Why was I invited to Beast Studios?

0:01 It is 4:20 a.m.

0:06 and I am up because I am flying to North Carolina to go tour MrBeast's studio...

0:19 for some reason.

0:21 Strange things happen to YouTubers all the time.

0:23 In a sense, it's part of the job to put yourself in the path of weird things.

0:27 You need an open mind to catch the diamonds in the rough,

0:30 but it does mean that sorting through my email is

0:33 often something resembling a trip to an alien petting zoo.

0:36 A parade of barely identifiable nonsense and many

0:39 a thing that you very obviously should not touch.

0:43 Back in late October, I got an intriguing email.

0:46 Do you want a most expenses paid trip to tour

0:48 MrBeast Studio and preview Beast Games season 2 in December?

0:53 Yes?

0:54 I mean, yes.

0:57 Yeah, I do, but...

0:58 Why would Team Beast be reaching out to me of all people?

1:03 How would I have ever wound up on their radar?

1:07 Critically: do they know who I am?

1:10 I needed answers.

1:12 [upbeat music] So, this was the question hanging over my head:

1:34 Why was Team Beast reaching out to me?

1:37 What was all this?

1:39 What's actually going on?

1:41 Actually, even before that, the question was more like,

1:44 "Is this even Team Beast," "and if they’re some scammers

1:47 impersonating Team Beast… do they know who I am?” Wait,

1:51 no, even before even before that, we’ve gotta introduce our cast of characters.

1:56 It may feel to many of you that MrBeast needs no introduction,

2:00 but surprisingly he does.

2:01 A lot of adults, especially those who don't

2:04 interact much with boys aged 9 to 14,

2:06 are maybe aware of the name, but have no real concept beyond that.

2:11 MrBeast is the online alias of Jimmy Donaldson,

2:15 who heads the at-present most subscribed single YouTube channel ever,

2:20 eponymously named MrBeast.

2:21 The channel and its many, many gaming, philanthropy,

2:24 and multilingual spin-offs are run by Team Beast

2:27 as the largest single organ within Beast Industries,

2:30 the conglomerate company that handles all the various MrBeast

2:34 things from a defunct cell phone company to a cartoon.

2:38 And they were asking me if I wanted to come to Greenville,

2:42 North Carolina, and peek around inside their stuff.

2:46 This process was kind of hallucinatory: Team Beast is understandably secretive,

2:50 so details in all our communication was pretty bare bones.

2:53 And while I can understand why that was the case,

2:56 it left a lot of room for my imagination to run wild with potential answers.

3:01 For your viewing pleasure, I've taken these theories and compiled

3:05 them into an internet friendly numbered list.

3:08 [smooth jazz music] The first and most obvious theory,

3:19 of course, was that this was all a scam,

3:21 not because they were doing anything scammy,

3:24 but just because none of it made any sense.

3:27 You want me, Dan Olson, the Line Goes Up guy,

3:30 to fly out to North Carolina to watch a couple episodes

3:33 of a TV show that I'm almost certainly going to be overtly hostile towards?

3:38 Surely that was just the initial hook for a pig-butchering operation.

3:42 But since there wasn't an open scam,

3:44 we decided it was fine to just keep talking to them until they asked for money.

3:49 After all, that would also be a pretty funny video.

3:52 Eventually, they did ask for personal information,

3:54 but only the stuff that would actually be needed to get onto a plane,

3:58 and they never asked for money, so I went ahead and got on the plane.

4:02 Of course, we did try and do some due diligence here.

4:05 The domain the emails came from was MrBeastyoutube.com which is a real

4:10 domain but the domain just forwards to the MrBeast YouTube channel,

4:14 so on one hand that didn't really tell

4:17 us anything about the people sending the email,

4:20 but also it was at least something of an indicator of legitimacy.

4:24 Like MrBeast's core audience is really young,

4:28 so I'd imagine that MrBeastyoutube.com is a very common

4:31 typo that Team Beast would lock down pretty quickly,

4:35 specifically to avoid impersonation or scammers.

4:39 And of course, the big thing that debunked

4:41 this theory is that the the trip was actually real.

4:44 In fact, I already told you I went,

4:47 so really there's not much suspense in this theory.

4:51 I arrived in Greenville without any drama and met up

4:53 with the 11 other YouTubers who were part of this little tour group.

4:57 The funny thing in this theory though is that everyone

5:00 else on the tour had the exact same first assumption.

5:04 It was literally the first point of conversation we had.

5:07 And one group even insisted that Team Beast do a video

5:10 call with them to verify that they were at least real people.

5:15 Which, uh, you know I...

5:17 I wish I'd thought of that.

5:20 I- I suddenly feel like I'm at a higher

5:24 risk of getting Taken than I would like to believe.

5:29 I should- I should- just a sec...

5:32 [furious typing] So, a print out of our somewhat insane itinerary.

5:43 So, I- So, 7:30 I need to be down in the hotel for dinner.

5:50 Um, what is on the back?

5:52 Nothing.

5:52 Okay.

5:53 Even up until the last minute, my professional intuition of what this tour

5:56 would look like kept getting upended.

5:58 I had assumed much earlier that the tour itself would be little more than

6:02 a walk-and-talk followed by a "vertical slice" screening

6:05 of big moments from the first few episodes.

6:08 So, the warning to be prepared for a full day was a little shocking.

6:13 Theory number two was that this was all

6:15 a stealth way of getting us into A Content.

6:17 Like I'd show up and suddenly Jimmy would

6:19 jump out of a helicopter screaming something like,

6:21 "I tricked 10 video essayists into giving me their passports.

