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- [00:01]
Reese Oliver
We find Vecna.
- [00:02]
Stephen Asarch
We end this once and for all together. On December 25th. We have a plan. It's a bit insane.
- [00:08]
Reese Oliver
Everyone in.
- [00:09]
Stephen Asarch
He knows where we are.
- [00:11]
Podcast Sponsor/Announcer
Watch out.
- [00:12]
Stephen Asarch
Get ready for one last adventure. We stay true to ourselves, stay true to our friends. No matter the cost. Found you. Stranger Things Season 5, Volume 2 begins December 25th only on Netflix.
- [00:30]
Podcast Sponsor/Announcer
This podcast is brought to you by Squarespace. Squarespace is the all in one website platform for entrepreneurs, artists, podcasters to stand out and succeed online. I've been a Squarespace user for six, seven years now. It's always super easy to update. The website sounds like a cult.com, thanks to Squarespace's features, including their design intelligence. I'm also a huge fan of the Squarespace payments feature and I also love that Squarespace makes it possible to host a fundraiser online. Square Squarespace is quite simply a household name for a reason. Head to squarespace.com for a free trial and when you're ready to Launch, go to squarespace.com cult to save 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain. The views expressed on this episode, as with all episodes of Sounds Like a Cult, are solely host opinions and quoted allegations. The content here should not be taken as indisputable fact. This podcast is for entertainment purposes only.
- [01:25]
Stephen Asarch
You really have to be dedicated to him and really figure out what you want out of this. Might not necessarily be what the company wants out of this. The people who are pro beast are very pro beast. It is very religious in that regard that you really have to like devote yourself to the brand. For better or worse.
- [01:45]
Reese Oliver
This is Sounds like a Cult, a show about the modern day cults we all follow. I'm your co host Reese Oliver. Sounds like a Cult resident rhetorician. Every week on this show we discuss a different fanatical fringe group or guru from the zeitgeist from Love island to Lebooboo to try and answer the big question, this group sounds like a cult. But is it really? And if so, which of our cult categories does it fall into? I'll live your life, I'll watch your back where I get the fuck out. After all, not every culty looking group these days is equally devastating, you guys. Sometimes cults are cataclysmal and dangerous and others are kind of just a really specific vibe on steroids. The point of this show is to analyze all of the many ways culty behaviors show up in everyday life, including and especially in places you might not think to look. You know, a lot of the cults that we have been covering lately on Slack take the form of escapist vices. You know, you've got like your reality television, mindless consumerism, overspending, etc. Today's cult intrigues me because it, or rather he offers you like all of the good conscience gratification you get from doing something productive or good for the world or virtuous. But the thing is, you get to do none of the work and still engage in all of your favorite dopamine brain rot. Instant gratification. And that's what we're here to discuss today. Culties. You read the title. We're here to talk about the scourge of our YouTube homepage, that is Mr. Beast. Mr. Beast has become one of those cult leaders who has become so mainstream that you kind of start to take for granted how much harm he could actually be capable of. Like a Taylor Swift, you know, they're so ubiquitous that it's like, you know, nobody stopped them yet. They must be kind of fine, right? But not always. If you're not a frequent YouTube watcher, if it was a little bit after your time, or if you've just found better things to do with your life. A, I'm jealous. And B, honestly, there's still probably a good chance that you know who MrBeast is or @ least have seen his face in content unknowingly. But if you don't, you're in for a wild little ride, my friend. So tune in, little duckies, for another solo Reese episode where I can to the bottom of yet another boy thing. I do not understand taking you with me first. You and I will together unravel the long and sordid tale of how one Jimothy Beast went from regular degular dude to pseudo God, Internet superstar, alleged philanthropist, Ozian, puppeteer of dystopian social experiments. Honestly, the most fitting term that I was really able to come up with is cartoon supervillain. That is the most apt description. After that, we're going to speak with Steven Asarch, who has been diligently covering all of Mr. Beast shenanigans for Rolling Stone for a very long time. His work came in absolute lunch. Putting together the mosaic of Mr. Beast for today's episode. And I cannot thank him enough for doing that dirty work. I always want to provide a wee bit of a disclaimer. Once again, as a woman delivering an opinion on the Internet, I feel the need to preface this by saying. Saying this is not a comprehensive encyclopedia of everything Jimmy Beast has ever done. You know, we're here to get culty and gasp and giggle a little bit. In all seriousness, MrBeast is a gargantuan presence who has managed to infect just about every corner of our Internet scape. There's very few places he doesn't exist nowadays and with that he is running around willy nilly instigating new ne' er do well shenanigans every day. He's always up to tomfoolery. So there's a very good chance in the time when I record this, in between, when you pretty little ears absorb it, that Jimmy Beast has done some more things that I will not have gotten to cover. Which I agree is very unfortunate. As always, feel free to sound off with whatever I didn't have time to get to in the comments, so long as we keep it cute and respectful. But it feels like everyone has a take or a story about Mr. Beast. That being said, let's get into it. Born in Kansas and raised in North Carolina, Jimmy Donaldson is aka Mr. Beast. Started posting on YouTube in early 2012. Pretty normal YouTube stuff videos where he would guess various YouTubers incomes, which feels very weird and invasive to me. He dropped out of East Carolina University in order to pursue video creation, which there's a lot of conflicting sources on this. He either got kicked out of his mother's house or he moved out to pursue YouTube and be an adult. It's really difficult to discern what is Jimmy's spin that he's telling these people and what is actually the truth. So Jimmy posting in 2012, but he really pops off in 2017 for a video where he counts to 100,000. Wow, good job Jimmy. And I guess that was worthy of virality at this point. Jimmy also dips his toe into the concept of putting video revenue back into larger video production. This cyclical nature that becomes his trademark. There was an early era of YouTube that I feel like had their very big giants, you know, like there's Jenna, Marbles, Mosh, and I feel like at all times I had an awareness of what was going on on YouTube, even if it was not something I was interested in. I was not very into Minecraft or gaming, but I still knew that PewDiePie was huge on the Internet and on YouTube especially. And then all of a sudden it was oh, there's this Mr. Beast guy I've somehow never heard of. And yet he is the most popular creator and he has all of the children in a vice versa grip. So by late 2018 he is pretty known for making very high production value YouTube videos, which are often various challenges, sometimes ones that have already existed a lot of the time, ones he's creating himself that have like philanthropic ends with him donating a bunch of stuff or helping a bunch of people. Sounds very wholesome. From here he decides that he needs to start expanding the Beast empire. And this means that he begins creating new channels. He now has four channels that dominate YouTube. He also has channels that post exactly all of his videos, dubbed in Spanish and French. He is really just trying to get on as many different recommended homepages as possible. So it is 2025. Mr. Beast is 27 years old and he is the most subscribed to person on YouTube, number 1,426 million subscribers. He is treated as a mythological figure, a God, a cult leader. Despite Jimmy being a dropout of East Carolina U, they did in fact announce that they would partner with him to launch a content creator education program. And in April of this year, he taught a class at Harvard Business School School to be a fly on the wall in that class. As he has grown, he has started multiple businesses and fundraisers. Jimmy's production value has also increased insanely. His videos are full scale productions now. In a recent clip, Mr. Beast crashed a full size train into an enormous pit. He spends $1 million a week on his videos. Time named him one of the world's 100 most influential people. He ranked first on the Forbes list for the highest paid YouTube creator in 2024. In his net worth was estimated at $1 billion. Even Rolling Stone, the home of our very own Stephen, reported that chocolate bars, restaurant partnerships, brand deals, and lunch snack collaborations earned him a reported $700 million a year. So it's time for me to give you a brief timeline of Jimmy's shittiness, A controversy crash course, if you will. So Jimmy's first formally organized philanthropic effort was team trees in 2019, and then team Seas shortly thereafter. Someone suggested that Jimmy should plant 20 million trees once he hit 20 million subscribers. And he essentially was like, yeah, sure, if you guys pay for it. And he arranged a website where anyone can donate to have a tree planted by the Arbor Day Foundation. And this is a big pattern in Jimmy's philanthropy, which is that he likes to make himself look like the good guy by facilitating channels for other people to do good and to donate money. And I think part of that is if he can make you feel not only like he is doing good things, but you are doing good things because of him. He knows that he is a viewer in you for life or that you will be very loyal to him because we love being around people who make us feel good about ourselves and make us feel like we're doing good things. They've planted like way more than 20 million trees. The site is still up. However, as of April 2025, only 6% of the original 2,000 trees are still alive. There's been a lot of research done into these mass tree planting efforts and how they're not really as eco friendly as they look on their face and that they're actually kind of a greenwashing effort. PBS Terra, there's a good video doc about this has called it the biggest climate scam ever. So we're going to move on to 2023. This is a brief aside about Rosanna Pansino. If you're unfamiliar, Rosanna Pansino is another YouTuber. She is one YouTube giants that I mentioned earlier. She's the creator of Nerdy Nummies, which is a very popular baking