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

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 https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-rise-and-maybe-fall-of-mr-beast-with-ben/id1740187810?i=1000679179331's MrBeast episode with Ben and Amory Garbage Day https://www.garbageday.email/, the newsletter "In the Belly of MrBeast" (Time https://time.com/collection/time100-leadership-series/6693255/mrbeast-interview/) "Willing to Die for MrBeast (and $5 Million)" (The New York Times https://www.nytimes.com/2024/08/02/style/mrbeast-beast-games-competition-show.html) "From baking to MrBeast: Meet the YouTuber taking on the platform’s biggest creator" (NBC News https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/internet/baking-mrbeast-meet-youtuber-taking-platforms-biggest-creator-rcna168610) 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.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

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• 0:19Speaker 01

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• 0:32Speaker 01

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• 0:50Speaker 02

  WBUR Podcasts, Boston.

• 0:59Speaker 03

  A question for both of you. Who was the first influencer you were aware of?

• 1:07Amory Sivertson?

  Hmm.

• 1:09Ben Brock Johnson?

  King Arthur, does that count? King Arthur is a...

• 1:13Speaker 03

  Did you have a parasocial relationship with King Arthur?

• 1:16Ben Brock Johnson?

  I don't know. This is already getting too deep and scary for me.

• 1:22Ben Brock Johnson?

  I want to say like the Nystat Brothers, maybe.

• 1:25Speaker 03

  Sure.

• 1:26Amory Sivertson?

  I'm gonna say Elaine Benes. Elaine Benes is my OG.

• 1:31Speaker 03

  From Seinfeld?

• 1:32Amory Sivertson?

  Yeah.

• 1:33Speaker 03

  Fascinating. Okay. Yeah, you did take that in a direction I was not expecting. That's fair.

• 1:38Amory Sivertson?

  Just keeping you on your toes, Ryan.

• 1:44Amory Sivertson?

  Ryan is Ryan Broderick. You've heard him on Endless Thread before, in our music meme episode, and in our series on crypto.

• 1:52Ben Brock Johnson?

  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.

• 2:08Amory Sivertson?

  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.

• 2:16Ben Brock Johnson?

  Oh.

• 2:17Amory Sivertson?

  A modern day influencer, unlike our crusty millennial examples.

• 2:23Speaker 03

  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.

• 2:34Ben Brock Johnson?

  Let's, let's hear some names. Can we get some names?

• 2:38Speaker 03

  So many. I mean, like, I had the Panic at Disco demo CD before it was properly released. Uh, I think that's sort of the, the, 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.

• 3:03Speaker 03

  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, the, the most important question of the modern era, which is, should we be outraged by his existence?

• 3:43Amory Sivertson?

  I'm Amory Silverston.

• 3:44Ben Brock Johnson?

  I'm Ben Brock Johnson and you are listening to a special collabo episode, boop, boop, boop, coming to you from the teams of Endless Threat.

• 3:54Amory Sivertson?

  And Panic World. Today's episode.

• 3:57Ben Brock Johnson?

  Mr. Beast.

• 4:10Speaker 03

  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 MrBeast6000, 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.

• 4:37Speaker 06

  Alright, where am I? What just happened?

• 4:42Ben Brock Johnson?

  Oh, oh, man. He's one of them Minecraft boys.

• 4:47Speaker 03

  Yes, it is a Minecraft video. It is extremely boring. And I think it is probably very hard for anyone born in 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.

• 5:19Speaker 07

  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.

• 5:32Speaker 03

  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.

• 6:02Ben Brock Johnson?

  Yeah, I was gonna say, this is like classic 13 year old stuff, it feels like to me.

• 6:06Speaker 03

  Yes. And, and part of the reason it's kind of like hard to parse this is because

• 6:14Speaker 03

  It is a parody of other YouTube videos. And this will be actually important when we talk about Mr. Beast 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.

• 6:30Speaker 07

  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 blow your mind.

• 6:39Amory Sivertson?

  Does he ever identify himself? Or is he just Mr. Beast? We don't know who this real person is.

• 6:45Speaker 03

  His name is Jimmy Donaldson.

• 6:47Ben Brock Johnson?

  Jimmy D.

• 6:48Speaker 03

  Jimmy D.

• 6:49Amory Sivertson?

