The rise and (maybe) fall of Mr. Beast (with Ben Brock Johnson & Amory Sivertson)
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A question for both of you, who was the first influencer you are aware of? I think mine would probably like myspace. Eo bans. I feel like that was the first time I was like, this teenager is famous on the internet. I want to be famous on the, I want to wear a White studied belts.

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

So many, I mean, like I had the panicked disco democratic IT was properly released. That 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 torturing of the money. And that's what we're going be talking about today. We're talking about mr. beast.

mr. Bee is the biggest youtube 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 spate of controversy.

Lots of weird and part of confusing things are coming out of his productions and were going to talk about all of that and trying to answer the the most important question of the modern a, which is, should we be outraged by his existence? My me is ryan brock. This is panic world, a show about the viral, frequent and moral panic pulling up out of the west cores of the internet.

And today we are zoom ing out and zoom ing in on the career of mr. beast. He's conquer youtube.

But will he be able to conquer traditional entertainment? Training me today are the host of, unless thread a wonderful podcast. I I would say A A much more professional and Better version of of our podcast.

I doubt that my cats already here making too much noise. So fantastic. Should I go kick her out? I feel like I should kick.

I mean, if she's got a good mike today. Uh, ben brock Johnson and amy severity, son, welcome. hi.

Thank you very much. Uh, I want to start with a you're sort of gut reactions about mr. piece. How do you guys feel about this little Albert that controlled 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, no way too much about him well.

this is where I confess that i'm one of those people who knows nothing about mister beast in part because ben was he he had mention mr. Beast and said, uh, maybe I wanted maybe we'll do something where I tell you more about him and so I intentionally stayed in the dark about mister beast so that so that i'm a fresh set of years and eyes and i'm i'm here to learn.

Imagine if you come out this, everybody like, I love. Anything could happen.

right? Anything could happen.

And let's this 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 the very beginning. So mr. Beast uploaded his first video to his youtube channel at thirteen years old in february twenty twelve and by back then he was not mister beest who is mister beest six thousand which is honest, much good um and if you guys go to the chat on the corner of the screen here, you will see a link to what we believe is his first video is someone who does grab his archive quite often. But can you sort of to describe what this video is, where IT looks like already, where my, what just happened?

Oh, he is one of the 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 kena, you will explode. Yes, IT is a mancroft video.

IT is extremely boring. IT is probably very hard for anyone born in a before the twenty first century to imagine watching other children play minecraft. But IT is huge.

And this is the world the mister piece comes out of. He a would eventually sort of become the mystery. Ece, we don't love, but this is how he started.

He started in the gaming world, specifically minecraft, and for a long time he was just a kid goofing off on the internet. So there's a daily motion link that you 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. So he's a team when he's filming this, when he's filming these videos and he's busy, he's making one of Younger kids that that's the joke. yo.

Welcome to worst and trials on youtube here. Number one, stop for cry. When a kid, his friend went out in the middle night and performed to, say, ic ritual in my name.

I that was as bad as I was gonna 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 where a he would keep joking about lying down in the street, getting run over by cars to kill himself. He had a occurring bit where he pretended to be apparent walking in on their child, watching one of his videos, and like 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 charter on his wall that he was sort of animate with, uh, text to speech bubbles and stuff um IT was just like very yeah going .

to say this is like classic thirteen year old stuff that feels like to me or thirty, fourteen, fifteen and that sound yes .

and and he is a child of youtube so that his earliest videos are making other kind of videos that he seeing, talking about other youtube he legs and even parading them um and so that sort of the his earliest type of .

content does he ever identify himself as he just mr. beast. We don't know who this real person is.

Oh, his name is Jimmy Donald. Wow.

I packed .

them for a check. Looking at him maybe that's not .

fair but the strong yeah energy um by twenty .

seventeen his channel .

has one hundred thousands of scribers which kind of that sort of the number that when you hit that you become like a real youtube r you're not like big but like you can probably start making some real money and people kind of think of you as a youtube yeah do you guys have any sort of memories of like what youtube is like in two and seven? I know it's so far no so so long ago.

twenty, there were fewer ads.

So this is important. The youtube ad politics, as is called in in twenty. This also when everyone decided I was, yes. So it's sort of, I think, an important year for youtube because it's the year that youtube transitions from something like vine, you know a social media platform to something like netflix A A more sort of lining AR programming platform um and this is I think very important for thinking about the beginning 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.

is trying to grow up very purposefully and like, make money for google in a way that I probably wasn't before, right?

exactly. And in january two thousand seventeen, he has his first big video. Can you take a guess what really blew him up? Like what his first big video was?

Man, it's .

january twenty seventeen. Is IT trump related?

I stormed .

the capital, right? He was the first thing.

Work exactly. Man.

i'm onna fail at this.

But I I want to say like something something like IT was like one of the viral chAllenges or like I think like everybody was doing and he did a two and I blew up. That's my guess.