channel. Rosanna Pansino is one of those people who she's just an unequivocally good presence on YouTube. And if Rosanna Pansino has an issue with you, it's like Betty White having an issue with you. It's like, oh shit, it's probably you. So all of this is to say Rosanna is one of the first youtubers to have been vocally anti Mr. Beast go off Queen. She claimed to have been edited out of Mr. Beast $1,000,000 influencer tournament challenge in 20 so he could create a more appealing narrative for the video and he wanted some other influencers to win instead of her. She has also spoken about being edited poorly or made to look bad in one of Jimmy's big challenge videos. Moving forward to October of last year, 2024, Mr. Beast launches in collaboration with Logan, Paul and streamer KSI Lunchly, which is a Lunchables knockoff that they claim to be way better because there's less preservatives. But you know what less preservatives mean? A lot more mold. Yes. People were opening their lunch leaves to moldy cheese. Rosanna Pansino being one of these people, of course, I mean, it has prime and Mr. Beast chocolate in it. How good could it really be for your kids? People start being like, this is not actually healthy. Why are you marketing to children? Guys, this is weird. And Jimmy, Logan and KSI respond with short form advertisements and a barrage of content to distract, essentially. So next we move on to summer 2023, and this is where shit really starts to hit the fan. Ava Chris Tyson was a content creator who was a friend and employee of Mr. Beast, one of Mr. Beast's like co head honchos. In June and July of 2024, messages between 20 year old Tyson and a 13 year old fan leaked, leading to a cascade of allegations. Rolling Stone interviewed some of the bigger players who reported sharing not safe for work material with an of age married Tyson performing unpaid labor for Tyson, hoping eventually that Ava and Jimmy would hire them to work for the Mr. Beast machine. But possibly the most troubling part of all of this surfaced on July 27 when a woman named Jess, who was Eva, Chris Tyson's executive assistant from 2023 to 2024, posted an over 60 part thread on X sharing her detailed experience with Tyson whom she claims used their position Mr. Beast to entice her with employment, leading her to being sexually assaulted while working. Jimmy initially defended Ava online and then quickly took action to remove her from the company once he realized this wasn't really something that was going to be blown over smoothly. Jess says, I do believe part of the reason Ava was able to easily manipulate me was due to the overall branding of the Beast channel appearing extremely charitable. I thought if I was loyal to Ava and Mr. Beast, then I would be greatly rewarded. Yeesh. Tyson denied any allegations of grooming or sexual violence misconduct, adding, I humbly apologize to anyone I have hurt with my unacceptable social media actions, past actions, and to those who may feel betrayed by how I used to act online. As far as Mr. Beast is concerned, on July 23, 2024, Ava Curse Tyson said, I permanently step away from all things Mr. Beast in social media to focus on my family and my mental health. Jess's story kind of catalyzed a whirlwind of statements and allegations about the Mr. Beast work workplace as a whole, in large part because it is so expansive and mysterious and reliant on social experiment and also Eva Chris Tyson proved that when you have celebrity figures in charge of running practical logistics of a production company, that can lead to very messy workplace situations. So in November 2024, Jimmy publishes results of an ongoing three month investigation by a third party law firm hired by Jimmy hires this law firm to do this internal investigation so he can turn around to everybody and say look guys, there's a few bad apples but everything's good and we fixed everything and everybody who was being bad is gone and everything's good and Mr. Beast is fine. To quote the Rolling Stone piece, several isolated instances of workplace harassment and misconduct took place, but they took swift, inappropriate actions to address the incidents, the company has already hired a new CEO at the time of this announcement, venture capitalist Jeffrey Housenbold, who came on in June and will hire a cp, cpo, cfo, and a general counsel. So he's like, look, everybody, we're rehauling stuff and changing things. So throughout 2024, when most of this is being aired out publicly, one of the more vocal anti mrbeast creators by the YouTube handle dogpack404 releases multiple videos, some of which contain interviews with former employees of Mr. Beast, alleging Jimmy's videos are scripted or fake giveaways are rigged. And he also goes over a leaked MrBeast company document containing a paragraph titled no does not mean no encouraging employees to harass collaborating parties for videos. That's some NXIVM shit, you guys. The kind of behavioral control being exerted by Mr. Beast, it feels very fraternity. Like when it's also attached to clout and cool points, it feels like a lot of the professionalism erodes. But when the professionalism erodes and the structure is maintained, all that's left is abuse. An article on esports.com contains an allegation from former employee Jake Weddle, who alleges that Mr. Beast had knowingly hired a registered sex offender. At this point, Mr. Beast begins deleting and heavily censoring comments on his YouTube channels. So in the midst of this investigation, before it's announced around August, Rosanna Pansino announces that Jimmy has hired Harvey Weinstein's lawyer. Great look, infamously innocent thing to do. His channel loses around 12 million subs, which is pennies to Jimmy, but that's not an insignificant amount of people. In late August, he also hires Elon Musk's lawyer just to put a little cherry on top, who promptly sends dog pack 404 a cease and desist. And this brings us to December 2024 with if there is any one MrBeast controversy that you have heard of, it is probably this, I would say. And that is his reality television show. And the shit show that it became, Beast Games. Beast Games was essentially Mr. Beast's scaled up version of his YouTube videos. It aired on Amazon Prime. There were a thousand contestants competing for $5 million in the initial season. The Guardian wrote that it exists to solely show us the worst of the human condition as obnoxiously as. As possible, which sounds exhausting and feels like most content nowadays. The show cost way more than $100 million to produce, according to Jimmy on Logan Paul's podcast, Impulsive to contextualize Just a little bit of the cultishness that was going on during this production. Just during the first leg of the shoot in Las Vegas, there were six hospitalizations. Reports of people lacking food and being separated from necessary medications. One contestant shared on their YouTube channel, anyone could have walked out at any time. Nobody was prevented from leaving. If anyone says they were trapped for real, they weren't. But I guess we were trapped because we wanted the $5 million. Like there is just something so sick about Mr. Beast instrumentalizing people's financial hardship, especially in our current political climate. And not only the hardship and the strife that people are undergoing, but also our propensity to for like escapist media and our need for instant gratification and to like watch more and more extreme, salacious, spectacular content in the very literal sense of the word. And he's really just combining those two things and extremity is all that he cares about. So the next shoot in Toronto was better for the contestants, but worse for the employees. During a record rainstorm in August, one production assistant tells Rolling Stone, workers were told to keep working with piles of electric electrical equipment literally submerged underwater. Many were injured again, one being hospitalized due to pieces of the set falling on them. People are literally like working themselves to exhaustion, getting lifelong sustained injuries for Mr. Beast. Not even for Mr. Beast for his silly content for all of the eight year old boys to watch who honestly don't know the difference between that and if it's AI generated, it's ridiculous. People are getting hurt for this, allegedly. So some contestants were misled about the duration and rules of a specific game and they felt disadvantaged and cheated and a lot of them refused to leave even though that they were out and they wished to renegotiate with the Beast team. And according to a Google form from November 6 Reviewed by Rolling Stone, those eliminated were offered the chance to, quote, prioritize your consideration for upcoming roles in Mr. Beast content in exchange for not sharing any information about this community or its backstory with any outside parties or participating in a class action lawsuit for 45 days after the form was submitted. We would give them priority over contestants who advanced further in the competition, but no promises or guarantees made. A source closer to production says, wow, literal bribery. Like, you can get closer to the cult and you can succeed more if you keep our community insular. Don't expose our nefarious actions to anybody else, and don't draw attention to the culty shit that we're doing, is what that says. From an archived New York Times article titled Willing to die for Mr. Beast during an intake process this year, several contestants told the New York Times that they had been asked whether they would be willing to be buried alive or travel to outer space. One contestant recalled being asked if she would be able to swim to shore if thrown overboard from a boat. I understand that such activities may cause me death, illness or serious bodily injury, including but not limited to exhaustion, dehydration, overexertion, burns and heat stroke, read a line in a contract reviewed by the Times that applicants were required to sign. Jimmy, in response to this, does an interview with Caleb Phelps and on X is essentially like, yeah, we did some bad stuff, but you guys are making it look way worse than it actually was. It's fine. We have a bunch of sick behind the scenes content coming to prove it and you guys will all see. And the said BTS content was overly clipped, underwhelming. He knows nobody was gonna care or watch any of that. So for Jimmy, it is business as usual and on to the next disgusting scandal. And with that, I think it is time for us to get a little bit more of an expert opinion. Because as much as I'm sure you guys love hearing me talk, I want to hear from someone who lives, breathes and dies by the Beast. Not in the sense of the culty followers that we've been talking about, but as a spectator of the cult. So to help us understand the man, the myth, the Beast himself, we are so delighted to welcome investigative journalist Stephen Asarch to the podcast, who's been on the Beast beat of Rolling Stone for quite some.