6:25 Now we're going to find out how many shirts they can sew in a week."

6:29 The email said that we were allowed to make our own content if we wanted,

6:33 no pressure, but they had no plans to make

6:36 MrBeast content of the trip at this time.

6:38 So, you know, maybe they were leaving the door open for a surprise like that.

6:43 But in the sober light of day, realistically,

6:45 that's just not how Team Beast does surprises.

6:48 They're more on the speed of not telling participants

6:51 the exact details of their solitary isolation challenge rather than,

6:56 like, hidden cameras.

6:57 Still, the human brain isn't nearly as logical as we'd like to imagine,

7:01 so as we toured the main compound and got a glimpse

7:04 of a bunch of sets in various stages of construction and disassembly,

7:08 then drove out to stand in a field and watch

7:11 the core team work on a main channel Beast video,

7:13 this possibility was still always in the back of our minds.

7:18 [distant laughter] Isn't that one of Bill Pulte's fake awards?

7:25 Theory number three, which is the first one to really have some meat to it,

7:28 is that this was all a wine and dine for Beast Games season 2.

7:32 A wine and dine is pretty straightforward in concept:

7:34 a video game studio or movie studio or car company

7:38 or Silicon Valley tech dingus or whoever gets a bunch of reviewers,

7:41 flies them out somewhere,

7:43 puts them up in a nice hotel, gets them to do cool stuff, feeds them,

7:47 shows them the product in an ideal context,

7:50 and then tosses them some branded swag on the way out.

7:53 If it's a video game,

7:54 they're playing it on a computer that costs as much as a car.

7:57 If it's a car, it's a trim loaded with features that aren't even for sale.

8:01 If it's a robot, it's a dude in a suit.

8:05 The days of the Dante Inferno guys sending

8:08 reviewers 200 bucks for positive coverage are mostly over.

8:12 Companies have gotten marginally more tasteful with it, which is a shame.

8:17 Bring back promotional Halo 2 branded condoms.

8:20 The whole idea is really just to take the reviewer out of their normal element,

8:24 tailor their headspace, control the experience, and you know,

8:29 maybe persuade them to give you a better review.

8:32 So, in my case, even if this wasn't a wine and dine,

8:35 even if Team Beast literally did not care one whit if

8:39 any of us made a video about Beast Game season 2,

8:42 what was set up for us was still literally every component part of one.

8:48 So, let's talk numbers.

8:50 Hotel room itself is a hotel room,

8:54 but we do have a, uh, swag bag, uh, positioned under a light.

9:02 So, let's see what we've got.

9:05 In terms of swag, we each got a hoodie, two t-shirts, and a hat,

9:08 a Beast Labs toy, a bag of meat snacks, and some other candy.

9:13 Then at the end of the day, after watching three episodes of the show,

9:16 they let us just go hog on a standee

9:18 of candy bars before presenting us each with a customized

9:21 Beast Games season 2 Strong V Smart team jersey

9:24 in front of the signature MrBeast massive pile of prop money.

9:28 All in all, the value of the swag came out to $220 to $230 US.

9:33 Add in flights, hotel, luxury car service from Raleigh to Greenville,

9:37 a restaurant dinner Tuesday evening, and then two catered meals on Wednesday.

9:41 It averages out somewhere around $2,100 to $2,200 US per head.

9:46 And the vast majority of that is travel and hotel.

9:49 That's not a crazy number by any means, but let's acknowledge the context here.

9:54 If I spent that on a one person, one day, two night vacation,

9:58 I'd say I got a bad deal unless I saw a really sick concert as part of it.

10:02 But also, on the other hand,

10:04 it's not even the most expensive business trip I've been sent on.

10:07 And that's the gap that a lot of outlets take advantage of.

10:10 There's a lot of smaller YouTubers out there who are full-time but just barely.

10:14 They're young, they're hungry, and they're taking a swing at a dream,

10:18 but they're also inexperienced and easily impressed.

10:21 That means that a corporation can spend

10:23 a very normal business trip amount of money flying

10:26 a 21-year-old YouTuber out to LA and get

10:29 a really disproportionate emotional reaction out of it.

10:32 That's the math underpinning a wine and dine.

10:35 And this is a business model

10:37 that has proven really effective for certain brands.

10:40 But that didn't really line up with the reality of our tour group.

10:44 No one in the group was exceptionally young, all of us were full-time producers,

10:48 most of us had little inclination to make a video out of the trip

10:52 at all and had mostly agreed to come out of raw curiosity.

10:56 I had assumed that I was going to be the odd one out,

10:58 that I was going to be surrounded by a bunch of credulous children,

11:02 but actual attitudes ranged from interested and curious to just kind of lost.

11:09 But carrying this theory to its logical conclusion, what's the goal?

11:13 Well, it would be to get reviews of Beast Games

11:16 season 2 out of us as part of a marketing strategy.

11:20 See, even if someone like me goes home and makes a negative review of the show,

11:24 statistically those criticisms are going to be softened,

11:28 the flaws forgiven as the foibless of mortal creators,

11:32 because the viewing experience was optimal:

11:34 I was removed from my normal environment, pampered a little bit,

11:38 given free stuff, shown the behind the scenes spectacle,

11:42 made to feel special, and also given a face to attach to all of it.

11:47 As a mandatory part of this is that the video

11:50 you're watching needs to go through their internal review process.

