MrBeast Is One Of The Most Popular YouTubers Ever — But Does He Actually Know How to Make a Compelling Show?

By Jesse Hassenger Twitter @rockmarooned
Published Feb. 27, 2024, 9:45 a.m. ET

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As someone born right on the dividing line between Generation X and the advent of the millennials, I’ve often seen generational distinctions drawn largely by the internet – that is, did you grow up with it to some degree? If you did, you lean millennial. If not so much, you’re Gen-X. (No need to get into who was dialing into which BBSes at how too-young an age.) I’ve wondered if maybe another digital-media qualification can apply to the millennial/Gen-Z divide: Do you look at YouTube as television, or just a way to watch old clips of stuff you first saw on regular television? My daughter – the generation after Z; we’re still waiting on a better name than “Alpha” – flips through YouTube like I used to zap through cable channels, which is to say, for a little while before her parents tell her to stop. Whereas I go there mainly to watch cut-for-time SNL sketches and old Siskel & Ebert episodes.

So despite using YouTube since “Lazy Sunday” blew it up back in 2005, I’ve so far been able to avoid the most popular person on it: MrBeast, a relatively recent ascendant to the title. (Although in internet time, his few-years reign is practically a dynasty.) MrBeast, born James Donaldson, traffics in grabby, ambitiously scaled stunts, and is probably best known for adapting the challenges of the scripted Netflix series Squid Game into real-life game-show-style throwdowns. (Before, it should be noted, Netflix eventually did it themselves.)

This is a notable turn for YouTube, because as a medium it’s so often unmoored from typical film or television constraints. Video essays can last twice as long as the movies they’re analyzing. Podcast-style discussions can take place, and be archived, in real time. An episode on YouTube can mean anything from a minute-long snippet to a four-hour epic. But similar to how some streaming channels have gradually begun to more closely resemble the network and cable television they were supposed to replace, MrBeast’s most recent videos don’t necessarily push at those boundaries in either direction. Most of them run 15 to 30 minutes, utilizing that YouTube flexibility while more or less averaging out to… about 22 minutes, the length of a half-hour of traditional television, minus commercials. They’re also not necessarily tied to YouTube anymore; Elon Musk has been encouraging MrBeast to post directly to the social media platform still commonly known as Twitter, which is how I watched my first full installment of MrBeast throwing a bunch of money around.

As someone who’s been wary about letting his kid watch prominent YouTube personalities, lest they turn out to PewDiePie-style creeps, MrBeast’s insta-game-show was something of a relief. Though it’s admittedly strange that Donaldson seems so deeply inspired by a Netflix series whose themes he doesn’t seem to necessarily understand or care about, the premise is almost hilariously inclusive, hinting that his demographic aims are now all-encompassing: 100 people, one representing each age from, yes, 1 to 100, are placed in small, clear, living-space cubes, with the promise that whoever can live there the longest will win $500,000. (Giving away extravagant sums of money is sort of MrBeast’s thing, with an appeal to likability it’s almost satirical: Like me, and I might give you a bunch of money.) At first, players are simply testing their endurance. They’re given a bed, and food, and the ability to talk to their directly adjacent neighbors; no TV, no books, no writing or drawing materials, and, presumably, no phones.

I don’t actually know all of this for sure, because this entire premise and follow-through must be contained in a single 24-minute episode. Given the fleeting shots of people writing and drawing on their clear walls with deodorant and ChapStick, however, that seems to be the case. There is some immediate attrition; the youngest contestants wander out, and a few older ones decide it’s not worth the waiting around. Eventually, players are allowed to vote on whether they want there to be challenges, or continue waiting. The majority goes for the challenges every time, and so begin a series of games both whimsical (everyone plays Jenga!) and reality-show cruel (everyone repeatedly votes people out until 15 contestants are eliminated!).

MR BEAST 1 TO 100
Photo: X

Is this entertaining? Sort of. It’s undeniably hooky, yet the hook in the initial tweet – “they competed in mental/physical challenges for $500,000 to see which age is the best” – doesn’t have much relation to how the situation actually plays out. That is, there’s not much attention paid to how age does or doesn’t affect the contestants’ ability to participate (beyond the extremely young or extremely old), even when the results seem to be begging for that kind of editing-room trickery. At one point, there is conflict between the 54-year-old contestant and some others, stemming from “54” intentionally providing incorrect information to other players during an early challenge. Yet the 54-year-old isn’t voted out until much later, for reasons never explained or even asked. Similarly, there’s reference to all the seventysomethings forming a loyal bloc that’s never really further explored, and a grievance between a 10-year-old and a 14-year-old that I had trouble understanding.

Now, no one is expecting deep-dive sociology from a MrBeast challenge. But why select one contestant from every age if it’s barely going to be talked about? Why have a series of votes that eliminate specific contestants if we’re not allowed to get a sense of anyone’s personality and therefore have an opinion about who might be eliminated and why? The result of these unanswered questions is a 24-minute video that echoes the language of game shows and reality TV without ever feeling especially savvy about how to craft a compelling narrative.

Game shows aren’t precisely narrative programs, of course. Reality shows, however, often are, even if they have to bend the “truth” of what happens on-camera in order to get there. And Squid Game, the show that helped catapult MrBeast to next-level popularity, certainly is. The relationship between this video and Squid Game, or any broader idea or genre, seems entirely algorithmic – even when it’s divorced from YouTube. This idea is being carried out because it seems like something people would watch, not because the creators have any facility for creating even a flimsy pretense for it. Similarly, the video doesn’t trade out narrative for a focus on character or process, like some less melodrama-inclined, cozier game shows. There’s no sense of actual personalities at play, from the players or their host. The idea is that you like MrBeast, because he is giving away money and making these videos, so you want to see him do those things, so you watch this video and don’t really think about the rest.

And that’s presumably what plenty of his fans do. Yet there’s something peculiar about these videos starting to branch out of YouTube and stick themselves into a social-media feed. The 12-year-olds who might love MrBeast may not be on Twitter (at least, let’s hope not), and plenty of social media users may not spend that much time on YouTube compared to other entertainment options. Clearly the idea is to expand his reach in some way or another, and it may well hook enough people to work. (Does it even need to work? This man could retire tomorrow.) It may also eventually require studying more than algorithm maintenance. As an Old Millennial drawn into the MrBeast world for the first time, I didn’t feel as if I was seeing something written in a different media language, impossible for older eyes or ears to decipher. I felt as if I was seeing something written in a familiar language, badly.

Jesse Hassenger (@rockmarooned) is a writer living in Brooklyn. He’s a regular contributor to The A.V. Club, Polygon, and The Week, among others. He podcasts at www.sportsalcohol.com, too.