During the spring semester of my senior year of high school, Covid-19 shut down everything and changed my life, and everyone else's, in a huge way. I went from having school and extracurricular activities everyday, to doing a few hours of schoolwork and then having the rest of the day free to do whatever I pleased. I spent a lot of that free time on Youtube, and I came across a youtuber called MrBeast. I binged MrBeasts videos during the Covid-19 shutdown, he became the first Youtuber that I followed and watched each new video, sometimes still watching when I see him pop up in my recommended. MrBeast, or Jimmy Donaldson, is a Youtuber with 111 million subscribers that is mostly known for giving away insane prizes to the ‘winners’ in his videos. He has done massive giveaways and crazy challenges like squid games, ‘last to leave the circle wins’, scavenger hunts, hide and seek and much more. The prizes he has given away range from money, to cars, to houses, to a private jet, and even a private island. Beyond these challenge videos, he has done numerous charitable causes and donations, such as raising money to clean the seas, and planting trees for every subscriber he gained in a certain time period.
Crystal Abidin describes an influencer as any user of the internet with a large following on social media, using advertorials for monetization. I think that MrBeast falls into this category. He uses various forms of social media platforms, all with a massive following, and gets paid very well for advertising a variety of things. Oftentimes there will be a 30 second to a minute piece of each MrBeast video that is solely dedicated to mentioning some sort of company or product that is ‘sponsoring’ the video. Going deeper into Abidins definitions and ideas, I think MrBeast does a fantastic job with the concept of intimacy and perceived interconnectedness. Particularly, with intimacy, which is how familiar, close, or attached followers feel to an influencer. MrBeast capitalizes on this by making it known that each person that gets picked to be in his videos is one of his subscribers, so if you’re subscribed you’ll always have a chance to be in his videos and meet him. Along with that, he does a lot of meetups and is seen out in public often by his fans. He has always been known as a great guy with fans, whether it's taking pictures or signing autographs, all of this adds up and gives fans the sense that they know him, that he is a nice person, and that they are somehow close to him, even though he has no idea who they are. With perceived interconnectedness, MrBeast sometimes does vlog videos of his days along with his competitions, or he posts daily on Snapchat to keep fans updated on his life. All of this makes it seem personal with the fans and lets people think that they are truly a part of his world (Abidin, 2018).
If I had to label MrBeasts videos with a theme I would put them under the action and adventure category. There is always something crazy going on, in some insane location, with a lot of competition taking place for the prizes at stake. There is also a lot of possible drama in his videos with contestants fighting over the prizes and MrBeast adding in twists and turns that make the videos that much more entertaining. This form of entertainment keeps a wide variety of people continually coming back for more. Mr. Beast's audience demographic is vast, almost anyone with Youtube has probably heard of him, or at some point at least seen his videos in their recommended. But, his target audience is most likely both males and females, ages 10-21. This is a wide range of people, but MrBeast is so largely popular that he can afford to try to reach everyone in this demographic, and he has proven to do it successfully with over 18.5 billion total views on his main channel.
Two things that we discussed in class that MrBeast does well is the idea of proper representation and understanding the power he has with his camera. Every video MrBeast puts out contains a variety of people, from gender, to race, to sexuality, to disability, everyone is represented in one way or another on MrBeasts channel. We talked about the importance of proper representation with Stuart Hall and how it is just fair to give every person, no matter their situation, the equal chance to be shown in the media. MrBeast also often gives even more of a chance to people in lesser positions to be shown in his videos and be able to win money. Often the contestants in his videos are subscribers that he knows are struggling and could use the money, and in that regard, of representation, MrBeast is largely inclusive (Hall, 1997). The other thing I think is important to mention is the idea brought up by Teju Cole, when he discusses the power of the camera and photography. Now, MrBeast is never doing anything very serious in the video he puts out, but I believe that he has a great grasp on the power that he has with his camera and the videos he makes. Always promoting positivity and the idea of being generous or overall just nice to everyone. He could easily use his platform in the wrong way and put out the wrong message, but he understands the reach he has and the amount of people he can affect. Cole talks of how cameras are associated with violence and that pictures are “for the greater good” but I think MrBeast actually does produce things for the greater good and has positively impacted very many people (Cole, 2019). I believe he does an excellent job on taking responsibility for that and doing the right thing with what he films/promotes.