11:53 And while the thrust of that process is to make

11:56 sure that I haven't accidentally included production schedules, phone numbers,

11:59 or details on unreleased content in the background,

12:03 it still definitionally creates a surface of interaction that's

12:07 going to influence the way that arguments are framed.

12:11 It is for most people a lot

12:14 harder to call something an existentially depressing exercise,

12:17 a glimpse through the veil into a realm of undiluted capitalism

12:21 where the concept of creative expression simply doesn't exist- is excluded

12:26 from the process in the same way that my process doesn't

12:30 account for the possibility of being besieged by the armies of Sauron,

12:34 the shadow in the east- if they have

12:36 a name and face to attach to that statement.

12:39 So, the secret sixth ingredient in a wine and dine is a human face.

12:44 I will say they've been like extremely accommodating,

12:47 but I mean it does make like this process nice and frictionless.

12:50 So, like I'm not going to I'm not really going to complain.

12:54 That's a pretty cool set.

12:56 On the subject of obligations, an obligation that isn't present is

13:00 the obligation to make content about the trip.

13:03 That was actually quite explicit.

13:06 quote, "There are no expectations surrounding content creation." Now,

13:10 while that sounds like reviews aren't the thing that they're after,

13:14 that phrase tripped a specific fuse in my brain.

13:18 A variant of this that you might be

13:20 familiar with is the camera equipment review genre,

13:23 where companies would send out free lenses and stuff, kit that costs a thousand,

13:27 two thousand dollars at retail and they say, "Oh, no obligation.

13:30 Just do whatever you want with it." And then these smaller channels,

13:34 often younger influencers, just go, "Oh,

13:36 okay," and make a video about the thing,

13:39 and since there wasn't any money exchanged, there was no deal made,

13:43 they just leave out the part where they got the thing for free.

13:47 Technically, everyone's in the clear.

13:50 It's not sponsored content,

13:51 but it's a backdoor to sponsored content that exploits

13:55 the good faith and naivity of inexperienced creators

13:58 that don't have the institutional support structure that would

14:01 teach them to watch out for stuff like that.

14:04 That specific example is slightly outdated at this point,

14:08 but only because other gear reviewers who know better and saw what was

14:13 happening started pushing for making full

14:15 disclosure an expected element of any review.

14:18 I should provide some disclosure.

14:19 Sony did lend me this camera to make this review.

14:21 I don't get to keep it.

14:22 No money changed hands.

14:23 Sony doesn't get any input on this video's production,

14:24 nor do they get to see it before it's posted.

14:26 So, that's in the back of my head here, right?

14:28 And so, this was the kind of briar patch of trying

14:31 to figure out what was going on with this trip.

14:34 What did they actually want?

14:36 And why and how did my name end up on their list?

14:42 Even if the trip itself wasn't shady,

14:44 everything Team Beast did was also something a shady team would do.

14:50 Doug Walker was actually one of the creators Team Beast invited,

14:53 and he put out a video that is really illustrative of the kind

14:56 of thing you'd expect to come out of a wine and dine.

14:59 [Doug] I have to admit, even though these types of shows aren't my thing,

15:02 I was genuinely invested through most of it.

15:04 Truthfully, the whole attitude of the place seemed upbeat.

15:07 I can definitely say it was pretty nice.

15:10 Everyone from my standpoint seemed very honest, kind, and direct.

15:14 A big thanks for having us out there when honestly you didn't need to.

15:17 I can certainly say I had a lot of fun

15:20 and it was cool seeing how a media giant like this functions.

15:23 It was a surprising and surreal experience,

15:25 but it was a positive one I'm thankful I'll never forget.

15:28 [Dan] In a word, the video is polite, cordial,

15:30 trying to give Team Beast what he thinks they want.

15:33 There's nothing particularly offensive about it.

15:36 The vlog is just the inevitable output of the process Doug had just experienced.

15:41 This is what that machine is designed to make.

15:45 But notably, Doug caught some flak in the comments

15:48 because he forgot to mention that it wasn't sponsored content.

15:51 So his compliment sandwiches came across to some as just shilling for MrBeast.

15:57 If there's a flaw in this theory, it's in the return on investment.

16:00 The whole affair cost Team Beast somewhere

16:03 in the neighborhood of $28,000 to $30,000.

16:05 And while that's peanuts in the scope of Beast Games' marketing budget,

16:09 the return is also kind of peanuts.

16:13 This isn't so much a question of can

16:15 they get $30,000 worth of coverage out of us,

16:18 which I don't think they can, but more of a question of why even bother.

16:24 At the point of writing,

16:25 only three other participants had made literally anything about the trip.

16:29 Doug made a video, as already mentioned,

16:31 and had it ready to go for when the embargo lifted.

16:34 Tik Tok creator Kate Riccio did a podcast

16:36 episode on her side YouTube channel in early February.

16:39 Ben at How to Beat posted a vlog about the trip in mid February.

16:43 And then I finally rolled out this sucker in whenever this comes out,

16:48 long after every video and show I got a sneak peek at had aired and wafted away.

16:53 I don't know how to say this without sounding

16:55 like I'm throwing my fellow content creators under the bus,

16:58 but "I toured MrBeast Studio" isn't an instant hack to a hit video.

17:04 In fact, they tend to under-perform.

17:07 There's just not $30,000 worth of exposure there.

17:11 So, this just can't be the primary reason.

17:14 I refuse to believe that Team Beast, the optimization lords of YouTube,

17:20 foresaw Doug's video as the primary intended outcome of this exercise.

17:27 We're out on their backlot.

17:29 So, prison set, uh, the different set, uh, some other set.

17:35 Um, I mean, it's a backlot.

