Web culture | Mr Beast, the philanthropist who charms your children

Almost every child over the age of 7 or 8 knows Mr Beast, the most popular youtuber in the world. The generosity of the character exerts an undeniable attraction on Paul, 10 years old: “He is funny, spends a lot of money and distributes iPhones in the street. Nassim, 6 years old: “He is rich and gives cars to people. Such extravagant prodigality has the advantage of leaving a strong impression on our little ones, even though we are going through a crisis in the cost of living. Who is really hiding behind this new tutelary figure and what does she teach Quebec youth?

Daphne B.

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The most popular youtuber in the world

Jimmy Donaldson, aka Mr Beast, uploaded his first video aged 13. The now 25-year-old American has amassed over 165 million subscribers on his main YouTube channel. Unlike other internet celebrities who profit from showcasing an opulent lifestyle, Donaldson embodies a certain simplicity. He evokes the good guy without history, the kind to laugh with his friends around a pizza and a video game console. Its wealth is more often explained by donations than by ostentatious purchases.

The youtuber has also made his spectacular acts of charity his trademark.

Some of his largesse seems random, like this private island given to his 100,000,000^e subscriber, while others, more structured, are organized around Squid Game-like competitions. A father, for example, tried to survive 100 days in a red circle drawn in the middle of nowhere for a nest egg of US$500,000.

Donaldson himself takes on challenges regularly and posts a summary of his accomplishments on his homepage, such as donating over 100 PlayStation consoles, donating millions to charities and reading the dictionary in entire.

A show philanthropy

We can rejoice that a celebrity with such an inoffensive modus operandi becomes the darling of young people. After all, Mr Beast’s videos never veer into violence, vulgarity or hate. The YouTuber only shares his assets by distributing goods or wads of greenbacks, thus expressing a rather uninhibited relationship with money. When he’s not offering his pizza delivery guy a house, he leaves his waitress a tip in gold bullion. The love we have for him can also pay off, since Donaldson regularly distributes gifts to his subscribers.

Subscribing to Mr Beast, therefore, is a bit like playing the lottery, even at 10 years old. It stimulates a form of cruel optimism: one begins to dream of one day being chosen by one’s generosity.

At the heart of this philanthropy of the spectacle, it is the emotional reactions of its recipients that we consume. Because despite the casualness of Mr Beast in the face of money, if his videos make “a good show is partly because they are based on the inequalities that structure our world. Receiving a wad of cash can bring us to tears precisely because the need for money, or even the lack thereof, shapes our lives. From these brutal economic reports spring Donaldson’s finest videographic moments, such as this heartbreaking scene where two women play rock-paper-scissors while crying their hearts out, taking turns apologizing for the money they may be making. be lose to another.

Of course, Mr Beast never addresses the structural inequalities that make such spectacles possible, not even when he restores sight to 1,000 people and the accompanying surgeon tells him that half of the world’s blind people could sight with a simple 10-minute surgery. Access to health care is not the subject of his video, rather his munificence and the euphoria of those who benefit from it.

A well calibrated recipe

Mr Beast’s success is also due to his expertise: he spent his adolescence studying YouTube in order to be able to identify the principles of a winning video. Result ? The content he produces is perfectly in tune with the platform and its attention economy: his thumbnails are effective, his editing paced and his videos filled with suspense are professionally dubbed into 14 languages, including French, Arabic, Spanish, Hindi and Russian. As Max Read points out in the New York Times : “ [Puisque] on YouTube, audience size is directly related to revenue, Donaldson advertises subscribing to his channel as an act of charity. One of the youtuber’s strokes of genius therefore consists in convincing his fans that they actively participate in his philanthropic enterprise, because the money generated by his views would be reinvested in the production of other videos.

A hero, really?

By ignoring the inequalities that arise from the economic system that contributes to his wealth, Mr Beast teaches us above all to enter into a relationship with the world through money. Kindness would be a matter of cash. Similarly, being cool and kind would depend on one’s ability to give or spend large sums. Money also dictates its relationship to the environment, which is bought more than it is protected.

While in a video, Donaldson plants 20 million trees, he also crisscrosses the air in a private jet and goes to “chill” in Antarctica with his friends, transforming the snow continent into a playground for the occasion, although it is a fragile ecosystem where tourism is discouraged.

Should we stop watching his videos? Not necessarily. They could be the starting point for a family discussion about money and inequality. By contextualizing the philanthropy of the youtubeur, we are forced to reflect on what causes poverty and on our ways of fighting against it.