- [22:30]
Stephen Asarch
Time. This episode is brought to you by Jack Daniels. Jack Daniels and music are made for each other. They share a rhythm in the craft of making something timeless while being a part of legendary nights. From backyard jams to sold out arenas, there's a song in every toast. Please drink responsibly. Responsibility.org, jack Daniels and Old Number 7 are registered trademarks. Tennessee Whiskey 40% alcohol by volume. Jack Daniel Distillery, Lynchburg, Tennessee this.
- [23:02]
Podcast Sponsor/Announcer
Podcast is brought to you by Squarespace. Squarespace is the all in one website platform for entrepreneurs, artists, podcasters to stand out and succeed online. Whether you're just starting out or managing a growing brand, Squarespace makes it super easy to connect with your audience, build a beautiful website, and to sell absolutely anything from products to content to even your valuable time. I've been a Squarespace user for six, seven years now. It's always super easy to update. The website Sounds like a cult.com and that's thanks to Squarespace's features including their design intelligence which combines two decades of industry leading design expertise with cutting edge AI technology. I'm also a huge fan of the Squarespace payments feature which makes it incredibly easy to sell things online, whether through subscription or a one time only purchase. And I also love that Squarespace makes it possible to host a fundraiser or raise money for a cause that you care about online. Squarespace is quite simply a household name for a reason. Head to squarespace.com for a free trial and when you're ready to Launch, go to squarespace.com cult to save 10% off your first purchase of a website or.
- [24:11]
Reese Oliver
Domain. Stephen, welcome to the.
- [24:13]
Stephen Asarch
Show. Thanks for having me. I take any opportunity to talk about the.
- [24:17]
Reese Oliver
Beast. I feel like a lot of people do, but I have a feeling you maybe for some more cynical reasons than.
- [24:23]
Stephen Asarch
Most. Yeah, unfortunately I was viewer for a very long time. I actually interviewed Jimmy for the first time in 2018 at Newsweek. That was an email Q and A and that doesn't count, but I've just been like watching forever since. And then last year things popped off so I decided to do some.
- [24:38]
Reese Oliver
Digging. Oh yeah, it's like a horrible train wreck that you couldn't look away from. I tried for a very long time because of how popular Mr. Beast was. I was like, I'm not going to engage with it out of just contrarianism. Like, no, I don't want anything to do with it. And then when Rosanna Pansino started talking out about him, I was like, okay, this is something that I need to keep eyes on. Not even for legitimate entertainment purposes, but for culty analysis reasons. And we've reached the.
- [25:02]
Stephen Asarch
Day. Absolutely. I've been a digital culture reporter for the past decade. I worked at Newsweek and Business Insider and now I'm freelancing and I kind of like to keep my eye on how the platforms change and how they evolve. And Mr. Beast is basically the most perfect encapsulation of how YouTube and how we consume content has evolved as algorithms have rotted our.
- [25:24]
Reese Oliver
Brains. Yeah, he's truly like the ringleader of the complete shift in our media landscape in a way that is definitely spooky. Hence our conversation today. So let's get into some questions. I would like you to describe for our viewers who may or may not have seen one already. The average Mr. Beast video what hooks you? What keeps you? Who's the demographic if there is one beyond like.
- [25:49]
Stephen Asarch
Everyone. So the average Mr. Beast video today is a lot different than what it used to be, but now it is designed to get you as hooked as possible in the shortest amount of.
- [26:00]
Reese Oliver
Time.
- [26:00]
Stephen Asarch
Time. So they're always intense challenges, mainly revolving around money or ridiculous ideas. He recently did one where he locked a convict and a police officer in a prison and forced them to compete together for challenges in order to win a prize. He'll take ages 1 to 100 and lock them in boxes in a room and force them to compete for money. It's all about money. It's all about control and it's all about just like consuming as much of it as possible personally. And looking at what Mr. Beast has actually said, his audience skews younger. In a leaked Mr. Beast playbook that came out last year, he said that his audience is mainly male teenagers. And I believe it's probably even younger these days. That's why he sells toys and chocolate and an animated show that's coming.
- [26:49]
Reese Oliver
Out. So obviously the workplace, the environment is culty af. But what about the fandom? What are some of the like wildest extents that you've witnessed Mr. Beast F going to. At what point do the cult of fandom and production.
- [27:04]
Stephen Asarch
Overlap? I think when it comes to parasocial relationships in general, they can tend to be very culty and fanatic. But Mr. Beast's parasocial relationship adds an extra layer because money's involved, part of his gimmick. He still does it to this day. Like you'll watch a TikTok of him like walking around be like, are you subscribed to Mr. Beast? Yes. Well, I'm going to give you this briefcase of $10,000. So the people that really care about Mr. Beast want that life changing money. The ones that kind of come to mind are when the Beast Burger was opening at the American Dream mall, it basically turned into a riot with just like thousands of kids just want to get a look of the man, just want to acknowledge him. There was also another one around that time a couple years ago where there were rumors that Mr. Beast was going to go to a supermarket and basically buy everyone's groceries. And Mr. Beast couldn't end up showing up because it was a security risk. And all of these people were upset that their groceries weren't going to get bought. So the store kind of got trashed. Mr. Beast's fans are devoted to the man because a lot of them are young and a lot of them are desperate. That's part of MrBeast's appeal, is that he wants you hooked because you could inherit generational wealth by chance and random luck for.
- [28:15]
Reese Oliver
Sure. I think he definitely fancies Himself a kind of Willy Wonka, where he, like, facilitates all of the shenanigans and is definitely the cause of them all. He just gets to pull all the strings in the background. But he's not the one actually shoving the kids down the tubes. You know, he gets someone else to do his dirty work. Yeah. So, speaking of money, Jimmy has an obscene amount of money. Explain, to the best of your knowledge, all of Jimmy's streams of income and how much of them he likes to make.
- [28:40]
Stephen Asarch
Public. Well, thankfully, we actually, as of a few months ago, have a much better understanding of Jimmy's money. I think it was Bloomberg, your Business Insider. I have to double check, managed to get a pitch deck that Jimmy used to kind of pitch himself. So we know his sources of revenue and his income come. So he's got a few. First, there are the videos themselves, which do not make money because Jimmy spends all the money they make on his videos. I think it was, like, 90% of the revenue that's generated from the actual Mr. Beast content goes back directly into the content. He has no real liquid assets. Like, there was that tweet where Mr. Beast's mom is going to have to pay for his wedding because he has no money himself. He's not sitting on stacks of money. He invests everything back into his videos, which it's kind of ridiculous. Like, how are you spending $300 million on YouTube videos? But I'm one of the few people who actually believe that he, like, burns money and destroys money, like, real money on his sets. I don't think it's prop.
- [29:37]
Reese Oliver
Money. Ooh. Tell me more. What makes you say.
- [29:39]
Stephen Asarch
That? I spoke to a lot of people from my Rolling Stone coverage about the Beast games, and they were talking about, like, vans of money coming in from the bank and being used on the actual game show. So when I'm, like, watching, he did a video recently where it's like, we're gonna put a guy in a burning room and we're gonna burn the money. I personally believe that that money was really real, that he actually burnt that money. I have no proof. I'm merely.
- [30:01]
Reese Oliver
Allegedly.
- [30:01]
Stephen Asarch
Allegedly. Allegedly, allegedly. You know, but in terms of other revenue streams, his most successful is Feastables. His chocolate brand is very successful. In the first few years since its launch, it's only generated more and more revenue. He now has, like, basically, Mr. Beast has realized the power of his brand, and he's chucking it on as many things as.
- [30:21]
Reese Oliver
Possible.
- [30:21]
Stephen Asarch
Yes. He just launched a Jack Link's beef jerky collaboration. So you can get Mr. Beast Jerky he's working with with Riyadh Season, which is a Saudi Arabian theme park, to get a section of that. Mr. Beast loves the Saudis. I can make that without.