You're not wrong actually. Yeah, he made a video where he counted to one hundred thousand.

of course.

See that. How long was that?

I've here. And you guess how long this video is?

That's a really good critics. Like this is like that.

How many marbles are in the door? 我去了， three, four, five. I'm going to say, like, twenty eight hours. No, I have no idea.

I close you. So the actually the actual time on this video is twenty three hours and forty eight minutes dam. But IT IT opens with a disclaim m are saying this year the original video was forty hours long, but a doby cabs at twenty four hours. So some parts are sped up together under twenty four hours.

Did he take bathroom breaks?

okay.

I mean, at that point, you should just be sitting on a toilet. Just easy for .

efficiency. Say, do you know it's interesting to me about this? Like to me that fact, right? And jumps out because IT feels thematic to who he becomes or or or some of the controversy make this.

And i'm for a listening, by the way, I was scanning through this. I'm not going to watch all twenty three hours this, but he is seemingly in the same chair and in the same cloth for the whole thing. wow. yeah. But I think you're exactly right where this is so 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 supposed to cut corners, or at least so .

the accusations seventeen, he gets his for sponsor ships and he this is this is the moment when he figures out what I believe is the fundamental core of the mr. Bees 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 a dollar traffic machine. And he gets ten thousand dollars, and he gives IT to a quote, quote, random homeless person, this is not click bait. I'm going to give a random homeless sky ten thousand dollars today.

He get ten thousand from youtube .

revenue from ads OK, yes, from his sponsorships and ads.

So he collects the ten to thousand dollars. He then films himself going to like a highway median next to a sonic and just gives a homeless guy ten grant. And the video has eleven million views.

Like, I mean, you care to tell me. I am. So you don't really have much yeah well, i'm a youtube I mean, you can see the camera so i'm just so serious when I just know be nice and just give people help.

So um if you wanna take IT, it's about ten thousand dollars. Not it's real. so. Serious, I promise that kind of think you promise yeah like so i'm a youtube and I just going .

around doing some good so that generates a bunch more ad revenue and then he can pull some .

other exactly and you can start to see him figure this idea out, which is like for every million views I make, I spend example of dollars to create y amount of z about, you know like get this. I'm never going to you know .

something he's doing. Pn, he's in the p nl world. These making budgets. He's like figure in IT out. He's like gaming the system in a way that a is probably smart.

That's exactly right now. Do you do you think them like how would you describe mr. Piece on screen personality or lack .

there of he looks like a college student in a dorm like a college bro who plays the ross and which, you know no no hate towards that, but he looks like like his name is chad and he has across practice later in the afternoon and first he's just going to make a .

quick little video yes, he looks like an NPC at in a video game said in 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 um uninteresting and you have this intensive fall and the name mr.

Beast, i'm expecting so much more from a name like mr. Beast that's .

interesting that that you read on IT because like so I mean I mean my mid thorium and I grew up with like a well in the messenger, so I am of like the first screening generation. And so when I saw his R P, I was like, oh, that's a username that he just like picked when he was thirty fair.

He chopped off the good part.

He chopped off the cool part. Yeah, he was over six thousand before. Now he just mister but I guess like I would love to hear your takes on sort of the difference between idolizing someone like mr. b.

There any kind of youtube reverses itis zing an actor or a musician or or or some sort of, you know our store or entertainer? Like do you find them to be similar mindsets? Or or do you think it's a totally different idea?

What's it's such a good question because like I think we imagine one of these to be way more created than the other in terms of how this person is presented to os's consumers, right?

Like I would imagine that like an actor or 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 created presentation of a person, whether like we are now in this world where the appearance of creation is gone. It's just like, oh, no, this is just, this person is just like who they are and they're like presenting themselves to me just like as they are. And so like that is that there's something about that change that feels meaningful to me.

That's the the key difference, right? Like mr. Bees, he's just himself. He's just being himself, man. Or at least that's what i'm LED to believe if i'm talking about like some sort of character I don't know like I what tom cruise like that's a person who's like public persona is very carefully created for me why?

What's what's the t and time?

Episode i'm .

afraid yeah .

I think I .

hear that he's tall that's .

the secret time there .

is no .

yes he .

very is a little team and .

his teeth to line up with his lip .

the other thing that .

is and he's got one exactly ah yeah I think when we see actors in a film or A T V show, we are trying to pe and we are trying to enter a different world for reas. I think the youtube or for me is more of just like, hey, you're just like me, you're just a regular person and we don't um we don't expect them to be polished. And you know I think .

that's right. I sort compare them to remember when you could like download like a little cartoon animal that would like hang out on your desktop and that infect your computer with spyware. In the nineties, yes, there is like a purple monkey you could get.

There would like dancing around your life, your screen. That sort of what I think of when I think of influence search. Now, like there are a virtual friend that you spend time with.

