ability to do bigger things in the future. Yeah.

And I find that fascinating when all those traditional things we just listed besides Amazon, I guess, are broken. And, but, Amazon's very broken. Okay. Great. I use T-Mu instead now. Are they a sponsor? Are they giving us money yet?

God, I wish we had T-Mu money. That'd be so sick. That'd be amazing. Can't be giving that shit away for fun. I just think all e-commerce apps should also be Chinese gambling apps. I think that's exactly what the future. Just one app. Yeah, just one.

Single app future. Yeah, draft kings that also can order me groceries. That's what I want. But I'm interested in both of your opinions on the need. of establishings outside of YouTube and the price of that when and when it's like his the New York Times would would lose their minds if they had one tenth of the eyes mr. Beast as yeah I mean I think he gets that he might be screwed but like what is screwed when you're Mr. Beast like what is screwed actually mean and I I I I

feel like he'll be fine he must have more money than god at this point so like he'll be he'll be fine no matter what happens he's just trying to keep it going he claims he doesn't have any money it's because he's buying school buses do you buy that though okay here's my totally unfiltered take on all of this mr bese is running a tax scam no i actually i actually believe that okay i believe and and we can decide if we want to keep this in the episode i believe that every single thing that is weird about mr bese could be explained by the fact that he is essentially running a massive multi-million dollar tax scheme where he is trying to basically argue that his entire life is based on his work. Thus, he can expense all of his expenses. And so he has no money at the end of the day. Like that's the whole thing.

He also essentially bought the town of Greenville, North Carolina. He owns a hotel there. The like local news stations cover his every move. I think the whole thing, his philanthropy doesn't really, his philanthropy doesn't really make sense, unless you think of it as him just like shoveling money into something else to get it away from the IRS. Yeah, that's what it all it is. Huh.

Yeah, I think that's it. They put in the Times piece. He's like, my mom controls all my bank accounts. I don't even know what's in there. Like, there's, there's, there's deniability on the record. Wow. As someone who,

who started a small media business, and my dad is very interested in it and constantly calls me to tell me ways that I can pay less money and taxes by doing things that are legally dubious Mr. Beast, the whole thing screams boomers set this up so that he doesn't... Well, joining us now is Mama Beast

to reveal all the answers. Thank you. Thank you. I put that joke in the outline in Ryan... Yeah. Grant put it in. I was like, I'm not saying Mama Beast. But I'm glad you did. I'm glad you did. I would love to sort of hear you guys sort of final thoughts at Mr. Beast and sort of what he means. I mean, first, I guess let's try to answer the question we posed at 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? Please. Yes and me. Let's do this. 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 it's not the right thing to do to just pin this all on Mr. Beast. And at the same time, like we should be, 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 like in my mind uh mr beast shouldn't necessarily like be the source of all your like like boomer lack of understanding of the like new internet kid stuff and at the same time like um you know we should be concerned we should be concerned about like how this is playing out and what it means and and how it's like impacting young people that's my that's my get off my long take i think that's i think that's a

very reasonable take thank you man i'd say my 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 we... Die. Give Mr. Beast a blanket. Give Mr. Beast a blanket. Or die horrifically. That's right. Or die horrifically. We will get tired because we actually do need... We 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 make us, is trying to condition us to keep up with. Maybe that's a totally naive take, but I'm going to say he's he's got a fizzle coming in five years or less. I love how pessimistic that is, actually. That's great. I don't think, I truly don't think anyone is, 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 continually top himself and also sort of expand beyond YouTube and possibly be unable to do so. I mean, we'll find out if his YouTube, if his Amazon show has a hit or not. But if he can't make it work, if he can't find a way out of YouTube, I do think he's, I do think it's over.

I think, I think already his, 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 becomes 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. You two 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 Yeah, that's right? Wow. Do you like that? That was pretty good right? That was good Is there an anti-Mr. Beast? Like what's the anti-Mr. Beast?

I guess it'd just be like ambient drone footage Like an account that just makes Just like really like slow soundscapes It's thoughtful podcast It's this podcast right here. This podcast is the liberal Joe Rogan, and it's also the anti-Mr. Beast. Are you ready? Are you ready to go to a $1.5 billion valuation and get money from the Koch brothers?

Dude, I want to get so much investment, then make this company gigantic and then lay Grant off. That's the whole plan. I'll be the sad guy in the Ryan version of the Steve Jobs documentary. We're like, he did the things, and he never. That's right. It's not the one of the turtleneck. Damn right. You're the waz?

Are you the waz? Is that what you're saying? Your waws? Just be careful, Ryan, because this too shall pass. And so you're Mr. Beast moment. You're the next one that will fizzle afterwards. I'm it.

This is a perfect version of final thoughts where you're just like, you know, eventually everyone dies. You know what? Everybody dies and nothing matters. That's true. Beast mode always ends. Always ends. Thank you, Ben, Emory, for coming on.

Yeah. Yeah. Of course. This was delightful. And everyone go check out, endless thread, the professional version of this podcast. Panic World is a garbage day production. It's written and produced by Grant Irving,

hosted by myself with research from the always fantastic Adam Bumis. A huge thanks to Gabby Cash for designing the incredibly deranged art for this show. And a huge thank you to Kat Rajesk, our lovely video editor. And if you'd like to sponsor an episode, you can reach out to Multitude, our wonderful partners, multitude. We have a Patreon, which you can find at patreon.com. slash panic world and I'd like to end this episode with an important reminder log off and touch grass while you still can