If viewers don’t really see him having fun, that’s by design. Donaldson has outright said he sees “personality” as a limitation for growth, once noting in a podcast that hinging your content on who you are as a person means risking not being liked. And if someone doesn’t like a creator as a person, they may not give the videos a chance.
McLoughlin’s comments hit at another bleak possibility: Viewers may hardly see MrBeast having fun in his videos because he’s not actually having a good time. In podcasts, Donaldson tells hosts that he goes so hard, he won’t stop working until he burns out and isn’t able to do anything at all. With a laugh, he admits that he has a mental breakdown “every other week.” If he ever stops for a breather, he says, he gets depressed. MrBeast is so laser-focused on generating content on YouTube that he describes his personality as “YouTube.” He acknowledges that this brutal approach to videos, which has cratered many creators over the years, is not healthy. “People shouldn’t be like me. I don’t have a life, I don’t have a personality”
While his free time seems minuscule, the rare times he does pull away from work are for dates with his girlfriend that center around activities that could enrich his videos, because he considers a single hour of a date to be worth $100K had it been dedicated to work instead.
Absolutely brutal indictment of algorithmic capitalism.
I agree with both of you I guess? I have millionaire relatives and they don’t seem much happier to me than people who basically have their needs met and don’t need to worry too much about destitution. Like once you have a house, a decent job, a family (assuming you want one), some hobbies, maybe the time and resources to travel occasionally, and relative stability, it’s difficult for life to get much better than that IMO. Some of these relatives also struggle with depression and can be unpleasant to be around. I haven’t seen any of them since the pandemic started.
None of the billionaire ghouls seem like happy or well adjusted people. Elon Musk strikes me as incredibly miserable. Exploiting people in order to run up an imaginary score has to be mentally corrosive no matter how much of a sociopath you are.