- [30:36]
Reese Oliver
Conjecture. That.
- [30:36]
Stephen Asarch
Tracks. He has a whole video where he's like going around Saudi Arabia and like I'm on the largest thing in Saudi Arabia or I'm gonna go see these fancy sports cars in Saudi Arabia. Ignore the humans rights violations cause I don't think he cares. But all of those put together. He evaluates his company at $5 billion when he's been going around and trying to colle from venture capitalists. Is his brand actually worth that much? Who knows? But he's certainly able to slap his name on a lot of things and make a reasonable amount of money for.
- [31:11]
Reese Oliver
It. It's wild to me how transparently he is only interested in money and how like all of his content is money centric and it is like the crux of everything he does. And yet just by like wearing a T shirt and not moving to la, he's built this whole, whole facade of himself as this really down to earth grounded guy who doesn't give a shit about money. That's a very obviously intentionally curated Persona that contrasts with all of his actions. And I think it's insane how easily it dupes.
- [31:38]
Stephen Asarch
People. Yeah, Mr. Beast cares about money just because it gets him views. If you go back to the earliest Mr. Beast content, it was designed around viral trends and getting stuff. Like some of the earliest MrBeast videos are him finding YouTube videos made by small children and basically calling them cringe and making fun of fun of.
- [31:57]
Reese Oliver
Them. The Cody Ko.
- [31:58]
Stephen Asarch
Avenue. Absolutely. Because that worked. You know, it did work. It was all about getting viral trends. And then he created one video where he donated $10,000 as a tip to a pizza delivery driver and that went viral. And then he did another one where he donated money to homeless people and that went viral and he's like, okay, this is now my brand. This is what we're going to do. Because it's not necessarily like money is just the vehicle to get the views. I don't necessarily think he is like a hypebeast or really cares about flaunting his wealth. Wealth. It's just about like people want to see people get money because it's like a dopamine rush. It's just the.
- [32:33]
Reese Oliver
Content. Yeah, get it and burn it. And the cycle begins all over again. So Jimmy is like the king of putting his name on other people's donations and associating himself with other people, doing philanthropic good. Why doesn't he simply donate the money himself if he has all of.
- [32:50]
Stephen Asarch
It? I personally believe when it comes to Mr. Beast's philanthropic efforts, he uses them as a way to block criticism. Criticism. Mr. Beast does not like criticism. He does not take it well. I've been trying to get him to talk on any of my stories. The people that got hurt on the Beast games, the poor amounts of money people were getting paid, all of these things that I would love to see Mr. Beast talk about. He won't. Instead, he'll do an interview with Oompaville, who is a YouTuber who really didn't care. I interviewed Oompaville about it and he was like, yeah, I just did it. And Mr. Beast showed up the next day. It's all about using philanthropy as a way to block criticism. When he is getting trashed on on Twitter, he'll often be like, oh, I donated to this thing. I have a food bank. But I don't like to talk about it because I don't want people to think that's all I'm about. But he only uses it to deflect criticism. His philanthropy efforts, I believe since the very beginning, like, again, the evil person in my brain, not necessarily saying I can confirm or whatever, is, you know, Team Trees was kind of created as a way to offset the CO2 emissions from.
- [33:54]
Reese Oliver
Mr. Beast.
- [33:56]
Stephen Asarch
Videos. You know, like, all of the.
- [33:59]
Reese Oliver
Like, 10 trees that actually got planted.
- [34:01]
Stephen Asarch
Again, like, I believe there were trees that were planted. I believe there was. I don't remember the exact amount of pounds that were taken out of the.
- [34:08]
Reese Oliver
Ocean. They took a lot of trash out of the.
- [34:09]
Stephen Asarch
Ocean. It was negligible. It was like less than a tenth of 1% of the amount of trash in the ocean. It's all about just getting the idea out.
- [34:16]
Reese Oliver
There. We did.
- [34:16]
Stephen Asarch
It. And Team Water has been in the works forever. I found the trademark for Team Water, like, earlier this year. It was like, we're going to be selling water bottles and we're going to be selling merch. And it's all about, you know, making sure people get safe water. Or, like, with the wells. He paid someone to go to every well in Africa because someone tweeted that the wells weren't being maintained. If you actually cared about the wells being maintained, it feels like you wouldn't start doing this after people are giving you shit on.
- [34:43]
Reese Oliver
Twitter. Yeah, it's very much what is the easiest way that I can virtue signal to the largest amount of people at well, and like, Just get it done with. And look, I did a good thing and that's it. It reminds me a lot of the charities that a lot of multi level marketing companies will set up in part to hide where all of like, you know, if there's money circulating that they don't want to put out in the open, they're like, oh, it's the charity, you know. And I do wonder a little bit about that too, if there's any transfer of money happening in nefarious ways between his crowdfunding efforts and his philanthropy side of things and then like the content making side of things, how those two things.
- [35:14]
Stephen Asarch
Intersect. I've definitely looked into that angle and I found nothing to say. Like, I believe that Beast Philanthropy is donating the money that it's doing. It's just not always in the best way and sometimes they screw up pretty hard. When it came to the Jimmy, you know, I fixed everyone's eyesight or I fixed a thousand people's.
- [35:31]
Reese Oliver
Eyesight. Oh, my.
- [35:32]
Stephen Asarch
God. Firstly, you didn't do diddly squat. A bunch of doctors helped those people and you put them in a video. But it was this company that did quite a few eye surgeries for Mr. Beast video, and they claimed that they were never paid paid for it. They posted a video and for about eight months nobody noticed it. When the video started to gain traction on Reddit, I reached out to the company and they were like, Mr. Beast never paid us. Mr. Beast used us. We feel that we were really mistreated by this. And the day after I reach out to Mr. Beast for comment, guess who gets paid and he no longer wants to talk and he takes down the original video and everything's good with Mr. Beast, it's all about avoiding PR scandals and avoiding controversy. I don't necessarily believe the money is being used in nefarious ways. I just believe there are so many tentacles to this hydra or tentacles to this squid that I think people really want Mr. Beast to be bad in that way. But he's bad in other ways that we could actually focus on and find evidence.
- [36:29]
Reese Oliver
Of. Yes, for sure. Can you talk a little bit more about how Jimmy outsources his dirty work or does most of his work in partnership with other entities or people and how that kind of contributes to keeping his image.
- [36:41]
Stephen Asarch
Clean. One of my favorite things to kind of go down. I don't really cover it because it's not like important in the grand scheme of Mr. Beast. But Mr. Beast has a fascinating connection with drama YouTubers who kind of share his information and the Angles for his stories. Keemstar, who was once an important drama youtuber but now spends his time on Snapchat yelling at the clouts, was a close collaborator with Mr. Beast. If there was ever a scandal breaking, he would be the first to get a comment from Jimmy and kind of share it to his audience who Mr. Beast would then amplify it to his audience. If you look at a lot of the posts Mr. Beast responds to, a lot of them are drama alert, which is Keemstar's.
- [37:19]
Reese Oliver
Live stream symbiotic relationship for.
- [37:20]
Stephen Asarch
Sure. And when his scandal with Dog Pack was released last year, Mr. Beast was actively ceding information to other drama YouTubers in order to get that information out. There is a YouTuber named Saki Cereal who posted a video basically trashing Dog Pack. He shared audio from Dogpack's firing. He went to Mr. Beast's compound in Greenville and interviewed actual Mr. Beast employees. How did he get all of Those? Turns out Mr. Beast paid for the plane ticket to bring him out to Greenville and was actually paying for. I don't want to say Mr. Beast. I want to say the Beast Corporation, because there's no direct beast. Yeah, Mr. Beast's brand, one of the 350 people. So he actively lets you like seeds information to an audience. Because what I've kind of learned about Mr. Beast is he doesn't like to have the information come from him himself. It likes the information to come from other sources and other people. He kind of likes to be the grandmaster behind the scenes rather than the actual one making the claims. Because when he tweets, it's instant viral news. So if he could have a smaller commentary channel, get this information out and still have the same level of Internet ferocity, why bother.
- [38:32]
Reese Oliver
Himself? Yeah, I think he knows. Not that he won't be taken seriously, but it's almost like he'll be taken too seriously and like the information is more valuable if it feels like a secret to.