  I pegged him for a Chad, looking at him. Maybe that's not fair, but his face says Chad. He's got Chad energy. Yep, okay, Jimmy, got it.

• 6:59Speaker 03

  Yeah, Jimmy D. 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. 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.

• 7:26Amory Sivertson?

  There were fewer ads.

• 7:28Speaker 03

  So this is important. The, the YouTube adpocalypse, as it's called, happened in 2016. This is also when everyone decided that PewDiePie was a Nazi.

• 7:37Ben Brock Johnson?

  Yes.

• 7:38Speaker 03

  So it's, it's, 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, a more sort of linear programming platform. 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.

• 8:06Ben Brock Johnson?

  Is trying to grow up very purposefully and like make money for Google in a way that it probably wasn't before, right?

• 8:12Speaker 03

  Exactly. And in January 2017, he has his first big video. Can you take a guess what really blew him up? Like what, what, what his first big video was?

• 8:24Ben Brock Johnson?

  Uh, man, I'm gonna fail at this, but I, I wanna 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.

• 8:34Speaker 03

  You're not wrong. Actually, yeah. He made a video where he counted to a hundred thousand.

• 8:39Speaker 07

  One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, twenty six, twenty nine, twenty eight, six, seventy, twenty six, seventy one, twenty six, seventy two, twenty six, seventy four.

• 8:51Speaker 03

  Uh, can you guess how long this video is?

• 8:54Ben Brock Johnson?

  I'm gonna say like 28 hours. No, I have no idea. I literally have no idea.

• 8:58Speaker 03

  You're close. So the actual time on this video is 23 hours and 48 minutes.

• 9:03Ben Brock Johnson?

  Damn.

• 9:04Speaker 03

  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.

• 9:14Ben Brock Johnson?

  Wow.

• 9:16Speaker 07

  Eight thousand seven sixty five, eight thousand seven sixty six, eight thousand sixty seven, eight thousand seven seventy.

• 9:28Ben Brock Johnson?

  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.

• 9:38Speaker 03

  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.

• 10:22Speaker 07

  It's a series where I just, you know, be nice and just give people some help. So, uh, if you wanna take it, it's about $10,000. I'm not joking.

• 10:35Speaker 07

  It's real. So.

• 10:37Ben Brock Johnson?

  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.

• 10:53Speaker 03

  It's the performativeness that seems to bother you.

• 10:56Ben Brock Johnson?

  Yeah, it feels performative in a way that's like maybe taking advantage, even if you're handing out money.

• 11:03Amory Sivertson?

  He gets $10,000 from YouTube revenue from ads?

• 11:08Speaker 03

  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.

• 11:18Amory Sivertson?

  So that generates a bunch more ad revenue and then he can pull some other stunt.

• 11:24Speaker 03

  That's exactly right. Now, how would you describe Mr. Beast's on-screen personality? Or lack thereof?

• 11:31Amory Sivertson?

  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, like his name is Chad and he has lacrosse practice later in the afternoon. And first, he's just gonna make a quick little video.

• 11:49Speaker 03

  He looks like an NPC in a video game set at a college. I think that's exactly right.

• 11:57Speaker 03

  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?

• 12:09Amory Sivertson?

  And the name Mr. Beast. I'm expecting so much more from a name like Mr. Beast.

• 12:14Speaker 03

  That's interesting that that's your read on it. Cause like, so I'm in, I'm in my mid 30s and I grew up with AOL Instant Messenger. So I, I'm of like the first screen name generation.

• 12:25Ben Brock Johnson?

  Sure.

• 12:25Speaker 03

  And so when I saw Mr. Beast, I was like, oh, that's a username that he just like picked when he was 13.

• 12:30Ben Brock Johnson?

  Fair.

• 12:31Speaker 03

  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 do you think it's a totally different idea?

• 12:52Ben Brock Johnson?

  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 to like, as they are. And so, like, that

• 13:37Ben Brock Johnson?

  is, there's something about that change that feels meaningful to me.

• 13:42Amory Sivertson?

  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.

• 13:56Speaker 03

  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?

• 14:06Ben Brock Johnson?

  Yes.

• 14:07Speaker 03

  There was like, a purple monkey you could get that would like, dance around your laptop, your screen?

• 14:11Ben Brock Johnson?

  Yep.

