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.

  • BodyBySisyphus [he/him]
    hexbear
    65
    2 months ago

    he considers a single hour of a date to be worth $100K had it been dedicated to work instead

    Just think for a minute about how much actual human wellbeing you could buy with a single hour of this dweeb's time, and then tell me about how capitalism is the most efficient way to allocate resources. debord-tired

    • dannoffs [he/him]
      hexbear
      34
      2 months ago

      We can't have healthcare but we can pay some weirdo to run a train into a big hole.

    • @mamotromico@lemmy.ml
      hexbear
      17
      2 months ago

      He even demonstrated this with the video where he paid for a bunch of cataracts surgeries for like a 1000 people

      And I bet that video didn’t make as much money as most do, since he hasn’t done similar stuff after it afaik