17:37 We also have a lovely sunset.

17:40 Theory four is that this was all an elaborate scheme

17:43 to lure us into the woods and have us killed.

17:46 They did not.

17:47 As a more serious theory,

17:49 there's the possibility that my involvement was in fact basically random.

17:53 That someone at Team Beast scraped a bunch of possible channels based

17:56 on target audience and favorable metrics and Folding Ideas was on that list.

18:01 That idea isn't entirely mutually exclusive with the rest of these theories,

18:06 but it only explains why *I* was in Greenville,

18:10 not necessarily *why* I was in Greenville.

18:14 [Ben] So, in that small amount of time we got to hang out with him one-on-one,

18:17 we basically let him know that we appreciated the stakes that he raised.

18:20 And at least 11 out of the 12 of us really appreciated the show.

18:24 You know what I mean?

18:24 [Dan] It's me.

18:25 I'll self-report.

18:26 He's talking about me.

18:28 The fifth theory, which didn't really crystallize

18:30 until we were in the thick of things,

18:32 is that this was all a roundabout version of a focus group.

18:35 One of the things that plagued the whole process was a deliberate vagueness.

18:40 Now, Team Beast has reasons to be secretive.

18:43 They are a large operation with a lot of moving parts,

18:46 they're very high-profile, some competitors are definitely obsessed

18:50 with scooping them on upcoming video concepts,

18:53 and there are security concerns with random

18:56 fans showing up at filming locations.

18:58 But...

18:59 rather than the forthright admission that details

19:02 were being withheld for operational reasons,

19:04 all of this was couched in really peppy corporate wording,

19:08 the kind that sounds inherently insincere and made it difficult to parse.

19:13 For example, I do believe they were telling the truth

19:16 about there not being any expectations around content creation.

19:20 From their perspective,

19:21 anything that we made to indirectly promote Beast Games was a bonus.

19:25 In fact, I suspect the main reason why they even left content

19:28 creation on the table was as a way of convincing us to come

19:32 incase any of the people they were reaching out to would feel like

19:35 they couldn't justify taking 3 days

19:38 away from their normal content creation schedule.

19:40 Less of an issue for me,

19:42 but definitely an issue for people making daily or weekly content.

19:46 So, I think when they said,

19:48 "We want your thoughts," that wasn't just hollow platitudes,

19:51 the kind of thing that corporate stooges say as a reflex.

19:54 There were a few things wrapped up in that, but the obvious

19:57 one was feedback on season 2 of Beast Games,

20:00 not for season 2 itself, but for season 3,

20:03 which they are in the process of starting.

20:05 They were only going to show us the first two episodes,

20:08 but then Jimmy rang up an Amazon guy and convinced them to show us a third.

20:12 And even though these episodes were visibly incomplete,

20:15 nothing that we were going to say was about to alter the trajectory of season 2.

20:20 What was interesting was that basically nothing

20:23 we brought up ever caught them offguard.

20:26 More or less, every point was met by someone from Team Beast or someone

20:29 from Amazon and a couple times even Jimmy

20:32 himself kind of nodding their head and going,

20:35 "Yeah, we've talked about that," in a really kind of resigned tone.

20:39 Now, that's not a bad thing.

20:41 Really, all it means is that they're professionals

20:44 who are aware of the thing that they're making.

20:47 But it did lead to a newish theory,

20:51 theory 5.5: We were there to settle an argument.

20:55 Through this lens, everything snaps into focus.

20:58 Why this group of people who don't

21:00 really overlap with MrBeast in any conventional way?

21:03 Why a highly critical middle-aged curmudgeon like me?

21:06 Why so cagey about the purpose of all of this?

21:10 This is a specialist test audience:

21:12 you know there's problems, but there's a bunch of them,

21:14 and no one can agree on which ones need to be fixed first.

21:18 The idea here is that you actively avoid poisoning the well.

21:21 You don't mention your own anxieties about the thing.

21:24 You try not to call attention to anything.

21:27 You just show the thing to a bunch of critics

21:30 and you see what they bring up all on their own.

21:32 Now, of course, that's all going to be

21:34 built on a foundation of criticisms of season 1, which aren't hard to find.

21:40 Everything on the show is exaggerated.

21:43 Everything is hyperbole.

21:45 And that's why shows like Survivor are like

21:47 the number one reality shows of all time.

21:49 you really get connected with every single character that is on the show.

21:54 I don't know how you can do that with a thousand contestants.

21:57 A show with so little to offer its audience that at the very

22:01 end its host feels the need to look at us and say, "Wow, wasn't that something?

22:05 Wasn't that important and deep?

22:07 Wasn't that quite an adventure?

22:09 Look at all the choices people made.

22:11 Don't you guys love that?

22:12 Don't you guys love the abstract concept of choices?" And it's like, "No,

22:17 I don't." So, when Doug says "it's better

22:20 than season 1," that's some pretty important context.

22:24 We're not exactly talking about the Killing of a Sacred Deer here.

22:27 Is that is that is that too much?

22:30 Is that the most joke I've ever told?

22:33 The Yorgos Lanthimost joke?

22:36 Anyway, we were shown the first three episodes of season 2,

22:40 and we had a few notes.

22:42 [Ben] At least 11 out of the 12 of us really appreciated the show.

22:45 You know what I mean?

22:46 [Dan] Okay.

22:47 And then I had a few more notes.

22:49 There was an improvement on characters.

22:50 People actually have names now.

22:52 Amazing.

22:53 Cutting the cast down to 200 is still too many,

22:56 but it gets the pool down to a manageable number much faster.