• 14:11Speaker 03

  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.

• 14:17Ben Brock Johnson?

  Yeah.

• 14:18Speaker 03

  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, the former king of YouTube. And he made a lot of videos early on where he's saying, you know, I'm studying how PewDiePie does things. I'm copying PewDiePie, blah, blah, blah, blah.

• 14:48Speaker 07

  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.

• 14:53Speaker 03

  And he then asked, he has to sort of turn his back on Mr. PewDiePie, sever that relationship in 2019. Can either of you tell me what happened with PewDiePie in 2019? Cause it's very dark.

• 15:06Ben Brock Johnson?

  So like my recollection is PewDiePie did something.

• 15:11Speaker 03

  The hint is he didn't do something, but he is unfortunately involved.

• 15:16Amory Sivertson?

  I don't know. I really, I, I don't.

• 15:20Speaker 03

  I honestly like shouldn't have turned this into a game show moment. I'm really sorry. It was the Christ, it was, it was the Christchurch shooter.

• 15:26Ben Brock Johnson?

  No points.

• 15:28Amory Sivertson?

  This is on brand for me.

• 15:29Speaker 03

  It was, it was the Christchurch shooter who, who basically wrote subscribe to PewDiePie on his gun.

• 15:34Ben Brock Johnson?

  Oh, yeah, that's right.

• 15:36Speaker 03

  Yeah. Sorry. I shouldn't have done that. That was actually really uncalled for.

• 15:39Ben Brock Johnson?

  No, that's fine.

• 15:40Speaker 03

  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 PewDiePie's protege. Like he is the, he is the next PewDiePie. 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.

• 16:11Ben Brock Johnson?

  Yep.

• 16:13Speaker 03

  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. Beast brand, which it turns out there are none. He can do whatever he wants with it.

• 16:32Speaker 03

  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,

• 16:44Speaker 03

  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 Dobrik, was cancelled.

• 16:56Ben Brock Johnson?

  Oh, yeah.

• 16:56Speaker 03

  For unsafe, you know, unsafe behavior on his productions and inappropriate behavior with his cast and crew. And David Dobrik 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 PewDiePie is synonymous with neo Nazism, David Dobrik is cancelled, the world is Mr. Beast Oyster. And that's when, in November 2021, he releases Squid Game in Real Life.

• 17:30Speaker 07

  I recreated every single set from Squid Game in Real Life, and whichever one of these 456 people survives the longest wins 456 grand.

• 17:40Speaker 03

  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.

• 17:59Amory Sivertson?

  Whoa.

• 18:00Speaker 03

  670 million views.

• 18:02Ben Brock Johnson?

  Damn.

• 18:03Amory Sivertson?

  God.

• 18:04Speaker 07

  Red light. Oh, yo, they're dropping. Okay, now some people are getting out.

• 18:10Amory Sivertson?

  You gotta 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 secretive and proprietary, but 600 million views.

• 18:22Speaker 03

  It's a little complex because he has sponsorships in it. I mean, the thing about Mr. Beast videos is like, 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.

• 18:41Amory Sivertson?

  Wow.

• 18:44Speaker 07

  And now that we climbed the mountain, we get to name it. I think we should name it Shopify. Because to be honest, I couldn't have done it without.

• 18:50Speaker 03

  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, that's what they're supporting. They're like, you know, we're gonna help. It's, it's almost like stock, uh, like, like, uh, like a stockholder in a company. That's how his fans, I think, operate.

• 19:15Ben Brock Johnson?

  Weirdly MLM vibes to me. Like where it's like, just invest in this idea that like, we're gonna 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.

• 19:36Amory Sivertson?

  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 that the whole point is to shine a light on capitalism and how fake money is and how he can just.

• 19:56Ben Brock Johnson?

  Oh, man.

• 19:57Amory Sivertson?

  Multiply it and.

• 19:58Speaker 03

  I got, I got cut you off. No, he's, he's like, he, he, he's notoriously dumb. Like, he, uh, like, he, 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, this is why it's such an interesting time to be like, right now, to be talking about Mr. Beast. Because he has effectively won YouTube. He, I, 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.

• 20:42Speaker 03

  He's not really growing the way he used to. And he's trying to branch out into like other forms of entertainment.

• 20:47Ben Brock Johnson?

  Right.

