satriales wrote:I can't stand his videos and won't be buying his crappy chocolate, but to be fair Mr Beast does do lots of good in some of his videos. I saw one where he was paying for hundreds of people to have eye surgery that they needed but couldn't afford or didn't have access to. Fair play if he can make millions from that sort of stuff. His voice is too annoying for me to watch though.
This is the most insidious aspect of his videos, though. His biggest videos are always ones like, "I bought eye surgery for 100 people to see again", "I gave thousands of shoes to kids in Africa", or "I built houses for the homeless", and while on a surface level these are good acts, they create and reinforce a lot of incredibly toxic narratives.
Firstly, this philanthropy creates a shield around him that exists to protect him from any and all criticism. Have something negative to say about Mr Beast online? Good luck buddy, be prepared to have hundreds of tweens flooding your mentions to tell you that you hate the poor and disadvantaged that he helps. Would you rather they starved or stayed blind. Mr Beast does good things, how can you attack that?
The biggest issue with him doing these good things is that, he profits off it! He might put his charity type videos on another youtube channel and ringfence the funds that come from ads there, but it all feeds into brand Beast, and all leads to him being able to exploit that rep for personal profit. It creates an air of angel philanthropist about him, and I can guarantee that people out there will be buying this chocolate under the assumption that it's an ethical product that's helping to heal the sick and clothe the poor.
It's reached a point where the guy has even proposed essentially building his own company town, as he's bought up a street full of houses to provide accomodation for his employees and their families, and people are looking at this like it's a good thing and not a relic of late 19th Century frontier capitalism.
Meanwhile, all this philanthropy is never placed in context. He never explores the reason these 100 people he's buying eye surgery for cannot afford to access that surgery themselves. There's no attempt to address America's busted healthcare systems. There's no attempt to explain why the lack of social safety net and welfare programs has led to the levels of homelessness that exist, as he's performatively housing a dozen people, going no way to even acknowledge the systemic issues that put them and hundreds of thousands of others on the street in the first place. It teaches his audience of impressionable children that these problems are just an innate part of life, with no addressable root cause, and the solution is an altruistic upper class of billionaires who are going to swoop in and save people with a portion of their vast wealth. If only we had more billionaire philanthropist youtube entrepreneurs, we could save help even more people, and also create even more tax write offs. What a dream world.