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.
see! he succeeded! He got the money! don't you want to be like him?
I really don’t get why he’s still doing it. Surely he’s made enough that he could just live his life and never have to make another video again right? Why live the nightmare when the dream is right there?
The way he talks about it, he has so sublimated everything about himself in pursuit of views that he wouldn't even know who he was anymore without it. He describes his personality as "YouTube." Dude makes it sound like he constantly is on the verge of a breakdown, but would just completely disintegrate if he stopped. As others here have pointed out, it sounds a lot like someone in the depths of a gambling addiction or the like. He is 100% a ghoul and absolutely lives in a prison of his own making, but he's also pitiable.