• 20:48Speaker 03

  But he, he is not, he's not a performance artist, uh, in, in, in the least. Uh, he's, he's.

• 20:54Ben Brock Johnson?

  No, he's just a vessel, man.

• 20:56Amory Sivertson?

  I was trying to give him the benefit of the doubt.

• 20:58Speaker 03

  Oh, I think that'd be super funny if he was just like, this was all just a giant.

• 21:02Amory Sivertson?

  This is a masterminded.

• 21:04Ben Brock Johnson?

  This is my PhD project and, uh.

• 21:07Amory Sivertson?

  Right.

• 21:08Speaker 03

  Yeah, no, he's not.

• 21:14Amory Sivertson?

  Genius or not, a lot of people are clicking play on a lot of Mr. Beast content. And they're staying put. Brian Broderick explains why in a minute.

• 21:43Speaker 00

  Support for this podcast comes from Is Business Broken?, a podcast from the Marotra Institute at BU Questram School of Business. Is sustainability in fashion a selling point for consumers?

• 21:55Speaker 02

  I think the sustainability gets advertised as being a big driver of fashion, when in fact, I think it's way down on the list of purchase criteria for consumers.

• 22:06Speaker 00

  Follow Is Business Broken? wherever you get your podcasts. And stick around until the end of this podcast for a preview of a recent episode on whether consumers can be both fashionable and sustainable.

• 22:22Speaker 01

  When everything feels nonstop, movement becomes the pause. So give Lululemon this holiday season. Smooth, seamless running gear builds momentum through every mile.

• 22:35Speaker 01

  Comfortable workout styles clear the way for locked-in focus.

• 22:40Speaker 01

  And dynamic stretch expands presence through every pose.

• 22:47Speaker 01

  Give the feeling. Shop in-store and on lululemon.com.

• 22:55Ben Brock Johnson?

  Brian Broderick of the Garbage Day Newsletter and the new podcast Panic World will be the first to admit-

• 23:02Speaker 03

  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.

• 23:09Amory Sivertson?

  But he'll also admit that some of Mr. Beast's videos, especially the more recent ones, Brian says, are pretty fun to watch. And he has a favorite.

• 23:19Ben Brock Johnson?

  Which is Train vs. Giant Pit?

• 23:24Speaker 03

  And it is literally what you think it is. He just drives a train into a giant pit and it's great.

• 23:29Speaker 07

  I just bought this train and it is currently barreling 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 with over one-

• 23:46Speaker 03

  Just talk us through the editing style, because I think this is a really good video to sort of use as like 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.

• 23:57Amory Sivertson?

  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 supercuts 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.

• 24:18Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 24:18Amory Sivertson?

  It's chaotic. It's chaotic.

• 24:21Speaker 07

  Three, two, one, fire in the hole!

• 24:27Speaker 03

  I've often described his videos as a trailer for a TV show that doesn't exist.

• 24:31Ben Brock Johnson?

  Ooh, that's good.

• 24:33Speaker 03

  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.

• 24:45Ben Brock Johnson?

  To me, it also like weirdly has like almost like a Mr. Show vibe. Like, did you guys ever watch that show?

• 24:50Amory Sivertson?

  No.

• 24:51Ben Brock Johnson?

  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-

• 25:03Speaker 03

  Yeah, it's like Tim and Eric, it's like Tim and Eric Awesome Show, great job.

• 25:07Ben Brock Johnson?

  Yes, exactly.

• 25:08Amory Sivertson?

  Yes.

• 25:09Speaker 03

  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.

• 25:23Speaker 03

  Hold your gun, go! Bye-bye!

• 25:37Amory Sivertson?

  What is the budget? What? How did he do this?

• 25:41Speaker 03

  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 vs. Giant Pit. Who wouldn't want to watch that?

• 25:52Speaker 07

  Here it goes.

• 25:56Speaker 07

  Oh, my God. Here it comes.

• 25:59Ben Brock Johnson?

  This is undeniable that you want to watch this. Like, you don't want to stop watching this.

• 26:05Speaker 03

  And and there's been some there's been some research into like exactly how good his editing is. He he has a an audience retention rate around 76%, which is insane for YouTube. That's 76% of the people who press start finish it.

• 26:18Ben Brock Johnson?

  That's amazing.