22:59 There was less of the boys, Jimmy's gormless friends from his YouTube channel,

23:03 and fewer instances of contestants being eliminated by pure random chance.

23:07 But the games were still bad.

23:09 It was still tacky and gauche.

23:11 They still have been unable to shake the ties to Squid Game.

23:14 And there's still too much of the goddamn boys.

23:17 All right, my script here says "clip of one

23:20 of the boys just lingering and being useless." Not hard to find.

23:23 All right, so let's just scrub through an episode here.

23:29 And yeah, there we go.

23:34 But yeah, overall our group's criticisms were fairly standard.

23:37 We probably gave them a conventional mainstream adult's perspective.

23:41 Though it has been interesting to watch the audience's

23:44 perspective diverge from our own opinion of the first

23:47 three episodes because a bunch of things we

23:50 considered to be an improvement, they do not agree.

23:53 You know, it's sort of interesting to consider that maybe they brought us

23:57 in because they want to pivot Beast Games into really being a mainstream thing,

24:02 not just a superersized MrBeast episode,

24:04 but now they're kind of trapped because they already have a core

24:08 audience that's here for the tacky spectacle and excess and Jimmy screaming,

24:12 "Think about the money in someone's ear."

24:15 [screaming] Are you guys numb to money?

24:17 [screaming louder] This is real money!

24:18 Real money!

24:20 None of you want a million dollars?!

24:23 So, that was the fifth theory.

24:25 But even here, like, I'm- I'm way more confident in this idea than the others.

24:30 But the problem is that all of the things

24:33 that make a wine and dine work undermine this one.

24:36 You're just not going to get the kind of incisive feedback you need if

24:40 everyone giving the feedback is riding the high of an all expenses paid trip.

24:45 The criticisms will be dulled, the harshness downplayed,

24:48 everything's going to be a compliment sandwich

24:51 around "it was better than season 1."

24:54 So even now there's a lot of questions I just do not have answers for.

25:02 This is this was a glimpse

25:07 into a completely diametrically opposite production mentality.

25:15 If you watch the other vlogs of the tour,

25:17 this is the point where they start to wrap up.

25:19 They say that we raided Jimmy's supply of candy bars,

25:22 were given custom Beast Games jerseys with our channel names,

25:24 took some photos in front of the big pile of fake money, and all went home.

25:29 But earlier in the day, before the screening,

25:31 actually even before most of the tour,

25:34 we were sat down for an interesting conversation.

25:37 And while most of it was softball questions,

25:40 there was one that really stood out.

25:42 And I wish they'd given us time to prepare beforehand because boy,

25:47 I could have given a much better answer.

25:50 How do you create fandom?

25:52 [screeching klaxon] And to answer that question,

26:05 I've got a huge surprise for you.

26:06 This backdrop isn't a real backdrop.

26:08 It's actually just a curtain.

26:10 [dubstep] Today, this becomes the first video

26:18 essay ever recorded in a bouncy castle.

26:21 Isn't that right, certification dude?

26:25 I mean, we weren't going for a Guinness World Record, but we got one.

26:29 Let's go.

26:30 [dubstep] [dubstep fades] One of the first things that people notice

26:45 about the Beast franchise is the profound inauthenticity of it all,

26:49 which is something we'll definitely be unpacking.

26:52 But something that has come to really stand out

26:54 to me is a less visible but equally profound proud inefficiency.

26:59 In order to explain this sufficiently, I need to get you more up to speed

27:04 with the details of what Beast Games is actually like.

27:07 And to do that, we're going to jump right

27:10 into the deep end and then work our way back from there.

27:13 The word I'm going to repeat a bunch here is "intent".

27:16 There's no intentionality to it.

27:19 Episode 7 and 8 of Beast Games season 2 are delirious in their structure,

27:24 seemingly assembled by someone who doesn't know what the word 'episode' means.

27:28 Episode 7 begins with the resolution of the previous episode,

27:31 a three and a half minute segment where Caty is eliminated with a sledgehammer,

27:36 narrowing the contestants down to the final 10.

27:38 The next 17 minutes are a last supper where Team Beast brings

27:42 in the contestants' families and they get to have a big meal together,

27:45 including all the kids getting just

27:47 absolute fistfuls of Feastables chocolate bars.

27:50 After that, the next 23 minutes,

27:51 fully half the run time of the actual episode once

27:54 you chop off the 3 and 1/2 minutes of credits,

27:57 is set up for the next challenge, Buried Alive.

28:00 This setup involves first the contestants strategizing amongst

28:03 themselves about who they should vote for as captain.

28:06 Then the introduction of the graveyard set,

28:08 then the vote for captain, which Nick wins, then the burying,

28:11 which is really just a formal sprinkling

28:13 of dirt over the windows of the plexiglass coffins.

28:16 Then an explanation of the rules of the game,

28:18 followed by a full 5 minutes of Nick

28:20 agonizing over how much money he should take,

28:23 with the episode ending on Nick seemingly committing to taking all the money.

28:27 [Jimmy] Are you going to take it?

28:34 [Nick] Yeah.

28:36 [Dan] But episode 8, Rug pulls that ending,

28:38 tossing the final line into the memory hole.

28:40 [Jimmy] What's your number?

28:46 [Nick] I'm going to take $250,000.

28:49 [Dan] Then they spend 31 minutes resolving the actual game,

28:53 14 minutes with contestants discussing the fallout of the game,

28:56 insert a 5-minute tourism ad for Saudi Arabia,

28:59 finishing on the setup for the next game, including an introduction to the set,

29:03 an explanation of the rules,

29:04 and then a cut at the first decision a player makes.

