In Defense of Mr. Beast

The internet's biggest content creator is great, actually

People really don’t seem to like Jimmy Donaldson.

Donaldson, aka Mr. Beast, is probably the most famous content creator in the world. Unless you’ve been living under a rock, you’ll have seen his videos somehow. He specializes in two types of video - giant spectacles like burying himself alive for a week or building giant laser obstacle courses, and giving away huge amounts of money.

You might think that a rich influencer giving away money is fairly benign, harmless behavior. Some of that is given away in crazy stunts like “Live in a grocery store for 100 days”, but some is purely philanthropic, where Mr. Beast has paid for wells to be dug in Africa, built 100 homes for the homeless, paid for 1000 cataract surgeries, etc. Surely nobody could be mad at that?

Behold the face of Satan

According to the internet, you’d be wrong. Commentators call him exploitative, a white savior. They compare him to the Jigsaw killer from Saw and the anti-Christ. They say he deserves to be cancelled. Mr. Beast is demonic. Mr. Beast does tasteless, dangerous charity porn. Mr. Beast is NOT a good person. Mr. Beast’s charity efforts are grimly dystopian. His philanthropy is actually harmful, it’s manipulative, and worst of all, it upholds and - gasp! - manufactures capitalist mythologies! This paragraph could include hundreds of these complaints, but you get the idea. Mr. Beast is giving away tons of money, and this is a very, very bad thing from all directions.

Now, look. Jimmy Donaldson doesn’t need me to defend him. He has fame and successful businesses and giant piles of money to cry into at night if he gets sad. He’s not going to notice a small time Substack in the permanent sea of discourse that surrounds him.

But the rest of us should be more curious about why this criticism happens. Mr. Beast is a public force with more fame, power and influence than even the biggest Hollywood stars. It’s worth thinking critically about the work that he does, the way he influences our culture, and the criticism he receives. So despite this all being a bunch of hot air about a lowbrow YouTube channel, it’s worth stepping forward and saying that the detractors are wrong and MrBeast is good. Great, even.

Keep the Main Thing the Main Thing

Back when I was in school, I had a basketball coach named Mr. Hickman who was filled with old-timey wisdom and sayings. One that’s always stuck with me is that you should always ‘Keep the Main Thing the Main Thing’. He meant it as a warning - don’t get distracted. Don’t lose focus on your goal. Keep the main thing the main thing.

When people criticize Mr. Beast’s philanthropy, I have to wonder what their main thing is.

There are two things that we typically consider when thinking about charitable efforts. What is directly being done? And what are the second-order effects that might come from it? For good reasons, we most often focus on the direct results. When Mr. Beast helped 1000 deaf people hear, did it work? Can they now hear? Did thousands of amputees actually get prosthetic limbs? By this standard, there’s very little room to criticize Donaldson. He says he’s going to go do big things, and he consistently delivers results.

Instead, most criticism focuses on the second order effects. He’s doing it for the wrong reasons, he’s too self-promotional. It’s gross, it’s exploitative, it reinforces something called ‘philanthrocapitalism’. These are all very abstract, hand-wavy concerns. And at some point, I want to grab all these people and yell at them to Keep the Main Thing the Main Thing.

The videos feel exploitative! Ok, but can those blind people still see? Did their sight miraculously return to them? Yes it did.

This is white saviorism! Cool story, but did the communities in Africa with no safe drinking water get wells? Did those wells solve a problem that was making their children sick? Yes? Ok.

This upholds broken systems! Yes, but did the homes get built? Were homeless people given permanent housing at no cost to themselves? They were? Then what the fuck are you complaining about?

Critics spend so much time arguing themselves in circles about ‘exploitation’ or ‘capitalism’ or how weird Donaldson’s persona seems, and miss the main thing. Real people are being helped. Schools and wells and homes are being built. Surgeries are being performed, children are being educated. The world is a better place because of Donaldson’s actions. I want these critics to look an African child in the eye and tell them that it’s bad that they got clean drinking water, you see, because it’s upholding Western chauvinist philanthrocapitalist systems.

And yes, you can argue it would be better if this sort of thing was handled by governments. Donaldson has said so himself:

Helping people is good, and if you’re in the business of philanthropy helping people should be your main thing. All the abstract concerns in the world can’t cancel out a deaf girl hearing her parents for the first time.

The Secondary Impacts are Also Good

Fine, maybe you’re an insufferable online psycho and you insist on having the debate about secondary effects. Let’s have that debate, because the secondary effects are wildly positive as well.