• 26:19Speaker 03

  In January 2022, he launches his chocolate bar company, which is called Feastables.

• 26:25Speaker 03

  And by the end of that year, he his company is looking for $150 million in investments with a $1.5 billion valuation.

• 26:36Amory Sivertson?

  Wow.

• 26:36Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 26:37Amory Sivertson?

  I did not see all of these directions coming. Burgers, chocolate.

• 26:42Ben Brock Johnson?

  1.5 billion dollar valuation for this YouTuber who used to just like do Minecraft videos?

• 26:49Speaker 03

  Exactly.

• 26:50Ben Brock Johnson?

  This gives my son a lot of hope.

• 26:52Speaker 03

  Yes, that is right. And then he has 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 they have two production facilities, one in North Carolina, where all of Mr. Beast's 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

• 27:25Amory Sivertson?

  Wait.

• 27:25Speaker 03

  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.

• 27:40Speaker 07

  Release the spiders.

• 27:43Speaker 03

  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.

• 27:54Speaker 07

  Now we did. Can you confirm? Is that broken? It looks broken.

• 27:58Ben Brock Johnson?

  It felt broken?

• 27:59Speaker 07

  Yep.

• 27:59Ben Brock Johnson?

  All right.

• 28:00Speaker 03

  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.

• 28:06Ben Brock Johnson?

  Yes.

• 28:07Speaker 03

  So by this point, he has to top himself every time.

• 28:10Ben Brock Johnson?

  Oh, man. I mean, Fear Factor, Fear Factor has given us Joe Rogan and, uh, and now we get Mr. Beast out of the deal.

• 28:17Speaker 03

  Two great personalities. That's right. Two cool guys.

• 28:21Ben Brock Johnson?

  Two cool guys. Yep.

• 28:23Speaker 07

  And if he can successfully face all of the fears, he will win $800,000. I'm not gonna lie, this was way more gnarly than I thought it would be. Three.

• 28:32Speaker 01

  What?

• 28:33Ben Brock Johnson?

  This is messed up.

• 28:34Speaker 07

  What is it? It's stand up, stand up. You're fine, you're fine. No, no, no, no, no.

• 28:40Speaker 03

  What are your general thoughts about the, the Mr. Beast story so far? How are you feeling?

• 28:46Ben Brock Johnson?

  I think you were right, Ryan, in describing him as like, kinda like the personification of the YouTube algorithm. Like, I think that makes sense to me. Um, I don't, I don't feel great about that, but, um, but also like you look at this like, like Train versus Pitt, that's undeniable, man. Like that, like that, like, 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. Uh, so.

• 29:25Speaker 03

  That's right.

• 29:25Ben Brock Johnson?

  That's how I feel. Amory, what about you?

• 29:28Speaker 03

  Yeah, what are you thinking?

• 29:29Amory Sivertson?

  Oh, boy. I, I just, I wanna ask Mr. Beast, where do you see yourself in five years?

• 29:37Ben Brock Johnson?

  You wanna interview him for a job?

• 29:40Speaker 03

  I think he's quite nervous about where he's gonna be in five years because he's currently, I think, 26, which is usually the age that YouTubers can't really grow past.

• 29:50Amory Sivertson?

  Really?

• 29:50Speaker 03

  Saying, 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.

• 30:04Amory Sivertson?

  Yeah.

• 30:05Speaker 03

  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 Sings controversy happened, where she realized that, wait a minute, like, I'm Blue's 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 of years of Mr. Beast's brand, and in many different directions, is because he's terrified of waking up one day and just being like Elmo.

• 30:34Ben Brock Johnson?

  He's got to make that Miley Cyrus, Christina Aguilera jump, man. He's got to, he's got to make dirty.

• 30:41Speaker 03

  And then he'll be fine. Yeah. He's got to get nasty. He's got to be a nasty beast.

• 30:44Ben Brock Johnson?

  Yeah, nasty beast.

• 30:46Amory Sivertson?

  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 in smoke, and it'll be like the end of Thelma and Louise, you know? And he's just...

• 30:56Speaker 03

  You're right. We can all hope that he dies, that's true.

• 31:01Amory Sivertson?

  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.

• 31:16Speaker 03

  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. Beast Burger. 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.

• 32:00Speaker 03

  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.

• 32:13Ben Brock Johnson?

