Dangerous YouTuber? MrBeast is just Mr Blobby for the internet age

At the start of last week, it appeared that half of Britain had just discovered MrBeast. The other half would have been aghast, but they were too busy watching his YouTube stunts to even notice what was going on in what we confidently used to call the real world.

On the off-chance that you’ve been on a news-free retreat in recent days, let me explain that MrBeast is a famous internet star. He spends his time creating spectacular videos for his 230 million subscribers, earning gazillions of dollars in the process, and doing a fair bit of philanthropy on the side. He is, says my son, the YouTube GOAT.

Until a couple of weeks ago, old Beastie – or Jimmy Donaldson, as he’s known to his mum – had mostly kept his content off X (formerly Twitter, formerly good), on the basis that it wasn’t worth his while. But in what appears to be an experiment by him, and/or by X, and/or X’s remaining advertisers, he posted an old video and within a week had racked up sufficient views to earn a quarter of a million bucks. This astonishing figure was enough to bring MrBeast to the masses – or at least, to anyone over 30 without kids under 16. Jeremy Vine had a phone-in about it on Radio 2 and wondered how he’d never heard of him.

As the father of an eight-year-old and a 14-year-old, I am only too familiar with MrBeast. My son especially is obsessed. So much so, that when he went through a phase of writing lyrics for “songs” not long ago, one of his masterpieces was a rap about MrBeast having a row with Mr Muddle (of Mr Men fame, and no relation) about whether coconut was better than pineapple. I have no idea…

Over the last year or so, I have regularly found my son watching inane YouTube videos – MrBeast being just one of several canny young men and women who film themselves playing video games, or “reacting” to stuff, or doing daft pranks and stunts. It is fundamentally mindless activity, often well-filmed, with an immediate appeal to fundamentally mindless people. Some of it is funny; most is basically harmless.

Yet with MrBeast having hit the headlines for his Twitter/X windfall, some commentators have been less sanguine, exercised by the daftness of his challenges, the focus on money – earned and given away – and the general angst that emerges whenever people who don’t spend their days on YouTube realise how much of the world’s time is apparently being wasted there.

MrBeast’s philanthropy as entertainment particularly raises eyebrows, and an article in our morning paper worried that children were being taught dangerous lessons about social and economic divisions, and about appropriate ways to respond to poverty. In other words, a YouTuber giving a homeless person a bag of cash might apparently be very generous, but it does nothing to challenge the structural problems that lead to people sleeping rough.

My son was having none of it, decrying the “lies” told by the media about poor, kind-hearted Jimmy, who only wants to make other people’s lives better. Such was his determination not to hear another point of view, that I started to wonder whether this was the main problem: YouTubers are so enthralling to kids, that the potential for manipulation or misinformation is rife.

That aside, however, I’m less worried than some. True, MrBeast’s focus on wackiness and dosh being an answer to everything feels a tad unsettling. But really, his is only a rather more extreme version of a tried and tested form of entertainment. Thirty years ago, it was Mr Blobby (also no relation) creating merry havoc on Noel’s House Party, with pranks and silliness galore, and viewers offered the chance to “Grab a Grand”, as well as good deeds along the way. Kids loved it, discussed it in the playground, and wished they could be involved – just as they do now.

So, there you have it. MrBeast might have more cash, his production values might be slicker, and his stunts extend beyond a good gunging, but he’s basically just Mr Blobby for the YouTube era. Nothing to worry about then…