29:08 At some point in the production of Beast Games,

29:10 the decision was made for every episode to end on the very

29:13 specific cliffhanger of a player decision within the context of a game.

29:18 And while this works tolerably well in the first few episodes,

29:21 by the end of the season, the whole show is completely out of sync.

29:26 Rather than cliffhanging on a deciding moment

29:28 that will determine the outcome of a game,

29:30 like episode 2 implying that Johnny has any hope of making this 9-ft jump,

29:36 these episodes are ending at the moment their games actually get started.

29:40 One side effect of this is that the back half all just bleeds together,

29:43 the show becoming a structurless parade of segments.

29:47 But more to our purpose,

29:48 it indicates a bizarre creative process where they knew they needed to make 10

29:53 episodes and had at least broadly planned what games would be in which episodes,

29:58 indicated by Jimmy literally saying,

30:00 "Welcome to the second last episode" at one point.

30:03 [Jimmy] "Welcome to the second to last

30:06 episode." But this also indicates that they

30:08 hadn't considered what an episode would actually

30:12 look like and where they would end.

30:15 Our second point of reference here is Katy's elimination.

30:18 Like all these other cliffhangers, it is smeared across two episodes,

30:22 being resolved in episode 7, but set up at the end of episode 6.

30:27 And this setup is...

30:29 something else.

30:30 The entire sequence is cut together

30:32 from these truly horrendous crops of the footage,

30:35 a post-hoc attempt to veil the identity of the final eliminee,

30:39 meaning that the structure of this ending, the buildup to a cliffhanger,

30:43 was thought up later and wasn't actually produced that way with intent.

30:48 This is the outward manifestation of profound inefficiency.

30:53 The MrBeast strategy, and by extension, the Beast Games strategy,

30:57 is to point two dozen cameras at everything and sort it out later.

31:00 A strategy usually summarized as 'spray and pray',

31:03 a hallmark style of low-budget, trashy reality TV.

31:07 Beast Games season 2 is a 9 figure production.

31:10 That's the vague estimate I was told,

31:12 which makes it four to five times more expensive than a season of Survivor,

31:17 which comes in around 2 million per episode, times 13 episodes,

31:21 plus prizes rounded up to 30 million per season.

31:25 Even if my research is woefully out of date,

31:28 and a modern season of Survivor costs twice

31:31 that, that's still half a season of Beast Games.

31:35 But does Beast Game season 2 actually look

31:38 and feel like it's twice as expensive as Survivor, let alone five times?

31:45 Feel is hard to quantify, but Beast Game season 2 provides a really strong

31:49 contrast as a result of their crossover episode with Survivor,

31:53 which was by and large assembled by the Survivor crew.

31:56 Not only does the episode look better,

31:58 but it features a better challenge well balanced to make good TV.

32:02 And it's also the only episode that ends with an ending.

32:06 [Jimmy] What's going on in your mind?

32:11 [JC] Leverage.

32:15 In contrast, episode 2 features a now notorious game nebulously

32:19 named Bluff that just absolutely disintegrated on contact with the players.

32:24 Players each had a colored dot placed on the back

32:26 of their head and had to stand in the corresponding color circle.

32:29 The idea being that players had to rely on someone else to tell

32:33 them what color they had and they'd be vulnerable to a lie.

32:37 The issue was there was no incentive whatsoever to lie.

32:42 One, people valued their own integrity

32:44 and their own reputation above eliminating any single individual.

32:48 Two, everyone basically split into pairs.

32:51 So eliminating your partner one round just leaves

32:54 you with no one you trust the next round.

32:57 So you're basically gambling that enough other

33:00 people will also betray their safety buddy

33:02 at the exact same time and end the game

33:06 or else all you've done is eliminate yourself.

33:09 So people simply refused to lie round after round.

33:12 Of the people who were even eliminated by the game's rules,

33:15 most were due to a process error where

33:18 they waited too long or broke some other rule.

33:20 And one villain got eliminated through the power of social ostracization.

33:24 [Karim] Hey, what am I?

33:25 What am I?

33:25 Tyler.

33:25 Tyler.

33:26 Tyler!

33:28 [slowmo] Tyler!

33:28 [Dan] But no one even bluffed him.

33:30 They just refused to talk to him.

33:32 At the end of the day, absolutely no one lied.

33:35 And Jimmy had to eliminate people by drawing names from a box.

33:38 Is this absolute faceplant failure of a game really what

33:42 anyone should expect from something five times as expensive as Survivor?

33:47 This isn't just me being a snobby d*ckhead: normies are noticing this!

33:51 Everyone is saying it.

33:53 [Dan] What do you think of Beast Game season 2?

33:56 [Beast Dan] It isn't very good.

33:58 [Dan] Jimmy's shots and only Jimmy's shots were shot on an ALEXA 265,

34:02 which is a rental-only camera so limited and expensive that you

34:06 can only learn the price of it by breaking one.

34:09 It's an awesome camera and so Beast Games' decision

34:12 to rent one would have been a great idea,

34:15 if Jimmy was the one running the damned obstacle courses.

34:19 There's a pivotal moment in the finale where a contestant is eliminated

34:22 by being dropped into a pit and the whole thing is huge and melodramatic,

34:26 but then the actual hero shots of him going

34:28 out look like a phone recording of a computer monitor.

34:30 It looks so bad.

34:32 God, if only there were a rigged Alexa 265 somewhere in this room right now.