Yeah, yeah.

but mr. Beest doesn't stay in this sort of virtual friend zone, if you will, for very long. In twenty eighteen is when he finally chops off to six thousand from his mission name R A P um and he starts to get pulled into more youtube r elite level dramas. So how you made this transition from regular guy to algorithm cartoon character and you know amateur tortured, that's all right. After the.

Um he he is he is a self proclaimed massive student of pui pie, uh the former king of youtube and he made a lot of videos early on where he's saying, no, I am studying how pedia I does things I am copping Peter I888， yes. And he then asked he has to sort of turned his back. I missed her peto pi several that relationship in two thousand nine. Ah can either of you tell me what happened with pui pie in two thousand nine hundred?

Because it's very dark. Oh mean, this is like so much year, like, I feel like we're really gonna fail at this because you are, like, you guys are internet experts. And like, without googling this, I am not going to remember this.

What I all of I guess is the empress al, you know everything and just ask you questions. You don't know.

yeah. Let me ask you to .

my me and I play their guess.

Let me ask you like one of the biggest moments in internet history, and you can fail IT answering. I want to say this twenty nineteen. yeah. So like my recollection, pui pie did something I honestly like should have .

turned this on to a game show moment. I really sorry, IT was the IT was the Christ church .

shooter no points .

was the cries church shooter who who basically wrote some .

scribe to pull out yeah.

sorry, I really, really Young called for. No, that was a horrible thing. But IT was a big deal.

I think we forgive.

I was not looking at for new listings that our products or grants telling me that I ve taken a bit too far. I had to work. That day was a rough day.

No IT is an important moment in mr. Beast trajectory because this is when he sort, I think, finally eliminates this idea from his brand that he is types protested that he is he is the Peter pie. I think this is the moment where he stops, uh, defining himself by other sort of huge creators. And he he puts a lot of distance between him.

Computer, I after this because at this point no one really understand like IT would take, I think, many weeks in many months for the immediately kind of like pull apart like what the troll of that idea was and sure I his lack of connection to the whole thing um but IT is also um I think very indicated of how mister peace will go on to deal with a lot of controversy which is sort of just shutting IT down, directing himself trying to remains quickly clean. He is very busy during the pandemic. He starts a burger chain. And if you guys ever had mb burder.

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 that 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, literally never finish the new yorker. But talk of the time.

the beginning. So if you made IT that far.

yeah, get a couple of ages in .

physical copy of new ork.

correct? Yes, these little like viney's that they do at the very beginning. But basically he was about the release of the mister beast burger. And I was like this, like very evocative description of this mall in new jersey that was, like, filled to the gills, would like, again, eleven to like fourteen year old boys and their parents, maybe girls two, who had drags their parents to this place to get in line for the mr. Beast burger and IT. Basically, like, shut down the entire mall and like, I 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 is mr. Beast burker, this is when that all starts. He also launches a gaming channel. And what will be very important for, later in her story, a non profit for planting trees. So this is sort of the beginning of his franchise era. He's trying to figure out, like the limitations of the mister bees brand, which he turns out there are not not he .

can do with what 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 were like completely unaffiliated ated. Their separate restaurants will just make the mr. Beast burger correct.

Isn't not yes. So um there are about a thousand physical mister beest burger locations across the world, but which is a lot as a right now. But the majority of people who are experience these are experiencing IT through ghost kitchens .

is so hard to describe.

IT really is is super weird. So like I know if you've ever seen like a gost kitchen facility, but you know for other things, you maybe not like there's a big building and you'll know because it's all the delivery drivers around IT and there's like key Oscars that you like open a door and your foods there because there's like one central kitchen making everything and that's where you can get the missing peace burgers.

yes. Is there anything remarkable about the burger itself since this is just I mean, I don't know if she's to make .

if he's a inconsistent think .

what what is IT is IT made of magic?

Let's see, let's see what's on the menu for mister beef burger. Um oh, I can get the mr. Beast burger APP so I can I can buy mr. Beast burger even faster. Okay, so there's a there's a beast style burger, which is american cheese pickles dice on your mail catchup and Brown mustard.

There's a changer style, which I think is like another person that appears in his videos uh, two smashed crispy beef patties with so it's a smash burger again. Then there's the corals dulux, which is paddy milts of some kind ah there is some very hideous looking fries covered in pickles that don't look very good. Yeah, it's like him. It's completely unremarkable. IT looks fine, but like whatever IT feels, 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 H I don't know gives me the heb gbs for some reason where I like the mr beast burgers is just an idea. Man is just an idea.

You don't want to franchise out mr. Beast burger.

I don't think so, man.

but I don't .

um so .

after this sort of franchise moment, there's basic one last piece of the wise minter bee's popular question just in here in April twenty twenty one. I think that you could argue that the only other person who could have maybe beat mister bees to the title of biggest person on youtube, the sort of growing personality on the platform, was proba David do brk, who was cancelled for alleged unsafe behavior.