- [38:42]
Stephen Asarch
Know. He wants people again that parasocial relationship. He's the brand, he's the Mickey Mouse. If Mickey Mouse is trash talking goofy, that is a whole new viral situation that people want to deal with. The only sit down interview Mr. Beast did about any of the scandals again was with Oompaville. There were plenty of journalists I know from the New York Times to every other outlet who wanted that interview, but he specifically chose a dramatuber who was very invested and didn't ask about any. Like a lot of the real scandals, like Ava Tyson never came up. He asked like one question. From my reporting in that, did the Beast Games use union workers? And he was like, yeah, there are these two unions. It counts. But it was like the Director's Guild so none of like the actual crew members doing the work were union members. He specifically sought out non union work for reasons people can jump to their own conclusions.
- [39:26]
Reese Oliver
About. Yikes. Yeah, he really is just only interested in being visible on his own terms. Terms. The control freak that that man is knows no.
- [39:35]
Stephen Asarch
Bounds. I've heard stories of a car being the wrong color on set and him forcing the people to go get a new car with the color he wants. He has like openly said if a video is not up to his standards, it doesn't matter how much money he spent on it, it's going in the.
- [39:50]
Reese Oliver
Trash. He's a cartoon.
- [39:52]
Stephen Asarch
Supervillain. I I think again it's because his brand is not personable. It's not who he actually is. So we are kind of able to see him as Dr. Claw from Inspector Gadget or you know, one of the villains in Power Rangers. Because in the way that we understand influencers, he is a brand, not an.
- [40:09]
Reese Oliver
Influencer. Yes, that's very.
- [40:12]
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- [41:37]
Stephen Asarch
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- [42:07]
Reese Oliver
You. So a big part of Jimmy's stated M.O. and all of the philanthropy that he does is that he wants to change the way that online platforms and influencer relationships function and that he believes they can do good and put money into the hands of people who are going to use it for. For benevolent reasons. Do you think that that's a real thing that's happening and that other people are catching wind and like doing good things because of Mr. Beast, or what kind of ecosystem do you think he's creating for other.
- [42:37]
Stephen Asarch
Creators? I mean, I think Mr. Beast is the reason YouTube is in the place that it is today, in that we're in the attention economy where you get the first five seconds, you gotta be flashy. Mr. Beast editing has permanently altered the way YouTube.
- [42:51]
Reese Oliver
Works. The.
- [42:52]
Stephen Asarch
Thumbnails. The thumbnails are all him. The fact we're getting AI thumbnails out the wazoo. MrBeast was the first. MrBeast is a huge fan of AI and has been pushing it in his content for years. The View Stats controversy, where he launched a whole program where you could create AI.
- [43:07]
Reese Oliver
Thumbnails. I remember that.
- [43:08]
Stephen Asarch
Yeah. And then immediately backtracked and tried to, you know, gain back public goodwill. Mr. Beast, ultimately, again, it's all of the content, all of the money, all of the challenges are just avenues for him to grow as large as possible possible. It's all about growth. Like last week Mr. Beast had a video come out that's this is me in 10 years, where he recorded it 10 years ago to go live this week. And he's like, I just want to have a million subscribers. I hope I'm still doing YouTube. And the fact that like a decade ago, that was still on his mind because being the biggest YouTuber has always been his.
- [43:43]
Reese Oliver
Goal. And do you think in that expansion what he's looking for is solely numbers of people, no matter what level of interest they have? Or do you think he's more seeking, like long term, intense, parasocial relationships with like a tighter knit group of hardcore.
- [43:58]
Stephen Asarch
Fans? I don't think you can be the biggest and have that tight niche. I think because we kind of live in an age where there's the, the micro influencer, where they have a very niche subject. They paint, like, warhammer miniatures or they bake cakes. And you have like a very small audience that you can basically monetize as much as possible to make quite a lucrative audience. But then there's the macro influencer. You know, your Logan Paul's, your Pewdiepie from a few years back, who are basically like monsters. And they can't just have specifics. They have to have everybody. Mr. Beast is as large as he is today because he embraced an international audience. His content is dubbed in every language. He has the voice of Naruto in Japan and the voice of Spider Man, I believe, in Brazil, do his voices because he knows people already have that connection to that character. So he can then bring that connection over to him. It's about growth. It's about being as big as possible. You can't, on that scale, have a personal connection with your fans. It's just not possible. And I think Mr. Beast realizes that. So that's why he has basically thrown a fishnet to catch as many as possible. And basically that's how he's ended up being the biggest. Where he goes to India and basically shuts down a city because people want to be around, around him. That's the noise I've made at least a dozen times while.
- [45:18]
Reese Oliver
Reporting. It's just.
- [45:19]
Stephen Asarch
Exhausting. There's a new one.
- [45:22]
Reese Oliver
Okay. There's another thing he did that's really how I feel like he throws so much at the wall at all times. It's very Trumpian and that, like, it doesn't even matter. Everything that fails because it all just blends into the stream of that he's constantly putting into our media atmosphere. And you can't even pick out anything specific at that moment.
- [45:40]
Stephen Asarch
Point. The goal is always to flood the zone and kind of get as much content out there as possible. I don't know if my reporting even managed to make a dent in the same way that any of his other stuff did, because it didn't get pushed in the same way by an algorithm. The dog pack stuff is unique because it sort of caught a wave at the right time. But then Mr. Beast spent the next six months trying to absolutely dismantle the credibility of any of the claims completely. Throwing it out the.
- [46:05]
Reese Oliver
Window. Yeah. I'm thinking about just the world domination that Jimmy clearly wants. And it seems. Seems to me like, I mean, he's kind of achieved everything he wanted. He is like the biggest YouTuber. He's even like outgrown YouTube into, you know, Beast games being on more traditional platforms. Do you think he even knows what he wants to do next or is he just taking whatever's offered to him and just growth with no ceiling is the.
- [46:30]
Stephen Asarch
Goal. I definitely think it's just grow as big as you possibly can. I don't think there's a logic behind it because if you go back to Mr. Beast before he basically became a mega corporation generation, the goal was always to just grow on YouTube in any way possible. But as you mentioned, he's already done that. He's become the biggest. What do you do when you're the biggest? Oh, I'm going to try to conquer another field. I'm going to try to be the biggest chocolate company. I'm going to try to make the biggest action figure toy line that ever exists and try to just grow and grow and grow and grow and eventually he will reach a point that he can't grow anymore. But his collaborations are not always the best. Like when he worked with Resort World in Las Vegas and they, they botched it pretty hard. It's all about just expanding. I don't really think there's any sort of plan in mind other than be the.
- [47:18]
Reese Oliver
Biggest. Yeah, and it's really interesting because in the genesis of influencer culture, influencers usually were still oriented around, like you were saying, like a certain subculture or a type of content they wanted to make or a certain thing that they wanted to, to express or something about themselves that they wanted to put into the world. Whereas for Jimmy, it really seemed like grow and be a successful YouTuber was kind of the only thing on the table. And as for what that consisted of, it was just whatever he needs to do at that moment to get bigger. So my point is just that we've reached the end of influencer culture. Like this is, this is what it all comes to is there's, there's nothing behind it. And the goal in itself, it's very antithetical to the original intent of influencing as a whole, if the that makes.
- [48:02]
Stephen Asarch
Sense. I think, you know, when we had the early days of influencers, you know, your Shane Dawsons and your Jenna Marbles and it was just someone sitting on their floor, well, that's Trisha Paytas, but someone with their countertop just sort of like building a personal connection, learning about their everyday kind of growing in that regard. But YouTube is now a business. YouTube is now very lucrative. There are multi millionaires who are just YouTubers selling candy on the Internet. Internet. It is no longer just that small timey thing. You know, as Jacksepticeye once said, while hooked up to A lie detector test. Mr. Beast made YouTube not fun anymore. He made it about the business. It's all about how much money you can make another way. Mr. Beast has graced us with his presence in our.
- [48:46]
Reese Oliver
Space. Okay, let's shift gears a little bit. Why food? Can you talk a little bit about lunch? Leaf Feastables, Mr. Beast.
- [48:53]
Stephen Asarch
Burger. So from my understanding, or at least what I thought, you know, I don't have any evidence behind. Behind this, but food is universal. Everybody needs to eat it. So how do you appeal to the largest demographic possible? You make chocolate. Because almost everybody in the world can eat chocolate. It's really that simple. When it came to Beast Burger, we know a lot of the details of the Beast Burger deal because of the lawsuit that's currently happening, and many of the files are currently public. But the Beast Burger deal came to be because there was this company that was doing these, like, celebrity branded dealers deals. Pauly D is going to launch his own chicken company or whatever. Not sure it was chicken, but they basically built it off of that. So it was off of Mr. Beast's brand, but the quality control wasn't there. And ultimately that's what led to Beast Burger going down. So with this chocolate and this chocolate milk and this lunch Lee, Mr. Beast now owns the means of production and he's able to maintain quality control. So he's able to maintain the standard that he wants for his brand with food. But again, he's also launched action figure lines. He's got an animated show coming out in a few weeks that will be out by the time. This is. It's about appealing to everyone or children, because children are very lucrative. Ask General Mills. It's all about, how can I get the most amount of people as.