34:39 We already talked about a few,

34:40 but all of the challenges in games are just so slipshod and poorly thought out.

34:44 They all look like this and they all play like this.

34:47 The opening episode strong challenge came off

34:49 head and shoulders above the corresponding smarts challenge.

34:52 It seems clever and deliberate, but that's movie magic.

34:56 Due to a critical flaw in the game design,

34:58 the strong challenge was just too hard.

35:00 The majority of the strongs fell off their ropes

35:02 and the remainder was decided by an impromptu pushups tiebreaker.

35:06 The smart challenge, though, was also a creature of the edit.

35:09 We are shown the smart contestants playing three rounds of Simon,

35:12 already an incredibly lame challenge, but in reality,

35:16 they were playing Simon all night.

35:18 [Jimmy] We'll be doing this over and over again,

35:21 adding more and more blocks until 50 of you are eliminated.

35:25 [Dan] The sun rose and the crew had

35:27 to tape garbage bags to the walls to keep light

35:29 from leaking into the temporary structure they had built

35:32 in Nevada in lieu of renting a sound stage.

35:34 People simply weren't failing this incredibly easy game,

35:38 and it was taking way too long

35:41 to verify 100 individual stacks of blocks between takes.

35:44 So, at one point, Jimmy got bored, doubled the block count, and haved the time.

35:49 [Jimmy] We're cutting the time in half and adding four extra blocks.

35:53 [Dan] Immediately, eliminating 82 of his 100 contestants.

35:57 [Tyler] I don't know why we did it.

35:58 That eliminated more people than we needed.

35:59 Like, it was a disaster.

36:01 [Dan] Jimmy might have gone a little overboard.

36:03 Somewhere in the endless flopping about

36:05 that was the filming of the Smarts Challenge,

36:07 the thing meant to decide whom among the smartest people

36:10 in the world was fit and worthy to enter Beast City.

36:13 What became the final round was simply the same red,

36:17 blue, green, yellow pattern, repeated four times.

36:20 These aren't isolated catastrophes.

36:23 All the games have some fundamental flaw,

36:26 and repeatedly contestants simply refuse to engage with the game

36:30 as Jimmy and his poker buddies conceptualized them.

36:32 The lion's share of the entertainment value

36:34 really comes from spotting those flaws in advance, like icebergs on the horizon.

36:39 We could go on ranting about all the little

36:42 foibless of Beast Games, and so we did.

36:44 There's a whole other video.

36:46 Everything in the Beast sphere is simultaneously

36:48 absurdly expensive and cobbled together from scraps.

36:52 One of the lies the team beast tells itself

36:53 is that when they go into a new field,

36:55 they gather a bunch of experts and really pick their brains,

36:58 learn everything they can about this new venture, absorb all their knowledge...

37:02 But, like, no.

37:06 I mean, hell, they told us that that's

37:08 what we were there for on the tour, right?

37:11 That that was the purpose of it all.

37:13 But if that's true, if we were brought in as subject matter experts,

37:17 why did we waste 20 minutes standing in the hall looking at fan art?

37:22 Why did nearly everyone we talked to pitch us on spectacle?

37:26 Why did someone tell me with a seriousness like he was trying to seduce me

37:31 that the ATV we were riding in was

37:34 the exact same one Jimmy drives in the videos?

37:37 Did you bring me here to pick my brain

37:40 or are you trying to sell me a time share?

37:43 [Ben] This bad boy can fit so many nerds in it.

37:45 [laughter] [Dan] This is already a recordbreaking video essay and we

37:50 actually broke two more that we didn't even tell you about.

37:54 But that's not enough.

37:56 We're taking it up another notch.

38:00 That's right.

38:00 This is the first video essay ever recorded

38:04 in a bouncy castle while wearing a tuxedo.

38:08 Isn't that right, certification dude?

38:11 Let's go!

38:12 [dubstep] [dubstep fades] The deeper underlying issue here is cultural.

38:34 Beast Industries is an organization obsessed with metrics.

38:38 Jimmy is famously a metrics guy, so it's not really a mystery where that culture

38:43 came from, but Team Beast is so obsessed with numbers, metrics, milestones,

38:47 and spectacle that it has leapt from being

38:50 something you put in front of the camera

38:52 to something that has seeped into the very

38:55 bones of the operation and metastasized.

38:57 This is a major contributor to the fact that Beast

39:00 Industries is kind of famously running the tank on empty,

39:04 with revenue barely keeping up with expenses.

39:07 The entryway of Beast Industries is dominated by a massive digital

39:10 counter that displays the main channel's realtime subscriber count and it

39:14 is surrounded by YouTube creator milestone awards for the various

39:18 Beast channels flanked by dozens and dozens of Guinness World Records.

39:23 The root issue that arises is a tremendous amount of inefficiency can be

39:27 sold internally as long as it can be tied to some metric of spectacle.

39:32 The biggest, the longest, the most.

39:35 As an example of all of this in action,

39:37 I was told at one point that Beast Game season 2 had the largest BTS crew.

39:41 You know, the people who run around filming the people doing the filming,

39:45 the largest BTS crew ever for a reality TV competition show at 16 people.

39:52 Now, that's funny for three reasons.

39:54 One, there is absolutely nothing in the BTS

39:58 footage that says this required 16 people running around.

40:02 You used four times as many people as normal

40:05 but absolutely did not get four times the results.

40:08 Two, that's a lot of caveats and it's really easy

40:12 to invent a record if you just keep narrowing the scope.