Tions allegedly appropriate behavior with this question. Crew and debris was a really the only other person I can see at this time period who could have overtaken mister beast. And now he's been effectively chased off the internet.

So now, pute, I pie is anonymous. neonates. Sm, David, do brick is cancelled. The world is mr. Beast oyster.

And that's when, in november twenty twenty one, he releases squid game in real life. Are you familiar? Oh, okay, amazing. So this is just so 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 he beats netflix to IT. Um and in fact, he argued over the years that he has more views on his school game in real life then they did on their actual game .

show version of school again wow and do know people don't die. What what are the stakes?

He doesn't execute you know the you you win .

money .

you win money um you win a lot of money. And it's four hundred and fifty six players and the video has six hundred and seventy million views. I recreated every .

single .

service with game in real life and whatever of these, four hundred and fifty six people survived, longest four thirty .

six grand old.

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 translators to in terms of money? I am am sure that's a very secretive and proprietary. But the thing about mr.

Bee videos is like they are essentially rushing nesting dolls of advertising. I mean, there is one video where he went in article and he branded a mountain in an article for shop fy by sticking a shop of five flag at the top of amount. So he really will do anything for money and because he's kind of created this prop culture personality around like helpme become the biggest youtube whatever.

I think his fans really like the idea that he is just sort of peer capitalism because that's what they're supporting. There's like you we're going to help. It's it's almost like stock a like a stock holder in a company that's how is friends. I think again.

like weirdly ml m vibes to me. Yeah I think I .

feel like you're getting more you're going further down the M L M rabbit le. And again, me as someone who really did not know anything about mr. Bees 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 multiple ET.

And I I got cut you up. No, like he is notoriously 的 OK。 Like he, he, he does not to be a particularly deep thinker, except I have launched to 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 is that is interesting time to be like right now to be talking about miseries? Because he is effectively one youtube.

He, I often consider him A A raw expression of youtube s algorithm. He will do anything the algorithms ants him to do. And he's very open to that and he has now sort of reached a point whether one's copying him. He's not really growing the way he used to and he's trying to branch out until, like other forms of entertainment, he's not a performing artist in english. He he's .

just a vessel man, a vessel doubt.

Oh, I think we'll be superfund if he was just like, this was all just .

a giant like, very, this is my PHD project. And yes.

you guys need to do anything.

jokes. I knew by twenty twenty three.

after this good game videos 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 he is. He just drives a train into a giant pet.

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 I OK first.

I love making fun of masterpiece. There's nothing gives me more perverse than than just like writing absolute barber n or take tons in this guy but I also think like his videos, especially in his later period, are very fun to watch. In fact, like here also you guys a link to the train giant put, I think.

is the best one I do.

Just talk us through the editing stuck 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, I referred to as retention editing.

That's the term for how you edit the OK. This is like a high video. Everything is coming.

You the train goes down into the hole and then IT hits the bus and then its super cuts to an explosion and now there are, oh my god, it's only been like twenty seconds, another people on the ground and there is a house and there's a guy in the tub. And I can tell what the hell is going on. It's chaotic, chaotic.

I've often describe his videos as a trailer for A T, V show that doesn't exist.

Oh.

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 brains. So thread with the internet that this is the only way that we can um process the information.

Like it's the kind of thing that like if you are 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 yes.

it's like, tim, it's like timer. Awesome show, great job. Yes.

it's exactly exactly.

If you skip further in the video before they get to the train, they tie to school buses to a tank with the the rope going across the pit, and then they make them drive in opposite direction to see which one ends up in the pit. What is.

The budget, what how did he do this?

Well, he has a lot of money because his videos at this point, this video has two hundred and thirty nine million views. And honestly, IT should because it's titled train versus giant pit. I wouldn't want to watch that.

agreed. This is underived that you want to watch this like you don't want to stop watching this?

yes. And and there's been some there's been some research to like exactly how good his editing is. He he has A A audience retention ata around seventy six percent, which is insane for youtube. That seventy six percent the people press start finish.

That's amazing.

He's also a master thumbnail. So like he he has a team that he says are spending hours and hours like hundreds of hours a week trying to figure out like exact calibration of sometimes for ab testing to make you wanna click on this stuff.

They're like, no, no, the science like we needs like a different kind of science and like a deeper science in the in the text to make sure people click on the exact that level of he .

famously decided at one point and he was no longer going to smile in the miles and I got from wow and you like did like months of A B testing to figure out like which one would do Better um and this this is most likely his peak around twenty two three in june twenty two he lost his his chocolate bar company, which is called .

festivals and by the end .

of that year he uh his company uh is looking for one hundred and fifty million dollars in investments with a one point five billion doll evaluation.

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

one point five billion dollar valuation for this youtube. Br, who used to just like, do my craft exactly. This gives my son a lot hope. Yes.

that is right. So he's pretty much instructive. But as this rise is happening, their controversy, starting with his charity organization, which is begin to cause some issues for him. So in october of twenty twenty, he launches beast philanthropy, which i've looked into on and off over the couple years. And it's essentially run by like a south african realist agent who doesn't seem to have any expertise with running and on problem seems legit.

