Abstract

YouTube is a multifaced platform that serves as a shared space for education, news broadcasting and mainly known for entertainment. It has shaped the way share, collaborate and participate in the online space. YouTube fosters an online space whereby creators can express their opinions and identity to evoke emotions and reflections towards their viewers. Creating an online community for social expression of creative freedom and online advocacy for topics of their desires. This conference paper argues that MrBeast’s dystopian-themed YouTube content fosters affective publics by mobilizing online communities through emotional engagement and participatory virality. MrBeast’s extreme videos challenge dominant socio-economic narratives and illuminate underrepresented experiences of inequality, positioning entertainment as a subtle yet powerful form of networked social framework.

Jimmy Donaldson, widely known as the infamous MrBeast, has emerged as YouTube’s most prominent and popular content creator, commanding an audience of over 382 million subscribers worldwide (Gerken, 2024). He began his successful YouTube career in 2006 and has quickly risen to become the online personality that he is today, with his trendy and intense challenge videos. His most well-known content feature dystopian and social reflective themes such as “I Hunted 100 People for $1,000,000”, “Last to Leave Circle Wins $500,000”, “I Survived 50 Hours in a Maximum-Security Prison” and his latest series and collaboration with Netflix, “Beast Games.” There are dystopian themes of confinement, surveillance, lack of freedom and high-stakes competition through extreme measures to entertain viewers which often resonate with fictional movies as the Hunger Games and Squid Games. On the surface it may seem like MrBeast is simply bringing one’s fantasies to life for non-harmful amusement and leisure but it reflects society’s current and future socio-economic challenges, injustice and inequality. In a society where monetary wealth underpins both individual survival and social mobility, financial incentives become powerful motivators. MrBeast’s content frequently capitalizes on this reality, with video titles that foreground substantial cash rewards, offers that participants often perceive as once-in-a-lifetime opportunities to transform their otherwise routine or precarious lives. With every grand reward, there always comes great risk. MrBeast’s content exposes humankind’s hunger and despair for money, forcing capitalism to absurd lengths. This concept reinforces and challenges realistic economic inequality across the world. MrBeast’s videos are both entertaining and disturbing to not only watch but also invoke reactions, comments, shares and debates to prompt the audience to reflect. This plays a key factor in affective publics around their audience’s and creators’ already formulated viewpoints around emotional spectacle, as MrBeast always creates the illusion of his channel centered around charity and helping others. He presents the positive façade of philanthropy to his subscribers such as charitable acts of well-building in Africa, solving world pain by paying for eye and hearing loss surgery etc (Gerken, 2024). Yet the majority of his YouTube channel content is drowning in inhuman competitions that highlight systemic inequality to induce emotional reactions and online engagement creating an effective public. I believe that there is a sense of comfort provided to individuals as they hide behind a screen watching. Despite, the amplifying hidden realities through hypervisibility presented through global platforms such as YouTube, there is not deep enough reflection on deeper meaning behind comical content. Most humans are quite inert and inactive with understanding the message behind the entertainment due to fear and anxiety. However, due to the nature of anonymous online identity it does generate freedom of expression to form a discursive community and circulate emotional truth about opportunity and working class for affective publics (Papacharissi, 2010).

The YouTube algorithm highly favours viewer engagement through views, comments and likes and those are the factors that affect what is most shown to worldwide viewers (Oladipo, 2024). This platform like many others amplifies and focuses on content that produces emotional reactions supporting both MrBeast and affective publics alike. The emotional reaction creates a sense of online community between various individuals to feel like they are a part of something bigger and get taken on an emotional roll coaster such as feeling joy, jealousy and shock. These strongly charged viewpoints are the ones that gain online traction to produce online advocacy in a non-traditional method. Within MrBeast’s challenge videos there are over hundreds of contestants that battle it out for these large winnings, featuring many upcoming influencers alongside many more ordinary people who live normal lives. YouTube is utilized as a platform that enable grassroots visibility, and high accessibility for all where anyone can upload their content and allows for visual storytelling about the narrative that they want to depict and express their identity to viewers. This platform fosters connective action, the viewers are emotionally invested and expressing their opinions which are important in shaping discourse. The viewpoint positioning affects as a pre-conscious to the audience, there is a space between personal experience and collective action between affective publics (Wang, 2017). MrBeast’s content perfectly showcases this as he introduces and interviews random contestants before, during and post challenges about their identity, their ideal goal and outcome and updates about their resolves throughout the dystopian challenges of risk and reward. The affective charge and tension of competition creates high emotional rapport and relatability to viewers that would also put their body and mind on the line, making his videos more visible to millions globally. This shines on individuals who would not usually be given the opportunity to have spotlight on such a large scale and giving them identity. These normal, working-class contestants are able to use their authentic voices and express their real life struggles to give others like them hope and creates feelings of aspiration. MrBeast’s purpose for this is to spark conversations about topics of change in poverty and inequality. His large range of participants are representation of differing, broader identities all within the same controlled game environment to emulate an even playing field, everyone is stripped away of their economic differences and dis/advantages.   

The high online engagement of likes, comment and shares from the large sums of unexpected generosity and paired with contestants’ visible display of relief and distress, result in the rapid online circulation and success of MrBeast’s videos. The complexity of these interactions resists normal empirical measurement, they do not follow a clear political agenda or causal sequence, but displayed in fragments (Wang, 2017). These fragmentations are networks online encounters with premediated planned content by the creators. This is key to understand online advocacy as online visibility is not equally disturbed, online platforms and apps are the ones who enable viewers to capture the narrative. Hence, why unique and loud voices are the ones who are able to be in favour of networked visibility and break through online algorithms.

