I never understand why people love Mr Beast content. I never enjoyed it.
Kids.
It’s reality TV for kids.
Everyone can blab about this for ages but you’ve put it so poetically and succinctly.
Kid got rich by streaming and shitposting. Ultimate hero for 14 year olds.
They always are. How else are you going to have no worries to be able to waste time pursuing things like art or music or completely useless videos of you playing a video game while you shitpost?
Not all of them are like that, actually most that I follow dropped out of school on a limb with really only having being able to crash with their middle class parents as a fallback plan.
IIRC Markiplier’s from a military family, not impoverished by any stretch but definitely not from money either before he made it with his content.
I peg him at upper middle, but that would be family wealth, not his. My kids watched him when he was really taking off, and he was just figuring out the content math. He started fairly small, spending a few hundred to buy people groceries, to in a few years was loading up a car lot and selling the vehicles for under $10. As his income got more ridiculous his stunts got more ridiculous.
There seems to be a wave of posts going after him lately, and I feel he’s flawed, but I don’t think his original intent was to do harm. He always gave the impression of someone who wanted to do good in the world while chasing fame, and I feel he succeeded more than many who go in with good intentions. I won’t be accepting the complimentary torch and pitchfork with all these posts, but they do raise some points where he should admit fault and clean up his act. The guy tried to get people to plant a billion trees and put a lot of time and money into it - I’ll grade him on a curve.
A) flashy, loud, snippy content that works on people with no attention span or who are easily amused like kids (and annoys everyone else)
And B) clickbait-type, over-the-top content and games that no one else does - the sorts of things that, even if not high-brow, are still interesting. For example, blowing up a Lambrogini appealing to the action-movie lizard-brain, or a giant game of hide and seek appealing to the sort of person who daydreams about how to survive a zombie apocalypse.
Basically, its the peak of broad-appeal, low-brow, high effort/production value media.
The way his content is structured and edited is like junk food for your brain. There’s a formula that appeals to the least lowest common denominator and he (his team) excels at it.
The topics he picks usually hit some nerve of vicariousness (game shows contestants) or suspense from wanting to know what happens next (challenges and clickbait).
Not really. You might think that from looking at thumbnails, because thumbnails all have to basically look like clickbait for people to actually engage with your videos. But there’s tons of good YouTube content out there.
It’s the only platform I still regularly engage with minus this, being lemmy, tildes, and watchpeopledie.tv/h/slavshit because I get a lot of interesting stuff to watch and people still come on there on their own to express themselves about stuff I care about. But yeah, the fact that YouTube weathered the onslaught of russian bots and kept all my UA supporting channels up earned my respect. Which it’s a great way to keep up if you’re not on Telegram, or are just depressed by the shit, I think it’s a damn good platform. Best thing google has imo.
But to each their own. I’m not like the vast majority of people.
Edit: I’ve been suspicious of Mr. Beast for many years. The deadness behind the eyes clued me into him actually. No one that successful with that kinda look is squeaky clean. That’s been the only thing besides the obvious this person is wealthy, probably not amazing, that’s made me dislike his stuff. Also the clickbaity nature of his content.