Is any .

actual philanthropy happening?

Yes, but. It's complicated. There's one video in particular that beast philanthropy puts out that upsets basically the whole internet. And this video works during a thousand people's one.

one thousand .

people I hate. I hate that. He now is wearing scrubs.

S, oh yeah.

H and like, p.

isn't this just like what what gloomy is or something or what caterer?

Or he's just given a bunch of people cataract surgery. So oud, and he gives her ten thousand. He gives a lady ten thousand dollars.

okay? My first question is, is maybe a boring one, which is just why this who who why this problem? Why was this the problem that he wanted to tack, you wanted to tackle with his many, many thousands, millions of dollars?

So i'm you guys a link to what his nonprofits page looks like now I will give you a good taste of the kinds of stunts that he's putting over on this channel.

Sorry, 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 firehose of chair table, quote, quote dents that are largely based on that before and after something is 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 fixed everybody's eyes and have a counter on the board of the screen. It's like, look how many eyes .

I fixed sure sure. Well, i'm 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 elen, a generous, and think about Opera.

And why is IT I? I get that this looks icky because IT is performative, but are open on elena, generous, any less performative about their their charitable acts? Or is IT just a different medium, different aid group, different audience?

I don't know. I think that's right. Nothing is inherently wrong with the stuff that he's doing. Morally, the esthetics are bad because their 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, twenty five feel uncomfortable about this because it's not A A T V show. Like what would you do, right? It's not like Opera. It's ugly because the internet is ugly. And I think that's really what bothers people about all this stuff.

right?

Because I love writing take downs about him. Like I get a perverse thrill from IT. I'll read one that I put together recently, which I think kind of simply puts all this together.

There are much, much worse things you can do to go viral. But like every rich guy now, Donald wants us to thank him for IT and telling music a person. But he's just a guy that spent a really long time figure 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 a symptom of 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 not like the cut of his job at all and also, you know it's not always fault, so it's complicated.

What tells us that he is like hungry for the is just the way.

like, I feel like just the way he talks about stuff. He is 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 me know please clap yeah you .

can see IT in the edit .

like they always live in shots of him like pretending to have human feelings while he hugged them and like gets thanked by them. There's just a there's avoided inside of him that leaks through the screen and you can feel IT and all of this is causing him some hiccup. S but they are 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. Is, is, is just gross looking. But there are controversies coming.

But before GTA break, I do think it's worth pointing out that while he's doing all these I feel good videos, he's also a weird fear factor videos where his torturing people and the his videos getting more extreme. And this tension is going to become a problem. You have to survive ten minutes with a thousand spider to move up.

I'm going to tempt the next seven days and litter confine. 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 one hundred and fifty 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 opportunity. So by this point, he has to top himself every time.

man. I mean, fear factor. Fear factor is given us joe rogan and and now we get mr.

Beest out of the deal to great. That's right. Too cool guys.

Too cool guys. Yep.

so there are some complaints, but he's still only gaining steam. But after the break, in the words of every youtube river, after the rise comes to fall.

What are your general thoughts about the mr. b. Story so far? How are you feeling?

I think you are right, ryan. And describing him as like kind of 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 pit that's underived man like like that can next to something deep inside me that is like hundreds of thousands of years old like for some reason that's like that's that's like what I feel when I see fire. Do not like it's still like something primordial uh but also uh totally after rails as they were a that's how I feel emery, what about you?

Do you .

think that boy I I just I want to ask mister beast, where do you see yourself in five years?

You want to interview for a job.

I think he's quite nervous about where he's getting fighters because he's currently I think twenty six, which is usually the age that youtube r can't really grow.

really just sting from .

what i've seen. If you start on youtube really Young, and you build audience and you're really Young, and your audience is Young with you, twenty five, twenty six seems to be the moment where there are no longer growing with you, because now they associate you with their child, her.

And a lot of youtube S I think become very frustrated because they discover one day, they wake up one day and discover their a child performer um they wake up when I discovered there are children show host. And this was part of, I think, why the of things controversy happened where SHE realized that, wait a minute, like, i'm blues clues. What what do you mean? I thought I was like, cool. My theory is a lot of sort of the escalation of the last couple years of mister beast brand in the many different directions is because he's terrified of waking up one day and just being like elmo.

He's got ta make that miley cyrus, Christina egeria jump man. He's he's to make dirty and can so that or just I think he's going to go .

horribly wrong in one of these videos and he's gona die Young and he'll go up in smoke and it'll be like the end of film and .

Lewis and he's just we can all hope that he goes.

That's true.

And I think that's a very real possibility. And that might be how the mister beast story. We will just say if this were a major motion picture, that is how IT would end.