- [50:12]
Reese Oliver
Possible? And do you think he in any way tries to, like, angle these very clearly for profit businesses as part of his kind of philanthropic Persona? Are you just kind of, oh, 100%? Like, when I buy a chocolate bar, he might give that dollar. Homeless person. Do you think that's what he's.
- [50:27]
Stephen Asarch
Wanting you to think with the chocolate? Specifically, Mr. Beast has claimed that he has found a way to ethically source it. That unlike Nestle, which uses slave labor and other chocolate companies, he uses ethically sourced chocolate. So you can trust it. And he says he spent years studying the chocolate supply chain. Again, like, it's one of those things where I'm like, sure, I believe it, Jimmy. There are so much other weird things that are much more obvious of the bullshit. But, yeah, I. I've been your chocolate's probably better than, you know, Nestle, who's like, the worst company in the world. It's not a fair competition when it comes to chocolate manufacturers these days. No, it's either the devil himself or Mr. Beast. And, you know, Mr. Beast chocolate might be better, but he's understood that philanthropic gains are a good marketing tool. They're a good way to kind of set yourself apart and make sure that your thing kind of feels better and stands out from the.
- [51:20]
Reese Oliver
Crowd. Okay. All righty. What is the single cultiest thing about how Mr. Beast runs his.
- [51:27]
Stephen Asarch
Studio? I'm gonna go ABC Players. As I mentioned before, Rosetta Pansino last year released a Mr. Beast Production Handbook. Basically, how to succeed in Mr. Beast production. The book itself is full of typos, and it's a way to kind of get Mr. Beast's brain into the minds of his employees. And I've spoken to a bunch of people who have worked for Mr. Beast, and they all describe it as culture because you have to be an A.
- [51:55]
Reese Oliver
Player. You know, every cult needs its.
- [51:57]
Stephen Asarch
Literature. Absolutely. C, players just do what they do to kind of coast to get by. They're not really doing extra work. They're doing what they have to to survive. B, players try their best, but, you know, they might take advice from someone or it might not be, you know, exactly what you want. But A, players, A, players devote their lives to Mr. Beast. A players do everything they can for Mr. Beast. That's all that matters, is making sure the video is as good as possible, possible. And those are the ones he wants at his company. And if you do that, it says in the production handbook, if you do follow these rules, the book says that you'll have infinite career growth and it'll be a final destination. Quote that I love is I want nothing more than for you to go all in obsessive all day every day and become so goddamn valuable. This company can't operate without you. That's. Yeah. And.
- [52:44]
Reese Oliver
That'S. This is giving like Elizabeth.
- [52:46]
Stephen Asarch
Holmes. So when you work at Mr. Beast, at least these days, days it's I believe 350 to 500 employees. You have to move to Greenville, North Carolina. Greenville is a very small town that is basically covered with like corn all around.
- [52:59]
Reese Oliver
It. Mr. Beast Company.
- [53:00]
Stephen Asarch
Town. It is a Mr. Beast Company. He's built lodging on the town for people to live in who work at Mr. Beast. You are basically spending all of your time around Mr. Beast employees. I know one guy who was like commuting hours every day so that he could make sure that he could stay with his family. And Mr. Beast, Beast, which ultimately didn't end.
- [53:18]
Reese Oliver
Up working, you know, where your true family.
- [53:20]
Stephen Asarch
Is. But that's kind of what it is. You know, it's about being part of that. And it's why people burn out with Mr. Beast so much. You know, there are people that have been there forever, and then there are people who don't last there very long because you kind of have to be super dedicated. And Mr. Beast and his team have poached other YouTube editors. Hey, I like what this guy's doing. Let's find who's editing for him and see if I can bring him into the Mr. Beast land. And to me, that's always been kind of culty. You know, you have to be able to drink the Kool Aid in order to tolerate a toxic workplace. I've compared the way Mr. Beast runs all of his enterprises, like an Amazon warehouse.
- [53:55]
Reese Oliver
Where. I was gonna say this sounds like.
- [53:56]
Stephen Asarch
Amazon. Yeah. Where the goal is to create the best product for the consumer as possible, regardless of the human cost that comes into making it. You know, you are gonna have to work a shit ton hours. I'm not saying Mr. Beast makes his employees pee in bottles, probably does, doesn't, and probably have good facilities. But for the most part, it's all about, like, how much content can you produce in the shortest amount of time with the most amount of input to make the most viral video.
- [54:20]
Reese Oliver
Possible. Yeah, I didn't realize that you have to move to Greenville. There's an irl, very tangible angle to this cult as an employee, whereas kind of the cult of the fandom. He relies on people being everywhere and him having the tastes of everyone everywhere. But then once you get too close and you need to look behind the curtain, he needs to keep you close and hold you as close as he.
- [54:40]
Stephen Asarch
Can. Yeah, he doesn't like when people leak. He doesn't like when his stories get out. I personally believe the people that I've spoken with are so terrified to speak out against Mr. Beast and share their experiences. They're all using anonymous accounts. They'll all be afraid to tell me specific details about their life because they don't want to get it back to them. Because to piss off Mr. Beast is.
- [54:59]
Reese Oliver
Terrifying. Piss off? God.
- [55:01]
Stephen Asarch
Yeah. You're pissing off one of the most powerful people in the world. You don't want to piss off a potential billionaire who is clearly a man who doesn't like criticism and has done petty stuff in the.
- [55:10]
Reese Oliver
Past. Since Jimmy doesn't want to Talk about Ava Chris Tyson. We will. How, from your research, did Jimmy create an environment where Eva Chris Tyson could utilize Jimmy's platform for her own unfortunate.
- [55:23]
Stephen Asarch
Behavior? So back in the early day of Mr. Beast, it was basically just a bunch of Edgelords doing whatever the hell they wanted. I interviewed Matt Turner, who is one of the first employees at Mr. Mr. Beast, and he described an environment that was just like, purely toxic and chaotic. Ava shot an AR15 right next to his ear, causing him to go deaf for a few hours. Matt Turner would get screamed at. Like, when Jimmy was in charge, you were basically beholden to what Jimmy wanted. And Ava was Jimmy's second in command. If you go back to that Mr. Beast playbook, he describes Ava as basically his museum. And how he is able to stay on top of viral trends is Ava is just very Internet pilled, chronically online, like, never leaves the Internet. And if you look at kind of what led to Ava's cancellation, there was the discord where Ava had a personal discord where she spoke with, you know, minors and basically had minors run the server and, like, you know, post porn in the server and post edgy things. I don't believe Ava is a pedophile. I believe Ava is an. An edgelord and basically just wanted to be as weird and messed up as possible. But when it comes specifically to Jess, who was Ava, Chris Tyson's executive assistant, they started out as friends that basically found each other through social media. And then Ava was like, hey, why don't I give you a job and you move in with me? All while we're, you know, having a sexual interaction. We'll continue to have sexual.
- [56:50]
Reese Oliver
Interactions. Sounds.
- [56:50]
Stephen Asarch
Great. Which again, is inherently toxic and against the rules. And because the HR at the time was Jimmy's mom, there was no real, you know, you know.
- [56:59]
Reese Oliver
Way. Seeing some Ned Fulmer parallels, I.
- [57:02]
Stephen Asarch
Mean. Yeah, well, Ava was never as obvious as Ned Fulmer. You know, they never. They never went out to the club together. It was only shared photos that didn't come out till after the whole scandal. In general, I spoke to Jess multiple times and continued to speak with her. She's made amends with Ava and Ava kind of has admitted some wrongdoing. But for the most part, the environment was allowed to exist and allowed to fest because the boys will be boys again. As the playbook said, if the boys want to draw a dick on the whiteboard, let him. It's a culture of enabling those at the top. If you are in Mr. Beast's personal circle, you could get away with so much more than everyone else. And it created a toxic environment that Mr. Beast paid a lawyer to do a investigation and found that, you know, there might have been some things that were done, but nothing too extreme. Ava's out. That was the.