The lightheartedness around trendy, popular and funny YouTube videos is the foundation of real cultural power for shaping new social norms and facilitates online networked, affective communities that function away from traditional public spaces. Instead of the serious and lengthy paper news articles about economic decline and wealth inequality, MrBeast presents the topic of anxiety around capitalism and future economic insecurity that today’s youth face. MrBeast’s media split identity of generosity and chaos, along with his dystopian themed videos of survival of the fittest gamify humanity and humankinds struggles. MrBeast does not explicitly advocate for any political or social debates, however his YouTube content draws attention to systemic inequality as the preplanned activities exaggerate and highlight the lengths people go for to achieve financial security. A non-traditional method of online advocacy about issues of poverty, healthcare and housing which are directly felt by the audience and validates the critique of capitalism reinforcing realistic desperation for wealth and survival. Forcing viewers to reflect about is this how the world will end or is the end closer than we imagined.

There are counterarguments present that are valid and plausible in many aspects. MrBeast’s YouTube videos generate approximately 30 million dollars annually (Brown, 2025). There are arguments about how MrBeast monetizes and capitalizes on the participant’s real-life struggles to create his viral content, exploiting their vulnerability and the viewers emotional connection for higher engagement. A true advocate for social change of wealth inequality and injustices, would show visible signs and labels of demands for policy reform and direct mentions of those topics. The overwhelming generous act he presents to viewers is faced with a lot of social media backlash as contestants from his YouTube videos challenges have broken their silence about the mistreatment, misinformation and insights about his production and working staff. Despite MrBeast’s branding of his content as charitable and transformative, behind the scenes multiple contestants have allegedly been denied access to basic necessities, including food, rest and medical care, with some collapsing or even requiring hospitalization (Kircher, 2024). During physically strenuous challenges, participants were forced to surrender personal items such as phones, medications and all essential belongings, raising further questions about consent and well-being. Kircher (2015) reports that in one instance, contestants reportedly endured more than 20 hours without adequate nourishment, both during the competition and while being held in Las Vegas before and after filming. These alleged accounts highlight the philanthropic image MrBeast promotes the potential physical and psychological toll of content designed primarily for mass consumption and commodification human vulnerability.

Furthermore, the lack of accountability makes it clear that entertainment and amusement triumphs all matters to him. Within his content, there contains a mix of individual and team challenges, which inherently results in blame and sacrifice, it visually insinuates individual salvation through luck and merit of being the chosen one at the end as there can only be one winner. Inhumane conditions while putting humanity against each other for their own selfish needs and wants. While MrBeast’s videos do form affective public and have the common denominator of enjoying his content, they are mainly passive and reactive, which do not directly lead to active change and coordinated action because of the lack of infrastructure on YouTube. There is no intention to promote wealth inequality and injustices, raising questions about social media and highlighting the broad gap between visibility and transformative change.

MrBeast’s content exemplifies the powerful role how social media platforms such as YouTube can play in shaping identity, forming affective publics and create non-traditional forms of advocacy through emotional driven reactions. His dystopian-themed challenge videos reflect the social and economic anxieties that real people face daily, further amplifying the experiences of ordinary, working-class individuals and presenting them to a global audience for reliability. By staging these high-stakes competitions motivated by extreme incentives, MrBeast exaggerates the desperation that defines realistic inequalities, creating viral content that mobilizes affective publics and provokes widespread online emotional engagement. While his channel fosters visibility and temporary empowerment for participants and viewers alike, it also highlights critical ethical concerns about the commodification of human struggle and the superficial front of digital philanthropy. Although MrBeast positions his content as charity focused and transformative, the lack of sustained advocacy and calls for systemic changes is evident. This lack of accountability showcases the limitations of entertainment-driven social engagement and the nature of online “clout”. His videos are an open-invitation for viewers to feel, but not necessarily to be actively react, raising awareness about the gap between emotional resonance and meaningful, long-term change. Ultimately, MrBeast’s YouTube channel illustrates both the promise and the paradox of digital media in the age of affective publics. He is a prime example of a compelling case study of how visibility and identity can evoke online advocacy and strike conversations about inequality. This case study is need of deeper insight on the role of social media platforms in sustaining and challenging the narratives that shape public understanding of wealth, justice and collective action in a networked society.

References

Brown, L. (2025, March 5). How Much Money Does Mr. Beast Make (2025 Updated). Filmora. https://filmora.wondershare.com/youtube/how-much-money-does-mrbeast-make.html

Gerken, T. (2024, September 12). MrBeast is YouTube’s biggest star – now he faces 54-page lawsuit. BBC. https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/ckgn8d04kdko

Kircher, M. M. (2024, August 2). Willing to Die for MrBeast (and $5 Million). The New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/2024/08/02/style/mrbeast-beast-games-competition-show.html

Oladipo, T. (2024, January 12). A 2025 Guide to the YouTube Algorithm: Everything You Need to Know to Boost Your Content. Buffer.  https://buffer.com/resources/youtube-algorithm/

Papacharissi, Z. (2010). A Networked Self: Identity, Community, and Culture on Social Network Sites. Taylor & Francis Group, 1-337. https://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/curtin/reader.action?docID=574608&ppg=6

Wang, Y. (2017). Book Review: Affective Publics: Sentiment, Technology, and Politics by Zizi Papacharissi. Journalism and Mass Communication Quarterly, 94(2), 620-621. DOI:10.1177/1077699017699390