Well, there's a fantastic transition into the darker era of mr. Bees would be talking about now. So mr.

Beast, in july of twenty twenty three, basic use the burger franchise and they sew him back. There's a whole bunch of litigation around mr. Beast burger.

So he didn't own IT.

IT was a partnership. A lot of these things are of franchise seps in twenty twenty four, he does a profile with time magazine that kind of I think someone unfairly makes him kind of like the poster boy for uh, youtube Brown people's brains and like children's attention spans.

And I only sort of like one of software that just because like mister, I don't I don't find mister beasts to be singular or unique anyway, if masterpiece exist, there would be another masterpiece. Because youtube created masterpiece and is very open about allowing youtube to create him. And so I think that's an easy way to sort of like past the blame off of youtube.

I totally agree with that. I think like we love, we love escape goat. We all love to like piles on something that we don't understand and think is bad, and find like the person who's like the most popular and like destroy them, right?

And this year is when we start to finally get the drum at 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 discard channels. There has been allegations of racist content being shared in his official employee telegram group.

There are numerous reports of unsafe filing procedures that are happening, his filming locations. And a lot of this finally starts to come out when he announced a new venture with amazon, which is called be 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 reported that one contestant recall being asked if he would be able to swim to shore if he was thrown overboard from a boat, which I guess is like Normal reality show stuff. Kinder by the major issue with bees games has been the logistics. Two thousand contestants were brought to a stadium and they didn't have their phones with them.

They did have anywhere to sleep. The new year tim story continues. They were given called o meal, one hard boiled egg and a few pieces of .

raw vegetables. Same, to be honest.

that's my child had. Yeah, that's great. I wish they just mr. Beers, they were also being forced to eat that they were allergic to like they didn't check.

You know people's like food allergy, this this one is very horrifying. So um contestants couldn't get access to clean underwear or feminine hygiene products. Um they are based just like treated like they are in a refugee cap by the mister bees production team for days on end.

A good way to kill, kill someone inadvertently with substance or something like you.

Not good. And I think the the major sort of take away here is sort of I understand that is that mr.

Bees grew in barely five or six years from a kid farting around on the internet to a one point five billion dollar evaluated company, right? And that I think no matter what is going to create a structure and an incentive system where you are just flying by the senior pencil time, you just there's no moment where an adult steps in and says, like we need to do this, right? yes. And and I think that happened to a lot of creators who grow very fast. But we're just talking about the biggest creator of all.

the biggest influencer er of all time does IT surprise you that after a people almost got trapped during the making of the amazon show and all of the other monday in problems, the fire festival of IT all uh that um 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 um but I am but I am surprised that like the controversy so far has not sunk the ship, so to speak.

And I also I am not surprised that the people who have advanced are sticking with IT. Because like when you create this like crave and atmosphere where people are like competing for money, I like the people who are advancing are not gonna tap out. Like why would they tap out that makes you know there's no reason for the people might win big to tap out. You'd have to be like incredibly committed to a identifying the thing that is wrong with all of this to say you I don't want the money even though i'm still in IT.

Well, that just shows how much money was probably poured into the show that the the bar has to be pretty high, that 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.

Tell you like, yeah, just GTA do IT uh, yeah he'll be fine. Amazon will be fine. The children eating his truckle bars will be fine until climate change ruins their lives.

And then he can go fixed up there like post apocalyptic village for youtube traffic. And none of that is mr. Bee fault.

T really? Yeah, I mean, someone, I don't know what the bar is, but i'm just picturing spiderman, the broadway musical. And someone had to literally plumet almost to their death, uh, to stop that. So what is the what is the spiderman actor pluming almost to their depth of this equation?

I don't know. And and also, that was a much smaller budget. Maybe that won't even do IT. yeah.

I'm curious how many people work for him. Do you know how big the company is?

shocking. The shockingly smaller I would that that is.

I've tried to contact them, but if you email them, they send you an auto, generate a response or written comic sense. I've tried to sort of like dig around their their corporate structure. I was particular interested in their philanthropy y group, because I was able to I was able to confirm that they were receiving money from, uh, uh, an organization affiliated with the coke 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 is happening with mr. Beast and how bad IT is. But a lot of the stuff is being covered by youtube. R the major character here is leading all of this right now is rosana pco. SHE became popular in twenty fourteen for making the fun cakes and like being really bubbly ah this is A A kind of A A good snapshot of her her whole deal.

Welcome to the other news, one of the combine two things that I really love baking in video games that so thank you and bar by.

And she's a kind of a funny character on this, not just because he looks like Polly pocket, but because he was on one of mr. Beast videos, he was in one of his contests and he had edited her in the video to make her look bad and make you look like he actually lost the game. And this, apparently he is so greece, from his pancre that he is, wage a one woman war against this bees ever sets, which honestly, I love, I love by, I love petless. I'm really, really happy for her. And this has manifested recently in her posting videos where he is essentially just like running a republica about beast games and like leaking horrifying contestant reports from the production of the show.