- [57:50]
Reese Oliver
Problem. It feels like a fraternity where it's like, oh, there's a hazing issue. We'll get rid of the one person who was hazing, and then you guys can continue functioning as you were before and everything is.
- [57:59]
Stephen Asarch
Fine. I think when it comes to influencers in general, if you give a teenager an unlimited amount of power and money, they will always do something dumb with it. That's kind of what we've learned with, like, you know, influencers from, like, Jack Doherty going after onlyfans models and basically running a harem to whatever Jake Paul was doing on the top of that news van truck all those years ago. But Mr. Beast was the biggest and had the most money, so he was going to do some wild, wild.
- [58:23]
Reese Oliver
Stuff. Oh, for sure. Through kind of the response to everything happening with Ava, especially online. Can you touch a little bit on Jimmy's hypocrisy, victim mentality, and lack of willingness to take accountability for any of his.
- [58:37]
Stephen Asarch
Actions? As I mentioned, Mr. Beast hates criticism. He doesn't like to be considered wrong. What he does is right because that's who he is. When all of this, like, cancellation stuff happened, he wasn't able to talk because of the investigation that was going on, which kind of allowed the drama to snowball and keep growing and growing and growing. When he was finally able to talk about it, he brought in a YouTuber named Upville, who was a drama YouTuber who, again, didn't really care. He sort of took it just because who could say no to a Mr. Beast? Interviewville told me that Mr. Beast's team contacted him the day before, and they flew in on a private jet A few hours later, did the interview, and he left. That's how Mr. Beast deals with criticism. It's got to be quick, it's got to be fast, so you can't think about it. You can't ask too many important questions. The one thing I found that Mr. Beast hates in the world is he hates being called evil. If you look at the tweets that he responds to, there are clips of him also having this. Evil is the word that really gets to him. You can criticize him on little levels, but calling him evil, that's really what gets to him. And most criticism kind of flows off his back. He will not respond to a controversy Unless it becomes too viral to ignorant ignore. Which is why he responded to the View Stats controversy where he created a company that created AI thumbnails and YouTubers specifically were complaining. And he can't piss off YouTubers. YouTubers are directly tied to his content. How's he going to get 50 YouTubers in a room to do a ridiculous challenge if they all dislike him? So he has to make sure the youtubers themselves are happy with him and specifically does not like criticism. So put those both together and you get an environment in which Jimmy will only respond when he thinks thinks it's.
- [60:17]
Reese Oliver
Worthwhile. He's very Swiftian in that way where he only responds to criticism that he knows he can warp and fire back with. Like, well, no, look, I'm objectively a good person because I'm doing good.
- [60:28]
Stephen Asarch
Things. Well, what's the line? You basically stay at the age you become rich at, and they both kind of got rich at around the same time being, you know, teenagers. It's the same sort of thing of what happens when you become a billionaire and sort of lose touch with the average man. You make a CD people don't really like about a.
- [60:43]
Reese Oliver
Showgirl. You make a terrible cd or you make videos that feel like rejected Netflix original horror movie premises and you just put YouTubers in them.
- [60:52]
Stephen Asarch
Instead. Sure, I'll say that about Mr. Beast, but I will not dare touch the Swifties. It's a fandom I am much.
- [60:57]
Reese Oliver
Too terrified of not willing to beef with. That's so fair. All right, Is Jimmy's goal to keep his image clean or merely cleaner than the company he keeps so he looks better in.
- [61:07]
Stephen Asarch
Comparison? I think Jimmy needs his brand to be clean. Jimmy specifically needs to keep selling chocolate bars and action figures to children. And I truly believe the Beast game scandal in Vegas, where it was a terrible combination of events where there was a network shortage and no one was getting any food and, you know, the. The line about not be able to get like, tampons, that was more terrifying to him than most of the other like, like the View stats thing, you know, because that hit the main mainstream. If there is mainstream coverage of his controversies, that terrifies.
- [61:40]
Reese Oliver
Him. The whole thing could.
- [61:41]
Stephen Asarch
Topple. Yeah, my coverage on Rolling Stone was mainstream enough for him to at least have to get his PR people in work, but for the most part, he wants his image to seem personable. I don't necessarily think he wants it to be squeaky clean, because why else would you go on Kick with Aiden Ross and XQC and, and say a bunch of Edgy, edgy stuff all the time. If you want to be seen as a YouTube Mr. Rogers, that's not the goal. The goal is to be.
- [62:10]
Reese Oliver
Cool. Yeah, like a little offensive, but just in very small doses that you can curate. That gives you enough leeway to do essentially whatever you.
- [62:18]
Stephen Asarch
Want. I believe, again, I have a parasocial relationship with Jimmy. I've never actually spoken with.
- [62:23]
Reese Oliver
Him. I'm sure many.
- [62:24]
Stephen Asarch
Do. Yeah, I know, but like when I interview an influencer, I feel the parasite social relationship is no longer as strong because I actually have a sense of who they are as people. With Jimmy, I have very little actual idea who he is as a person, but I've been kind of able to piece together a few bits. Jimmy has no sense of humor. He lacks the ability to understand a joke unless it is mean or belittling. If you watch a lot of his content, he's just mean to a guy named Nolan over and over and over, because that's what it is. When I've spoken to people around Beast, they. They agree with that. So he's just kind of like, like a caricature, you know, and doesn't really understand those social.
- [62:57]
Reese Oliver
Dynamics. You touched on Beast Games, now this has hit the mainstream. You've written a handful of very good articles about it, and it is just absolute insanity. From what I can tell, Beast Games was something of a cesspool that realized pretty much anything that could go potentially wrong with the Mr. Beast production. So can you, as concisely as possible, give us the tea on what Beast Games was, what happened, what made it culty, and what this means for Jimmy and the creator space in general for the.
- [63:27]
Stephen Asarch
Future? First, I'll say there is no was. Beast Games will continue for a very long time. Amazon has a quarter of a billion dollars put aside for Beast Games season two and three and four and God knows how many others. But Beast Games Season 1 was such a unique clusterfuck because there were so many different things that had to go wrong and have someone in charge who didn't know what they were doing. So at bare minimum, Jimmy Donaldson has always said he hates the mainstream. So when he gets this mainstream opportunity, he wants to do it his own way. He doesn't necessarily want to do it like every other reality show that has kind of been proven and works. He brought in his own people to create this thing that was going to be the largest reality show in history. He wanted to be the biggest because again, it's all about headlines. It's always about being the biggest. The Flashiest originally, the Beast Games, they theorized having 5,000 people, and then it went down to 2,000 and then it became a thousand. They wanted to go as big, big, big as possible. And the first round in Las Vegas could not have gone more horribly. They had a thousand people in a giant pit waiting around, not doing anything. There was. There was a system outage that happened at the exact same time they were filming. So all of the wristbands that the contestants had weren't working. So no one was able to give people their proper medication or bring them to their hotel room because the hotel systems were also down. Everything was just going wrong at the exact same time. And you also have a thousand people there who are confused. They're not getting the necessary food, they're not getting their clothing items, their medicine. At one point, they have to sleep on the floor of the stadium because filming was going so terribly that they just needed it to keep going. And while Vegas was happening, it sort of hit the mainstream. The New York Times covered it. I was speaking to people at the time, time, and it was going so terribly. You kind of get an insight into what was going on. Colin and Samir, who are two YouTubers who were very close to Mr. Beast, were filming a behind the scenes video while it was happening. So I was able to actually kind of like prove a lot of my reporting because I was like, oh, that's that thing I wrote about. It's right.
- [65:28]
Reese Oliver
There. Oh, you, you put it right there.
- [65:30]
Stephen Asarch
Cool. Like right after the story breaks, that's when Mr. Beast is like staring like, am I evil? Like, is this bad? Oh my God, what's going on? On. So when the actual show was being filmed, because that was all for a YouTube video. I don't know if it started as going to be a YouTube video or because it went so terribly, it was going to be a YouTube video. They then took half of them and brought them to Toronto. The reason they picked Toronto was because tax purposes, basically, they were able to get away with it cheaper by using Toronto workforce. And the crew members that I spoke with, I spoke about a dozen crew members and contestants the Beast Games. And they told me that they didn't really know who Mr. Beast was. But work was so bad in Toronto, there was just not a lot of jobs in the filming space right now. So they had to take the gig. Even if they knew about how crappy things were in Vegas, they still had to take the gig. And the Beast Games actual filming was a different type of clusterfuck because they built this giant Thing and they had to keep it going, going. At one point there was a record rainfall where the entire set flooded. A lot of the actual competitions were taking place inside these airplane hangars. And I have videos of like water shooting out of the floor in these airplane hangers. And just like pure chaos. All of these tailored suits that had to be made because all of the Beast game security guards and crew members all had to wear like suits with a mask on them because you couldn't dare show people's faces. It was actually in the second challenge challenge, the contestants that got eliminated tried to mutiny and wanted to form a union. Basically there were instructions that were put on screen before everyone could kind of see.
