Read this article, win $500,000: How MrBeast sells the myth of modern wealth 

Since the early 2000s, a strange twist on the “survival” genre has emerged in entertainment. Previously, lead characters might have unintentionally been propelled into life-or-death circumstances, as in “The Lord of the Flies” or “Cast Away.” But in today’s media, situations of survival become competitions in which protagonists deliberately partake to win a handsome profit. Variants of this trend have appeared across film franchises (“The Hunger Games”), television (“Survivor” and “Squid Game”) and even video games (“Fortnite”). Yet no one has perfected the serialization of this sub-genre quite like MrBeast. 

James Stephen “Jimmy” Donaldson, best known as MrBeast, has amassed the world’s largest YouTube empire, boasting over 467 million subscribers. He originally attained virality by performing absurd acts such as counting to 100,000 (which took over 40 hours to record). Nine years later, MrBeast produces these stunts as a living, often at an unprecedented scale. 

Capitalizing on the popularity of the aforementioned dystopian “games,” MrBeast curates high-stakes situations where everyday people compete to win some crazy reward. On Amazon Prime, he currently hosts the second season of his “Beast Games,” where 200 contestants compete for $5,000,000. And on YouTube, his videos are no less absurd, holding such titles as “Stop This Train, Win a Lamborghini” or “Survive 100 Days in Nuclear Bunker, Win $500,000.” Though bizarre, MrBeast’s channel is the most watched in the world, averaging around 200 million views per video and begging the question: Why does this content resonate with today’s audience? 

For Generations Alpha and Z, MrBeast embodies the archetypal genie who grants wishes, or more nefariously, the devil who bargains your soul for riches. Contestants might win life-changing sums of money, but often at the cost of their own dignity. This is evident in one particular challenge, “Survive 100 Days Trapped In A Private Jet, Keep It,” in which a pilot is offered a private jet as long as he doesn’t leave its surface area for 100 days. Challenges like these exemplify three core themes found across MrBeast’s content:

1. Opulence. MrBeast decorates his videos with the spending habits of the top 0.1%. Many of his other videos are premised around comparing luxurious experiences to cheap ones, showing the viewer what a $1 flight, date or vacation would look like compared to its $500,000 counterpart. The private jet in the video at hand is a similar display of opulence, allowing the masses of his audience to virtually indulge in the pleasures of the elite and thus feel (imaginatively) part of it. These exaggerated symbols of the ultra-wealthy — private planes, Lamborghinis, briefcases full of cash — appear like recurrent characters in his videos, almost to the point of fetishization. 

2. Chance. The fact that MrBeast gifts a private plane to a complete stranger illuminates the sheer randomness on which MrBeast’s success depends. Many of his videos work like a makeshift lottery. In his shorter promotional clips, MrBeast will walk up to random passersby on the street and ask them if they subscribe to his channel. If they are subscribed, he may offer them cash or the chance to win an extreme prize. If they aren’t, then on to the next! This past week, MrBeast visited Stanford’s campus to stage one of these chance-driven stunts, where he gave away free Super Bowl tickets to a random student. This mechanism generates not only more subscribers (and therefore, revenue) for his channel, but also a sense of vicarious involvement in the viewer, who feels they may become actively involved at any waking moment. 

3. Dehumanization. MrBeast doesn’t give out private planes for nothing. He makes the contestant earn their keep. The cost? For the participating pilot, who has a wife and child, it is living in isolation, filth and delirium. There is something ironic about being isolated within a private jet — being trapped within a vehicle that ideally enables unlimited freedom of movement. There is also something extremely captivating about it, raising questions as to what extent the video’s 138 million viewers (or voyeurs?) participated in this revenue-generating sadism. 

At the end of the video, right as the contestant is about to receive keys to the jet, MrBeast offers the contestant half a million dollars to continue the challenge for another 100 days. The contestant’s wife tells him to deny the offer, saying, “I’ve been through enough!” One can only guess how MrBeast justifies inflicting this pain so easily: coming from nothing (he dropped out of community college to pursue YouTube full-time), he earned his living from a similarly dehumanizing masochism. 

Thus, the myth of MrBeast tells us something brutish about contemporary outlooks on labor. Work — even work which a person deeply cares for — is not at all desirable, at least not visually. Rather, wealth in its absolute iconicity is glorified above all, symbolized by wads of cash, private islands and luxury sports cars. Furthermore, it is not only wealth, but the near-instantaneous acquisition of wealth which draws the most attention. There is no investment needed — only a dire, survivalistic crunch time (à la “The Hunger Games”) in which one must combat degrading conditions to receive a prize. And in the end, is the prize even worth it for the man who forfeited 100 days with his daughter for a jet he may never afford to fly?

MrBeast’s popularity testifies to a valueless burnout society which scrambles for wealth even at the expense of one’s dignity. It naturalizes the absolute gamification of labor — one all too familiar within the realms of banking and consulting or a venture capital culture which produces contemporary genies like Y Combinator. Suddenly, compared to a 90-hour work week, MrBeast’s conditions start to seem somewhat amenable. And though the prestigious intern or co-founder may feel above his YouTube-watching compatriots, it doesn’t take much to see that, at the end of the day, they are perhaps guided by the same mythology.

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