  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.

• 32:25Speaker 03

  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, we start to find out that members of his staff are having inappropriate relationships with his fans and Discord channels. Uh, there's been allegations of racist content being shared in his official employee Telegram group. Um, 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.

• 33:04Speaker 03

  They've been filming it, uh, all year. And the onset reports of Beast Games are kind of horrifying. Um, 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. Uh, 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. Um, they were basically just like treated like they were in a refugee camp by the Mr. Beast production team for days on end.

• 33:42Ben Brock Johnson?

  It's a good way to kill someone inadvertently with sepsis or something like, you know, it's not good.

• 33:48Speaker 03

  Exactly. And I think the, 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 billion valued 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.

• 34:14Ben Brock Johnson?

  Yep.

• 34:15Speaker 03

  You're just, you know, there's no moment where an adult steps in, uh, and says like, we need to do this right.

• 34:21Speaker 03

  This last couple of months, things have really escalated when another YouTuber named Rosanna Pansino emerged, basically saying that she'd 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. She, uh, she, she bought, uh, Mr. Beast's new food product Lunchly, which is kind of like a Lunchable company that he started with, uh, Logan Paul and opened it on a stream and discovered it was moldy.

• 35:00Ben Brock Johnson?

  She's the Edward Snowden of Mr. Beast.

• 35:02Speaker 03

  Yeah, I know. She's, she's literally, she's very upfront that she has a massive vendetta against him. Um, she also reported him to the FBI, uh, because she got access to his Telegram group and was claimed and, and has claimed that there were illicit, uh, possibly illegal content being shared in it by employees.

• 35:21Ben Brock Johnson?

  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, um, which I, 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 lolicon. There's like a lolicon layer to this. Does any of that ring true? Or have you seen any of that stuff?

• 36:00Speaker 03

  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, um, younger fans came forward earlier this year alleging that she had been inappropriate with them, uh, 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. Beast's 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

• 36:45Speaker 03

  that wanted to seize on the idea of a trans woman. Possibly being sexually inappropriate with minors.

• 36:52Ben Brock Johnson?

  Of course.

• 36:53Speaker 03

  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?

• 37:01Ben Brock Johnson?

  Yep.

• 37:02Speaker 03

  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, a deep thinker.

• 37:15Ben Brock Johnson?

  I mean, it's not like you need to be a deep thinker to run for president or to be president.

• 37:20Speaker 03

  But up until this stuff with Tyson, he was very vocal about defending her transition.

• 37:27Ben Brock Johnson?

  Okay.

• 37:27Speaker 03

  And I think, you know, it's unfortunate that this happened, um, but he, cause you know, uh, pick, pick the wrong trans woman to support perhaps. But, um, uh, 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 a, it's awful to watch. It's a slog. It doesn't make any sense. It's not done by people who know what they're doing half the time. And yes, it's not really made for audiences over the age of 30 anyways. So it's, it's confusing to say the least.

• 38:06Ben Brock Johnson?

  What, what does his audience do with all of this? You know, like what, what, where do they go from here? Are they like, oh yeah, forget this guy. Are they gonna discard Mr. Beast? As he would any of his other like problematic associations from the past? Or are they defending him? Like what, what, what's happening amongst his audience right now, do you think?

• 38:28Speaker 03

  So I track, uh, YouTube growth of all the major channels month to month. My researcher Adam and I have 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. I don't think his audience cares.

• 38:53Speaker 03

  Because that's not what the people who like him care about.

• 38:58Amory Sivertson?

  Yeah, it's so disconnected from the act, his actual content that it's like,

• 39:02Speaker 03

  Right.

• 39:03Amory Sivertson?

  Why is that relevant?

• 39:04Speaker 03

  Like, 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, I, I, it would really have to come down 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.

• 39:29Amory Sivertson?

  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.

• 39:38Speaker 03

  What do you mean? What, what happened?

• 39:42Amory Sivertson?

  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 X, Y, Z, A, B, C after that? And, and we, 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, they'll take the racism with the economic policy. They'll take the, the bigotry with the retention videos, you know, with the train and the pit. It doesn't seem to matter enough, you know?

• 40:25Speaker 03

  I think that's exactly right. I don't think it matters, uh, which is an incredible place to end this.