Food would run out, and people would fight over steel and hord food, water with scarce and kept running out as well. I had to say, 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 slap on the floor in the stadium in a ten dollars sleeping bag.

She's doing real investigating work. He has access to tens of thousands of leaked messages from his internal discord and telegram, which he has, has even reported to the FBI because of some of the inappropriate content that was in there. Wow, SHE bought mr.

Piece new food product lunches which is kind of a lunch able company that he started with. Uh, logan poll. I opened IT on a stream and discovered IT was mody cheese. Although cheese was moody in there.

She's the origin of the a of the lunch. I mult cheese. yes. wow. She's the Edward snored of mr. beast.

She's very front that he has a massive and data against him.

What I think is interesting from what i've seen about the controversy around mr. Beast is a lot of the stuff that, uh, you know, a lot of the stuff exposing him, like the investigative journalism effectively that is like exposing mr.

Beast is also like made by youtube s um which I I find really interesting and I also but some of that 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 lowly con. There's like a love con layer to this. Does any of that ring true? Or have you seen any of that stuff?

yeah. So thank you very much. This this is sort of the last peace. No, no. And you are right though because this stuff is really confusing because IT is largely being done by other youtube ers because we're talking about a demographic this doesn't read.

It's a post literary at society, right? So know anyone anyone under the age of twenty seven like isn't reading words on the internet anymore. They're watching youtube. Uh the controversy you refer to is a childhood best friend of a mr.

B SHE goes by aba Chris tyson now and um Younger fans came forward earlier this year alleging that he had been inappropriate with them uh sharing content of a sexual nature, things like that. mr. B is uh in 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 internal structure where 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 disease on the idea of a trans woman possibly being sexy, appropriate with miners, 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 you? 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 when day, but I sort of put him the same categories, is like the rock, like I don't really think of him, is like a deep thinker but up until this stuff with tyson, he was very vocal about defending her transition .

OK and very .

sort of like a Chris, my friend, is as simple as that and I I always sort of I always want to give him more credit. I I I think you know it's unfortunate to this, but because you know pick pick the wrong trans woman to support perhaps but ah IT is unfortunate because mr. Beef is this massive role model at this very politically no delicate time for the transaction ity.

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 what was going on because youtube citizen journals, just awful to watch. It's a slog.

IT doesn't make any sense. It's not done by people who know what they are doing at the time. And yes, it's not really made for audiences over the age of thirty anyway. So it's it's confusing to say the least.

IT feels complicated.

I ask you by this point, still trying to figure out if mr. Bee is just sloppy or predatory and unfortunately, it's kind of difficult because not only is he very tightlipped about how he's doing things, the people that are coming forward are not exactly the most trustworthy. They're going straight youtube.

So when they do these sort of reports, they have the same incentive to sensationalized or outright lie the mr. bestwood. One of these cases is A A video by M, A name jake weary, who claimed that he was offered to do a solitary confinement chAllenge, mr.

Beast, and basically alleged that there was psychological abuse throughout. And here is why you should take at this with a bit of a great assault, because they have never air this video. He claims they paid him out and is IT believable. sorted. But once again, we we don't have let to go on here.

Yeah, is there an hr department had beast incorporated?

Based on my understanding of the corporate structure, mr. Beast think there are people doing jobs, but those people either have never done those particular jobs before or their friends. Mister b got swept up in the machine. I don't get the sense that there is like a massive media company behind this is just sort of his friends, his family and people that he's met along the way.

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

do you think so I track, uh, youtube growth of all the major channels last month that we researcher adam and I been doing IT for about a year and half no two years and he has stopped growing as fast. But he is still the biggest channel youtube. I've not seen any evidence that any of this has really changed that um there is no correlation between like growth and controversies when they emerge.

I don't think his audience cares. I think he would take a lot more to move the needle. Know he's like like a duty party. Like maybe, but as right now, I think a lot of this is so IT doesn't really matter because that's not what the people who like him can.

So disconnected from the act is actual content that it's like why is that relevant exactly?

Like I don't think mr. Bees fans want an ethical mr. bees. They just want to watch a train going .

to pit IT doesn't seem to matter enough, you know.

I think that's exactly right. I don't think that matters. Which is an incredible place to this.

The last hour doesn't know. No, I went to tweak this a little bit. So I think what IT is, is that mr. Beast is trying desperate to get out of the youtube box. He's very terrified of being trapped in youtube world. To get out of you to 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 you. I don't think any of the controversies will affect his audience on youtube because they're all the ipad beings. But he, I think, is quite concerned about being as above board as possible right now because it's like the last chop etna like if he doesn't get this right now, he is done and I think that's the that's the the the missing link there or it's like it's not changing as youtube trajectory, but I might eliminate his ability to do bigger things .

in the future yeah and 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 OK.

Every I use .

tmo instead. Now, are they a sponsor?

