MrBeast: The Greatest Showman

"They're going to laugh anyway...Might as well get paid."

Jimmy Donaldson (MrBeast) has been making a lot of waves recently, even more than normal, because of some of the stunts he has pulled in his most recent videos. A sort of “moral” conversation has begun about MrBeast and the kind of content he’s creating.¹ I think it’s a good conversation to have. I’ve waited a number of weeks to write about this, and I think I am ready to give my two cents.

But, in step with how I often do things here, I think it’s important that we look at a bit of the history of the social internet before we just hop into the latest MrBeast discourse. If I’m going to hook you with MrBeast hot takes, I’m at least going to give you a brief YouTube history lesson.

To best understand where things currently are, we should know how we got here.

And that means we have to start with the first king of YouTube: PewDiePie.

August 29, 2018

On August 29, 2018, Felix “PewDiePie” Kjellberg was still the biggest YouTuber in the world. That day, he posted a video called “THIS CHANNEL WILL OVERTAKE PEWDIEPIE! LWIAY #0046,” which was simply another episode (the 46th) in a series of videos in which he engaged with content that his audience posted to his subreddit, a common subgenre of the “reaction” genre. At least, it seemed that’s all the video was.

PewDiePie was sort of exiting the most tumultuous few years of his career when he was the Supreme Edgelord of the Internet and found himself routinely apologizing for all kinds of humor that went too far in the eyes of many. In August of 2018, PewDiePie was still making some bizarro content, but it wasn’t quite of the same problematic variety it had been the couple of years prior.²

I started watching PewDiePie right around the beginning of his public meltdown in November 2016 when he announced he would be shutting down his channel upon reaching 50 million subscribers. It was clear he was burned out, and that began to show in his increasingly edgy content over the following couple of years. 

I watched PewDiePie every single day throughout his meltdown (from late 2016 through early 2018), and frankly studying his trajectory was one of the reasons I ended up doing a lot more study and research on how social media affects us in general.

It is fair to say I am a “fan” of PewDiePie, even if I found a lot of his edgy content foolish and inappropriate. I’ve always appreciated him, even as I’ve been disappointed in him. And it’s really great to see him now living his best life with his wife Marzia in Japan, occasionally making vlogs about their lives there, mostly in a sort of pseudo-retired state, preparing to welcome a child later this year.

But, like I said, by August 2018, most of PewDiePie’s edgelord woes were behind him, and he was just creating goofy, off-the-wall content that looked very little like the video game content that made him popular and a lot more like basic “reaction” content that has dominated YouTube since its inception.

If the internet had a museum, PewDiePie’s video from August 29, 2018 should have its own room. In one sense, it was simply another in a series of LWIAY (“Last Week I Asked You”) videos in which Felix engaged with his audience through a dedicated PewDiePie subreddit. But the video launched the PewDiePie v. T-Series meme that became a global, internet-wide phenomenon for months, and this makes it one of the most consequential videos in the history of YouTube (at least from my perspective).

PewDiePie v. T-Series

What was “PewDiePie v. T-Series”? Good question. Let me do my best to explain this very important phenomenon in the history of YouTube and the social internet.

In short, PewDiePie was the most-subscribed YouTuber in the world and quickly approaching 100 million subscribers. Meanwhile, the Indian mega-channel T-Series, a channel run by a corporation rather than a YouTuber, was set to eclipse PewDiePie as the biggest channel in the world. Effectively we were witnessing a proxy war over the soul of YouTube.

What does this all have to do with MrBeast? You wonder.

We’re getting there, I promise.

The competition between PewDiePie and T-Series was more than just a goofy battle for the title of “Most Subscribed YouTube Channel in the World.” The battle between PewDiePie and T-Series was even more about “Old YouTube” v. “New YouTube.” Like I said above: it was a war for the soul of the platform.

PewDiePie represented the YouTube of yore, the YouTube made up of creators and individuals who used the platform to grow audiences and become household names by recording all manner of videos from their bedrooms, dorms, and otherwise. These creators grew because of their raw appeal—their ability to entertain, inform, or otherwise personally connect with their audiences. They weren’t all “authentic” in the true sense of the word, but they were real people creating content specifically for the YouTube medium, and there was an authenticity to that. 

Up until this point creative individuals were the engine that made YouTube what it was—but YouTube had been burned by problematic creators (like PewDiePie) and they were pivoting to safer content and creators in the form of corporations and media conglomerates.³

T-Series, an Indian media company, represented the newer version of YouTube that catered to corporations and advertising and sparkly, clean, curation. Leading up to the battle between PewDiePie and T-Series, plenty of YouTube creators had been expressing their frustration with YouTube and how it was leaving behind the amateurish individual creators that helped the platform grow in its early days (like PewDiePie, Jenna Marbles, Phillip DeFranco, and others), in favor of catering to corporations like major American television networks and international media companies like T-Series. 