- [67:07]
Reese Oliver
Them.
- [67:07]
Stephen Asarch
Yes. And these like 200 or so contestants lost their minds. I have videos of them sort of like screaming at the executives to try to figure out like what the hell was going around. Because they all felt that they were unjustly kicked off the show. They didn't feel it was a fair show. A lot of people just kind of felt like they were kind of getting kicked off for no reason. But I will say the contestants were fed and were hoteled. They learned from Vegas that you can't screw the pooch that hard. But when it came to crew members, absolutely not. Crew members I spoke with said they weren't fed enough. They were paid a lot less than the wage they were used to. They were being worked incredibly hard. And one crew member I spoke with was permanently disabled on the set for pure negligence of Beast Games, in my.
- [67:51]
Reese Oliver
Opinion. Can you say more about.
- [67:52]
Stephen Asarch
That? Yeah, that's my Business Insider article. So the, the story is it's September 11, 2024, the last day of filming on the Beast Games. And Sam, a 24 year old electrician, is. It's his first day on set and he doesn't really know much about beasts, but his friend got him the gig. There's a giant tower in the middle of the Beast Games. He is underneath the tower, basically like wrangling wires. At one point he is leaving the tower and a giant piece of 200 pound wood meant to look like concrete. Concrete falls on his clavicle on the left side. So I guess right here and throws him to the ground. He hits his head back. He's bleeding out. He's saying, I don't want to die. They immediately rush him to the hospital. He has a whole bunch of issues. I believe he had his pancreas removed. Most of his spine was. Part of his spine was broken. Permanently disabled because of this. And according to my reporting the reason that it fell. And I will say Mr. Beast team did not tell deny this. So on the fourth floor of the tower, there was a crane like a lift attached to the piece, but they had taken off the third floor piece and there was nothing attached to it. So when this guy fell out, this thing sort of just got pushed out, fell on him. He's still permanently disabled. He's able to lift a few more pounds than he is than he was when I spoke with him in March. But Beast has not spoken about this in the slightest. They have completely ignored. Ignored it. I will say that a source close to production claims no responsibility. Beast takes no responsibility when it comes to the accident. They also don't blame the guy. Whose fault is it? Not my job. But like negligence, like that is kind of why I go to like Beast is an Amazon warehouse where it's all about how much stuff can they push out and if the people that make it get hurt, that's just kind of part of it. This isn't the only injury I've heard of on Beast Games when it comes to crew members. It's just kind of the one that I had heard from so many different people, people that I needed to figure out what happened. You know, it's not every day that you heard the tower falls on 911 at the Beast.
- [69:52]
Reese Oliver
Games. No, no. I was like, I didn't connect those dots until you just said.
- [69:56]
Stephen Asarch
That. But I know that was the only, I think, virality I got out of. That was the meme of the tower fell on 911 at the Beast Games. The actual story did not do nearly as well as the.
- [70:06]
Reese Oliver
Meme. Never. Never does. Of course not. And that's the Internet Mr. Beast has.
- [70:09]
Stephen Asarch
Created. But that's it. It's like this is why I try to talk about this stuff as much as possible. Because Mr. Beast's SEO will always be a thousand times stronger than anything I'm able to create. But I want this story to go out there because I don't want this to happen again. I haven't heard anything. Is awful happening on Beast Game season two. I do believe they've learned a bit. They're not using non union workers. From my knowledge, they could still be, but it's a lot of like Survivor contestants and people who are kind of used to reality.
- [70:36]
Reese Oliver
Shows. Yeah. I was like, that sounds strategic. It's like MLMs recruit Mormon women because they already.
- [70:42]
Stephen Asarch
Know. They already know how it works. So it'll probably be better for season two. But again, it's just kind of like, this only happened last year, and it's basically like nothing.
- [70:51]
Reese Oliver
Happened. And that's the way of the Beast. Throw so much at you in such rapid succession that you're just in constant state of whiplash from all of his very many scandals, and they all blur together into one big terrible legacy. And with that, it is time to give dear Jimmy a verdict. So every cult on this show is either a live your life, a watch your back, or a get the fuck out level Cult. Steven, which of these categories would you place Mr. Beast.
- [71:22]
Stephen Asarch
Into? I guess I'll break it up into two parts. I'll do fans and employees with fans. Live your life like it's a YouTuber. You know, just make sure you're not going too crazy. Standing outside his Greenville home, understand that the content you consume is not real. It is fabricated to push a parasocial agenda to get you to consume more and more and more. But just consuming it, it's fine. If you are inside of Beast. Watch your back. Jobs these days are hard to come by. And when you're stuck inside a company that I believe pays well, but you're kind of devoted to the Beast, you really have to be dedicated to him and really figure out what you want out of this might not necessarily be what the company wants out of this. So if you're willing to tolerate it for a little bit to like, get it on the resume, I've heard plenty of people who have done well afterwards. You know, you're not in Scientology and basically going to sign a billion year.
- [72:16]
Reese Oliver
Contract. Yeah. There's not so many exit costs to leaving the Cult of.
- [72:20]
Stephen Asarch
Beast. Yeah, it's not ethically divisive. It's just like financial financially divisive. Are you willing to kind of put up with a boss that is going to be picky and going to make you make 50 different versions of the same thumbnail, then maybe you can tolerate it. But I think those people are usually very young and they'll usually burn out very easily. The people who are pro beast are very pro beast. It is very religious in that regard that you really have to, like, devote yourself to the people brand. For better or.
- [72:51]
Reese Oliver
Worse. I think I'm gonna go watch your back because I agree. I think it's such a big machine and Jimmy cares so little about any individual part of it that I think there are ways to just get what you can gather from it and take that and run. I think he's also a good. Like, this is what I shouldn't do with my platform or what the consequences of trying to utilize a platform this way is like, Jimmy ultimately seems to have no soul. And I think even a lot of his fans would be like, yeah, we don't know anything about him as a per. Like, I. I think that's the price you pay is being kind of personality.
- [73:21]
Stephen Asarch
Less. He also hates when you say he doesn't have a Soul. There's a YouTuber I know who basically tweeted jimmy has no soul and Mr. Beast DM'd him, saying, Hey, I have a soul and I'd love to talk with you, because he, you know, couldn't even take.
- [73:35]
Reese Oliver
That. Well, Jimmy, if you want to be on part two and if you have something to contend with, hit our.
- [73:40]
Stephen Asarch
Line. Oh, if you Mr. Beast interview before me, I be.
- [73:43]
Reese Oliver
Furious. Oh, well, I would send him your.
- [73:45]
Stephen Asarch
Way. Appreciate it. I just show up instead of you. Hey, Mr. Beast, how's it going? I have a.
- [73:51]
Reese Oliver
List. Pull a Jimmy on Jimmy. I love that. Okay. Stephen, thank you so much for joining us. If our listeners want to follow your work, where can they find.
- [73:58]
Stephen Asarch
You? I am on the hellscape known as X under I am Ace Arch and blue sky as Acearch. I will be starting a YouTube channel sometime in the near future and. And, you know, just keep reading. Keep having media.
- [74:12]
Reese Oliver
Literacy. Oh, God. If anything you can take from this episode, it's that. Well, Culties, that is our show. Thank you so much for listening. Join us for a new cult next week and in the meantime, stay culty but not too.
- [74:27]
Podcast Sponsor/Announcer
Culty. Sounds like Occult was created by Amanda Montel and edited by Jordan Moore of the Pod Cabin. This episode was hosted and produced by Reese Oliver. Our managing producer is Katie Epperson. Our theme music is by Casey Cole. If you enjoyed the show, we'd really appreciate it if you could leave it 5 stars on Spotify or Apple podcasts. It really helps the show a lot. And if you like this podcast, feel free to check out my book, Cultish the Language of Fanaticism, which inspired the show. You might also enjoy my other books, the Age of Magical Notes on Modern Irrationality and Word A Feminist Guide to Taking Back the English Language. Thanks as well to our network, Studio71. And be sure to follow the Sounds Like a Cult cult on Instagram for all the discourse. Sounds Like a Cult Pod. Or support us on Patreon to listen to the show ad free at patreon.com soundslikeacult.