Are they giving a money?

God, I wish you.

I just think all .

e commerce apps should also be chinese. That's the future. Asked just one single draft king that also can order me.

But but i'm interested in both of your opinions on the need of establishing outside of youtube and the the Price of that when and when it's like his the new times would would lose their minds if they had one tenth of the eyes mr. Best's, yeah I mean I I think he gets that he might be screwed um but like what is screwed when you're mr beast like what is screwed actually mean ah and I I I feel like I will be fine. He must have more money than god at this point so like hel be held, be find no matter what. If he doing.

he lam, he doing have any money he do you buy that the p okay, here's my totally on filter. Take on all of this. mr. B is running a tax game. I I actually believe, okay, I believe, and we can decide if we want to keep this neither side.

I believe that every single thing that is weird insta piece could be explained by the fact that he is essentially running a massive multi million dollar uh 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 he has no money at the end of the that 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 is seems just like shoveling money into .

something else yeah to get with the .

rest I think that is all that is yeah. I think that they put .

in the time space is like my mom controls all my bank accounts. I don't even know what's there like there there's .

the ability of the record.

Well.

as someone who who started a small media visits, and my dad is very interested in IT and constantly tly calls me to tell me ways that I can pay less money in taxes by doing things that are legally dubious. mr. Beast, the whole thing screams. Bombers .

set this in.

Thank you. Thank you. I put that joke in the .

the outline and right and put I I would like to sort of here you guys is sort of final thoughts and mr. Bees and sort of what he mean. I mean, first, I guess let's let's try to answer the the question we posed, the top, which is, do you think mr. B is worth freaking out about painting about? Do you think that this is 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. Uh, 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 um 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 ah the things that he is representing about like the way our society is coming to work in the way that like people are showing up and interacting with the platforms that we interact with and like in my mind, mr. Beast shouldn't necessarily like be the source of all your like lack boomer lack of understanding of the like new internet kids 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 that means and and how it's like impacting Young people. That's my that's my get off my long take.

I think that I think it's a very reasonable.

Thank you.

Mh, i'd say my my classic memory old lady take would be that I don't think our heads and hearts can keep up with th Epace t hat m r. Beast is running at. I don't think he can keep up with th Epace t hat h e's c urrently O perating a t. So i'm going to optimistically say that he's just going to get tired at a certain point or we .

die .

or give give me to be the blanket to that.

We will get .

tired because .

we actually do need uh, we do need to, you know touch grass literally and on the internet. And we do need to slow down a little if we're going to survive as a species. So I don't think any of us can keep up with what mister bees is trying to make us, is trying to condition us to keep up with. Maybe that's a totally now you've take, but i'm going to say his, his, he's got a fizzle come in, in five years or less.

I love how to misc, that is that's that's great. I don't think I really don't think anyone is. I have read anything good on someone being like he's parly cut.

And I think you 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 will find out if he if his amazon show is a here or not. But if he can't make IT work, if you can't find a way out of youtube, I do think his I do think it's over. I think I think already his his youtube brain has come to an end to a degree.

And and this is the last, I think, important point to end on here, which is that youtube has a history of treating its most powerful creators like a virus. Eventually, the type of content they create become so uniform and so stolen by other creators that IT starts to manifest to spam. And I think mr.

Bish is a child of youtube, knows that that algorithmic changes coming youtube will not allow every single account to be to making the same kinds videos is bad for youtube. So now that everyone knows how to be masterpiece, no one could be masterpiece. Wow, wow. Do you like regular was good .

for good. Is there an anti mr. beast? right? Like, what's the anti mr. beast?

I guess I just be like ambient drone footage, like an account just makes just like really like slow sounds capes.

It's brought full podcast .

it's yeah it's for this podcast here. This pakistan is the liberal joe rogan, and it's also .

the intimate beast. Are you ready? Are you ready to go to a one point five billion valuation and get others?

I want to get so much investment, then make this company gigantic. And then later, grant, that's the whole.

i'll be the sad guy. And like the right in version of the tea jobs document, were like, he did the things and he never eternity. Then you that was are you was baby, is saying here was, be careful.

ring. Is this too cash and so your your mr. Beast moment, you're the next one that will after this is a perfect diversion and final thought.

We are just like, you know, eventually everyone dies.

You know why everybody dies and nothing mode, always and always. Thank you in memory for coming on.

Yeah, yeah.

Of course, this was delightful. And everyone go check out in this thread. The professional version of panic world is garbage day. Production is written in, produced by grand urban, hosted by myself, with research from the always fantastic and ambience.

A huge thanks to gabby cash for designing the incredibly danged art for the show, and a huge thank you to cat reject our lovely video idea. And if you like to sponsor episode, you can reach out to multitude our wonderful partners, multitude of productions, slash ads. We have a patron, which you can find a patron 到 com slash panic world。 And i'd like to end this episode with an important minder. Log off and touch grass, but you still can.