To summarize: the battle between PewDiePie and T-Series for the top spot on YouTube was as much a proxy war over the heart and identity of YouTube as it was about the two channels themselves. Would YouTube keep its heart and soul? Would it retain its magic? Or would it sell out and become an internet hub for global media companies?

Because of this broader reality, many prominent YouTubers came to the aid of PewDiePie in his battle, even people who didn’t like PewDiePie and had denounced him in the past.⁴

And who was the first significant creator to throw his lot in with PewDiePie? MrBeast.

I Bought Every Billboard In My City For This

At the time, MrBeast had fewer than 10 million subscribers which was a lot, to be sure, but very few compared to other big YouTubers at the time, and only a fraction of the subscribers that he would eventually attract.

A couple of months after PewDiePie’s August 2018 video, MrBeast posted a video on his channel called “I Bought Every Billboard In My City For This” in which he does a giant publicity blitz in North Carolina in an effort to get people to subscribe to PewDiePie and defeat T-Series.

The video is so incredibly unpolished and amateurish compared to MrBeast’s more recent fare, but it’s such a beautiful picture of exactly what the fight for PewDiePie against T-Series was all about: goofy people making 21st century home videos for an audience of millions on the internet.

To make a long story very short, so we can wrap up our “history” portion of this exploration and get to more recent events, MrBeast rode the PewDiePie v. T-Series wave to tremendous growth for his own platform. He regularly donated $10,000 at a time to PewDiePie’s livestreams in order to promote his own channel. He didn’t donate out of generosity, but because donating $10,000 to the biggest YouTuber in the world is more of an investment than it is a “donation.” This is a theme you will want to remember as we move into more recent events.

MrBeast’s videos campaigning for PewDiePie have ten times more views than PewDiePie’s videos have from around the same time. 

MrBeast was becoming one of the world’s biggest YouTubers before PewDiePie v. T-Series happened at the end of 2018 and into 2019, but by joining the fight for the soul of YouTube in his campaigning for PewDiePie, MrBeast accelerated his own growth dramatically. It’s hard to find subscriber counts from the past, but most graphs I found indicate that in January 2018 MrBeast had around five million subscribers, and by January 2019 he had close to 20 million subscribers. He benefited greatly from the PewDiePie battle, and his support just poured gasoline on the raging fire of his increasing popularity.

I really wish I could keep going and write another 3000 words about how MrBeast grew to where he is to today, but we need to get to the present. To tie a bow on this bit of history, you should know that today PewDiePie has 111 million subscribers and MrBeast has 145 million subscribers. He surpassed PewDiePie in November 2022 and has left him in the dust, which makes sense given that PewDiePie is effectively semi-retired. MrBeast is the king of YouTube now, and he won’t be slowing down anytime soon.

MrBeast is an opportunist. He knows how to grow an audience better than anyone on the planet, and he lives for it. It drives his every thought. He sleeps in his studio. He works more hours than any normal person. He spends tens of thousands of dollars on YouTube thumbnails. And he’s reaped the reward for his work, to be sure. 

But YouTube and audience growth drive every aspect of his life. That is important to remember, and it’s the lens through which you really have to view virtually everything he does.

The Greatest Showman

If you’ve ever seen The Greatest Showman you know that at the core of the movie is a battle in the heart of P. T. Barnum. He hires “freaks” and all kinds of outcasts who are rejected by society to come be performers in his show. They appreciate the attention at first and revel in the fame, but soon they begin to feel a bit like they’re being taken advantage of and are simply props in Barnum’s freak show. He gave them a family when they had been rejected by their own, but they quickly realized that maybe they were just being used for Barnum’s own gain, and they hate him for it. Sure, Barnum helped them out when no one else would, but were his motives pure? 

Even since I began the first draft of this piece a number of weeks ago and set it aside to work on some other projects, a handful of controversies have boiled up around MrBeast, which sort of comes with the territory when you’re one of the most influential people on the planet.

But perhaps the most notable controversy in the last few months came when he posted a video called “1,000 Blind People See For The First Time.” The video was posted on January 28, 2023 and has accrued over 133 million views at the time of this writing, which means that he likely has made, at the very least, about $1.5 million from that video alone.⁵

In the eight minute video, MrBeast does exactly what his title suggests: he documents how he paid for 1,000 people who are legally blind have a cataract surgery so that they could truly see for the first time. It’s not, like, clickbait or something.

This sort of thing isn’t uncommon for MrBeast. It’s fair to say that a significant portion of his most popular videos are what I would call “performative philanthropy,” in which he documents himself giving away tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars to people for playing games, enduring Fear Factor-like experiences, or participating in crazy stunts. He’s part Publishers Clearing House and part Bob Barker.⁶

Back in 2017 when he didn’t even have two million subscribers yet, MrBeast posted a video called “Giving My Mom $100,000 (Proudest Day of My Life)”, in which he goes to his mom’s house and presents her with a $100,000 check. It’s heartwarming. Well, until his mom tries to reject the money and this happens:

MrBeast: Well if I don’t give it to you, I don’t have a viral video.