The first thing we should note is that while Beast Philanthropy’s efforts are not maximally efficient, he actually does better than average from an effectiveness standpoint. The primary way he’s effective is that his projects are increasingly focused on giving money internationally, in the poorest countries in the world. Only 6% of American charity dollars go overseas, despite the fact that overseas charities are far more impactful. And Mr. Beast has even partnered with GiveDirectly, a well-researched charity famous for showing how impactful just giving poor people money directly can be.

So Mr. Beast isn’t just wasting his charity dollars on stupid stuff - he’s relatively effective. And the thing about effective charity is that the secondary effects are real, and they’re positive.

The secondary effects that matter have nothing to do with you, the viewer, getting a squick feeling from watching a YouTube video. The real secondary effects occur when you give a child a prosthetic limb, and it allows them to finish school. It’s when giving people money leads to them being healthier in the long run, more likely to get out of debt, start businesses, etc. It’s when you build a well, and the people in your village stop having diarrhea every week and don’t get so many parasites from bad water, so they can work more productively. These are investments that will pay off in those communities for years, decades to come. Positive effects can snowball from a new school, from a new house, from clean water. The power of those secondary effects swamps any ‘but exploitation’ concerns.

Publicity is Good

Maybe you’re still not convinced. You don’t care how much good is being done in the world - Donaldson is still having a weird, bad impact over here. He’s giving all the kids who watch him the wrong ideas!

But even this complaint is stupid. Publicity for good things is good, and Mr. Beast is actually a fantastic role model for kids.

Yes, Beast Philanthropy is an unusual philanthropic model. Perhaps it seems to you to be self promotional and self serving to make videos about how much money you’re giving away. There are a few things I’d like to point out as you consider that idea.

First: The videos are what funds the projects. If MrBeast wasn’t making these videos, he wouldn’t be able to do the charity. Keep the main thing the main thing - who cares if he’s making videos as long as real people are being helped?

Second: MrBeast does not seem to be taking advantage of his fame and power. He famously still lives in a modest home, does not own super cars, does not wear designer clothing. He’s said that he despises the idea of a ‘materialistic’ life and wants to die with zero dollars in his bank account after giving it all away. He reinvests all his channel’s profits back into the channel to either make new videos or give away his profits. He genuinely seems to walk the walk.

Third: Kids are always going to be influenced by someone. I’d invite you to consider who the alternatives to MrBeast are. Kai Cenat is an immature screaming weirdo who incites riots. Logan Paul is an awful douche most famous for mocking suicide victims. Andrew Tate is a sex trafficker and vocally proud of it.

Amidst this sea of influencer douchery and outright criminality, Jimmy Donaldson seems like a normal, decent human being. All he cares about is doing big stunts for his videos, and giving money away. Donaldson lives a normal life surrounded by his friends from before he was famous. He pushes back publicly against racism and transphobia.

Do you realize how lucky we are that the world’s most popular YouTuber is out there saying that being materialistic sucks, and what’s actually cool is helping people? Every other option is so much worse. I don’t care whether you love or hate his videos, it’s fantastic that this message is getting broadcast to millions of young viewers.

About Those Videos

There may be a final category of Mr. Beast hater still out there. Perhaps you agree that his philanthropic efforts are good, but you just can’t stomach his regular videos. Taste is subjective. Maybe you’re a high brow arbiter of culture, and it’s certainly true that Mr. Beast isn’t out there painting the Mona Lisa. None of his videos are Citizen Kane. But with all due respect, have you all considered lightening up?

Who, if they had the ability, wouldn’t want to do real life Squid Game? Or try to blow up a yacht while their friends tried to protect it? Who wouldn’t buy a train and then drive it off a cliff? Are you saying that given unlimited money, you wouldn’t build giant obstacle courses like a demented Willy Wonka? Liar. I name you a liar, because giant obstacle courses rule. Driving a train off a cliff rules. Embrace your inner ten year-old and just enjoy the ridiculous content.

‘Demented Willy Wonka’ was not a metaphor, he actually built a whole Wonka factory.

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There’s no good reason I’ve found to hate Mr. Beast. His philanthropic efforts genuinely help people. He’s a good role model and has few if any problematic tendencies. Even his videos are good as long as you don’t take yourself too seriously. There’s just nothing to latch on to.

The irony in this psychodrama is that if Mr. Beast did nothing and had no philanthropic efforts, he’d face no criticism. You only get criticized and blamed when you try to help, after all. It would be much easier to do nothing to help the world’s poorest people - that’s what the vast majority of influencers and content creators do.

Mr Beast and Being Blamed for Helping

But Donaldson continues helping people despite how mad it makes the Internet. We should applaud him for doing so. The dramatically online weirdos who hate him are wrong. Mr. Beast is good. And I’m tired of pretending otherwise.