MrBeast Brags About the Human Lives He Has Suspended in Bizarre "Simulations"

To make great content requires great sacrifice. It just doesn't have to be your sacrifice.

At least, that's the essence of Jimmy "MrBeast" Donaldson's success as a YouTube creator. In just 13 short years, the now-26 year old content creator has amassed a virtual empire by filming brash "Squid Game"-style videos and poppy viral stunts, which he trades to platforms like YouTube and TikTok in exchange for huge sums of ad revenue, sponsorships, and merchandise sales.

Donaldson's videos are an acquired taste. Primarily marketed toward children and young teens, the MrBeast brand thrives off costly productions that put everyday people through the Stanford Prison Experiment-esque challenges in exchange for huge gobs of cash. Examples include "Ages 1-100 Fights For $500,000," where 100 people of different ages compete in tiny cubes to be the last man standing, and "I Helped 2,000 People Walk Again," where Donaldson pays the prosthetic fittings of 2,000 people who couldn't otherwise afford them.

It's these life-changing outcomes that make the content so popular — and that allow Donaldson to play the benevolent millionaire philanthropist.

Take Donaldson's recent post on X-formerly-Twitter as case-in-point: "I have a pilot living in a $2,500,000 private jet and if he doesn’t leave for 100 days he keeps it, a cop/criminal in a jail and if they don’t leave for 100 days they win $500,000, and someone living in a gym until he loses 100 pounds for $500,000."

"Can’t wait to upload these," he concludes.

Like rats in a maze, these folks — largely plucked from Donaldson's audience — are the lifeblood of MrBeast. Though Donaldson and his defenders love to point out that MrBeast's Running Men "can leave whenever," that's sort of beside the point; anyone putting themselves in that desperate situation clearly needs the money, making them easy to manipulate.

As critic Nathan J. Robinson wrote in Current Affairs, the problem with MrBeast is best understood by looking beyond Donaldson himself. "It’s clear that part of the reason people are willing to undergo whatever challenges MrBeast sets is that money has the power to completely change people’s lives," Robinson pined.

"In a world where everybody was doing fine economically," the critic continues, "maybe there wouldn’t be anything objectionable about offering people a reward to participate in some televised challenge, but in this world, where nearly half of Americans can’t afford a $400 emergency expense, a lot of people are going to be grasping for MrBeast’s largesse because they need it."

If there's one thing Donaldson's learned in his years of content creation, it's that charity pays. Thanks to the industrial scale of his dopamine-pumping almsgiving, the YouTuber has amassed an estimated fortune of $500 million. That's money for more brand deals, more merchandizing, and more extreme stunts.

As the saying goes: the road to hell is paved with good intentions.

More on MrBeast: MrBeast Says His Life Is Full of Sorrow Due to All the Boss Things That Occupy His Schedule

The post MrBeast Brags About the Human Lives He Has Suspended in Bizarre "Simulations" appeared first on Futurism.