Mom: So you’re using me for views?

MrBeast: Yeah, but you get money, too, so we’re both happy.

Mom: So you use me for views, and I get to pay off my mortgage? 

MrBeast: Mhm. I think it works out pretty well.

Mom: What an entrepreneur! Hahaha.

A significant portion of that $100,000 came from a sponsor. Likewise, the video has over 30 million views. If we assume a very conservative $10 of ad revenue per 1,000 views, he likely made at least $300,000 on ad revenue alone from that video. He profited over $300,000 by paying his mom a third of that. How generous is that, really? It sounds more like an employee/employer relationship than it does generosity.

His mom obviously gets a kick out of it. She knows he loves her regardless of how he may be using her for views. And I mean, hey, she paid off her mortgage with it! You may think, “If she’s cool with it, it’s fine!” But is it?

Are we okay with someone whose primary motivation for his philanthropy is personal gain? What do we do with that as Christians, or even just consumers of online content? 

I am not “anti-MrBeast”, and you shouldn’t read me as saying that here. I think his videos are super creative, and I admire how good he is at what he does. His Squid Game video is one of the best YouTube videos I’ve ever seen. I don’t think MrBeast is a terrible person or a menace to society or anything like that.⁷ I am less concerned with MrBeast as a person and entertainer as I am with how much we herald him as a “philanthropist.”

I am super uncomfortable by how okay we have become with farming people’s plight for content as long as “everybody wins.” I think this is a symptom of being so enamored with entertainment that we’ve come to a point where, “As long as the entertainment isn’t hurting anybody, it must be fine.” I think we need to reckon with how vulnerable-people-as-viral-video-props jives with our understanding of the image of God and biblical human dignity.

At least one Christian conservative commentator preferred to blame the outrage around MrBeast on the “socialist left,” which is an unfortunate oversimplification and politicization of the deeper issues at hand. Such a claim does, however, make for a really good headline in an attention economy built on polarization and divisive political rhetoric.

Of course it’s good that the people in MrBeast’s blind people video can see now when they couldn’t before. This is good! But it isn’t wrong or “socialist” to bemoan the fact that they had to be the fortunate benefactor of a rich YouTuber’s spontaneous, performative philanthropy to access such medical services in the first place. Not great, Bob!

Imagine a world in which poor, blind people didn’t need to rely on being props in a viral video to be able to see again. What a world that would be!

And this whole situation highlights just how ridiculous it is that some people’s best hope for medical care is to be invited to participate in a modern P. T. Barnum “freak show.” What does this mean for our understanding of the image of God? For human dignity?

But I digress.

As Christians, when we are wondering about this kind of thing, we should consider what Scripture says about being generous. To be sure, Proverbs 14:21 tells us that “blessed is he who is generous to the poor.” Indeed, this is true. But let’s not forget Matthew 6:2, which says, “Thus, when you give to the needy, sound no trumpet before you, as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and in the streets, that they may be praised by others. Truly, I say to you, they have received their reward.” An important consideration in this circumstance!

Being generous is good, but how we are generous matters. And while I understand that MrBeast doesn’t likely care much about Christian generosity, we do as viewers of his content, or at least we should. And generosity that is accompanied by trumpets ought to give us pause.

Again I want to say that I don’t think MrBeast is a evil supervillain here. We have seen far more objectionable YouTubers go viral for far worse activities (see: Jake Paul).

I think MrBeast is simply a product and promoter of the morally suspect creator economy and those of us who say, “This is fine,” have been enchanted by the same. 

We who are Christians should have higher standards for generosity. It should make us uncomfortable to see people be used as props in philanthropic theater.

We should be wise enough to notice a modern P. T. Barnum when we see one, and maybe think twice about punching our ticket for the show, even if the profits seem to be going to a good cause.

1. This conversation has been further complicated because of some new developments around one of MrBeast’s long-time collaborators. But I don’t cover that here because it isn’t really pertinent to the purpose of this piece, which is to examine MrBeast’s content strategy.

2. It was still quite vulgar and distasteful, to be sure, but he wasn’t making Nazi jokes and flirting with some extremist tropes like he had been for years.

3. This was in the wake of the YouTube adpocalypse of 2017 triggered by PewDiePie, which you can read about here.

4. For more on The Great Subscriber War, I encourage you to read the KnowYourMeme article on it.

5. All of the earnings estimates for MrBeast assume a $5-10 CPM which is very conservative, so the dollar estimates I make are likely quite low.

6. I’ve read/heard MrBeast explain before that very early on he was offered something like $5,000 to read an ad script in a video, but instead he asked for $10,000 with the agreement that he would give it all away in the video, resulting in more views, benefitting him and the advertiser. This is sort of how it all started. He talks about some of it here.

7. Compare and contrast MrBeast with the Paul brothers, and I’ll take MrBeast every day of the week—that is what I’m meaning here.