• 40:34Speaker 03

  The last hour doesn't matter. No, but I, I would love to sort of hear your guys' sort of final thoughts of Mr. Beast and sort of what he means. I mean, first, I guess, let's, let's try to answer the, 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, is really all that bad, all that new, all that different from anything we've seen before?

• 40:57Ben Brock Johnson?

  Can it be like a both and like, can I, can I say like,

• 41:00Speaker 03

  Yes, and me, let's do this.

• 41:02Ben Brock Johnson?

  It's, 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, that's my get off my lawn take.

• 41:42Speaker 03

  I think that's, I think that's a very reasonable take.

• 41:45Ben Brock Johnson?

  Thank you, man.

• 41:47Amory Sivertson?

  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

• 42:09Speaker 03

  Die.

• 42:10Ben Brock Johnson?

  Give Mr. Beast a blanket. Give Mr. Beast a blanket.

• 42:14Speaker 03

  Die horrifically.

• 42:15Ben Brock Johnson?

  Or die horrifically.

• 42:17Amory Sivertson?

  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, 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.

• 42:42Speaker 03

  I love how pessimistic that is, actually. That's, that's great. I don't think, I truly don't think anyone is, 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 continually top himself and also sort of expand beyond YouTube and possibly be unable to do so. I mean, we'll, we'll find out if his YouTube, 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 YouTube, 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

• 43:26Speaker 03

  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. Beast, as a child of YouTube, knows that that algorithmic change is coming.

• 43:47Amory Sivertson?

  Hmm.

• 43:48Speaker 03

  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.

• 43:58Amory Sivertson?

  Wow.

• 43:59Ben Brock Johnson?

  Wow.

• 44:00Speaker 03

  That's right. Did you like that? That was pretty good, right?

• 44:01Ben Brock Johnson?

  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 Oompa Ville, 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.

• 44:42Ben Brock Johnson?

  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.

• 45:11Amory Sivertson?

  Find it wherever you listen to us.

• 45:13Ben Brock Johnson?

  Endless Thread is a production of WBUR in Boston. This episode was co-hosted by me, Ben Brock Johnson.

• 45:19Amory Sivertson?

  And Amory Sivertson. 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 Vikes.

• 45:29Ben Brock Johnson?

  Our managing producer is Suma Tojoshi. The rest of our team is Grace Tatter, Emily Jankowski, Dean Russell, and Mr. Nah, never mind.

• 45:40Amory Sivertson?

  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, [email protected].

• 45:50Ben Brock Johnson?

  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?

• 46:07Amory Sivertson?

  Just tell us where you're filming and when. We will be there. I'll bring some snacks.

• 46:15Ben Brock Johnson?

  See you next week.

• 46:19Speaker 00

  Support for this podcast comes from Is Business Broken, a podcast from the Marotra Institute at BU Questram School of Business. Follow Is Business Broken wherever you get your podcasts, and listen on for a preview of a recent episode featuring fashion and culture journalist and author Dana Thomas on the origin of fast fashion.

• 46:40Speaker 07

  In the 1990s, during the early days of globalization, a small brand out of Spain called Zara was deciding to spread its wings beyond Spain and move throughout Europe and roll out its stores of not expensive, kind of fashionable clothes, middle market, accessible fashion. And what they did for their business model was they would go to fashion shows and see what was the hip thing, and then reinterpret it in less expensive fabrics, just like Gap was doing. But at the time, Zara was embracing this business model called QR, Quick Response, which was in fact invented by the US apparel industry.

• 47:23Speaker 07

  Basically, you'd put in a few items of a collection in the store, and if it did really well, then you put more into production and you put them in the store. And if they didn't do so well, then you stopped it and you moved on to the next thing. It was like, almost like doing a focus group. Drop of clothes in the store and seeing what works, what doesn't, and what does, you play. So they started moving into this area of quick response and turning out more collections more quickly and getting them onto their store floor faster. And they saw that by doing this, by upping the number of times they did drops in the store to every two weeks as opposed to four times a year,

• 48:03Speaker 07

  that their numbers of visits from consumers went up dramatically.

• 48:09Speaker 00

  Find the full episode by searching for Is Business Broken wherever you get your podcasts and learn more about the Marotra Institute for Business Markets and Society at ibms.bu.edu.

• 48:22Speaker 01

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