One video I want to highlight in particular is the video titled “$456,000 Squid Game In Real Life” (Donaldson, 2021). Which is a remake, or a sort of copy of the popular Netflix show, Squid Games, where 456 contestants are put into a bunch of challenges and the last one standing wins all of the money. MrBeasts version was not quite as gruesome as the Netflix series, but it used all of the same ideas and challenges. MrBeast got together 456 contestants and made them go through a series of obstacles, eliminating people during each one, the last person left won the grand prize. This video shows the lengths MrBeast is willing to go, not only with all of the money spent on the props, challenges, sets and everything else, but the prize money too. This video was styled to show the great competition between the people that all wanted the huge grand prize, it was very entertaining and had nearly 300 million viewers captivated for the 25 minute video. This type of content is the perfect representation of MrBeast, taking something that people have heard of, but putting his own big twist on it and making it something immensely special and entertaining for hundreds of millions of people to watch. I don’t know if there is any real message behind the videos MrBeast produces besides just the idea of him being very generous with the money he makes from the videos. His main message that he has conveyed on his channel is that he doesn’t need all the money he is making, so why not give it to someone that isn’t as fortunate as him. The fact that he does that, while also making it fun for everyone else to watch, is what makes him so special and one of, if not the best and most popular Youtuber ever.
Works Cited
Abidin, C. (2018, February 28). Communicative ❤ intimacies: Influencers and perceived interconnectedness. Ada New Media. Retrieved November 14, 2022, from https://adanewmedia.org/2015/11/issue8-abidin/
Cole, T. (2019). When the camera was a weapon of imperialism – and when it still is.
Donaldson, J. (2021, November, 24). $456,000 Squid Game In Real Life! YouTube. Retrieved November 14, 2022, from https://www.youtube.com/?watch=
Hall, S. (1997). Representation: Cultural representations and signifying practices. Newbery Park, CA: Sage, pp. 225-249
Dear Daniel Heintz,
ReplyDeleteI personally thought that the individual that you chose to write your blog post on was a great choice and you did an amazing job in relating concepts we learned in class to this individual.
As someone who is not the most familiar with Mr. Beast and his Youtube channel, I found your background information on him and his videos to be very informative.
After reading your blog post, I started to think about Adorno and Horkheimer’s “Dialectic of Enlightenment” and how their definition of standardization relates to the overall theme that is present throughout Mr. Beast’s YouTube videos. Adorno and Horkheimer provide us with their definition of standardization by informing us that, “Under monopoly all mass culture is identical, and the lines of its artificial framework begin to show through” (Adorno, T. & Horkheimer, M., 1944, p. 1). Essentially, they define standardization as creations that are just an alternative form of the same artifact in popular culture (Adorno, T. & Horkheimer, M., 1944, p. 1). I would make the argument that Mr. Beast and his content directly fall under this definition of standardization.
As you mentioned, a vast majority of the videos on Mr. Beast’s YouTube channel that have contributed to his fame consist of very similar challenge and giveaway videos, all with absurd prizes ranging from money, to cars, and all the way to a private island. Mr. Beast, as a content creator, might believe that since he is posting different videos of different challenges, giveaways, and prizes, he is providing his audience with different content. However, this is a prime example of Adorno & Horkheimer’s definition of standardization. Mr. Beast is essentially posting content that are variations of the same underlying theme of philanthropy which in this case is him posting videos of crazy challenges and massive giveaways with absurd prizes on Youtube.
From,
Michel Jung