40:16 Three is that like 16 people is not that many people and even if it's true,

40:23 there's no competition for that record.

40:26 You invented a race and then awarded yourself the victor

40:29 while everyone else was too busy doing their jobs to care.

40:33 No one else is keeping score here, so why are you trying to impress me?

40:38 I'm sorry.

40:39 The fact that you even thought to think about it is a sickness.

40:44 The obsession with metrics is such a deep-rooted

40:46 value that it has become a gilded cage where

40:48 Team Beast must be wary at all times

40:51 of even the perception that they're losing the juice, that they've plateaued,

40:55 that it is even physically possible for MrBeast to stop

40:59 being the most watched single thing on planet Earth.

41:03 Speaking of the behind-the-scenes stuff,

41:05 I keep thinking about this bit where Jimmy

41:07 brags about using more equipment than the Olympics.

41:11 [Jimmy] People might not even realize it,

41:11 but we use more gear for this season of Beast Games than the Olympics used.

41:15 [Dan] Okay, assuming that that is even true,

41:18 that's the kind of brag that exists for its own sake.

41:20 Beast Games is, for all intents and purposes,

41:23 a sporting event where a single thing of interest

41:26 is happening at any given time in a single venue.

41:29 The Olympics is a sporting event where two

41:31 to four events are happening simultaneously across seven different venues.

41:36 And for a visual comparison, Beast Games looks like this.

41:40 And the Olympics looks like this.

41:43 There couldn't be a starker example of "it's not about what's in your kit,

41:47 it's how you use it." If you're hauling out more gear than the Olympics,

41:51 it's not because you need more gear than the Olympics.

41:54 It's because you want to be able to say, [Tyler] "We have as much gear,

41:58 if not a little bit more than the Olympics uses." [Dan] It's a really cheap,

42:02 tacky way of thinking.

42:03 And honestly, the product starts tripping over the process.

42:06 There's so many cameras that they

42:08 are simultaneously capturing everything and nothing.

42:11 Tied up in the more gear than the Olympics

42:13 is bragging about how many GoPros they use.

42:15 I don't remember the exact number,

42:17 but Beast City and basically every game is plastered with GoPros.

42:20 Something like 600 of them.

42:22 But to what end?

42:23 The actual volume of GoPro shots that make

42:26 it into the final cut are few and fleeting,

42:28 mostly confessional stuff, and they don't really add that much here.

42:31 Like, I believe that a show like Beast Games has use for tiny

42:35 action cams and even has use for a very large number of them.

42:38 You want to be able to stick one wherever you need one up in high,

42:42 hard-to-reach places and not worry about getting it back down anytime soon.

42:46 But the math just doesn't math.

42:48 Unless you're literally firing them into the sun, how do you get to 600?

42:53 One of the running story lines in season

42:55 2 revolves around the loveirds, Monica and Jim.

42:57 The two of them say they met at the games, but that meeting isn't in the show.

43:02 And given their profile within the show and the fact

43:04 that they got married in Beast City during production,

43:06 there's no way the producers would leave that moment out if they had it.

43:11 So, a beastzillion cameras pointed at everything

43:13 and you still didn't get the shot.

43:15 And you know what?

43:17 It's fine.

43:18 Not having that moment is fine.

43:21 No one who noticed you didn't have the shot actually cared.

43:26 I fear that Beast Industries is going to learn the wrong lesson from all this.

43:30 That culturally they are inclined towards deciding

43:33 that they need even more cameras next time,

43:36 rather than learning they need to move forward with intent.

43:40 [Jimmy] We have some of the largest sets

43:42 in history where breaking dust at the world records,

43:44 giving away millions of dollars.

43:45 Ultimately, Beast Industries lies to the outside

43:48 world and in turn it lies to itself.

43:51 They've pumped out so much BS about their world

43:53 records and status that they've bought in themselves.

43:56 They believe in their performance and believe

43:58 that performing it is the same as doing it.

44:01 Like we mentioned earlier, Team Beast says that they love to bring

44:04 in experts and purport to pick their brains, absorb their knowledge.

44:08 This seems to be an internal cultural belief derived from Jimmy's explicit

44:12 belief that complex subjects can be absorbed in 20 minutes or less.

44:17 [Jimmy] What's something that annoys me?

44:19 Um, education.

44:20 Why is it that your parents got taught the same

44:23 way in school that your kids are getting taught?

44:25 Look at Mark Robber's videos.

44:26 Look at all this amazing educational content

44:29 where you learn such great or like such

44:32 complex topics in like 20 minutes and it's

44:34 really engaging and fun and you retain it.

44:36 And like no, there's too much there.

44:38 Let's not get distracted.

44:39 Just no.

44:41 This oddly recasts the entire visit

44:43 into something between the performance of research,

44:45 a ritualistic exposure to expertise, or straight up delusion,

44:49 like they legitimately believe that listening to a dozen YouTubers

44:53 freestyle their thoughts about fandom confers cumulative decades of experience.

44:58 They told us how intentional and deliberate

45:00 they are before moving into a new space, but sorry, that's demonstrably untrue.

45:06 Hell, while we were putting the finishing touches on this video,

45:09 Defen 1 released a video called 'MrBeast is Boring Now'.

45:13 And Jimmy turned up in the comments agreeing with the guy and suggesting

45:16 that they hop on a Zoom call to hash some ideas out,

45:19 which is an absolutely insane thing for the face

45:23 of a media empire to admit out loud!

45:26 "Intentional, and deliberate", but Jimmy's out there just doing...

45:30 whatever this is.

45:31 Visibly, demonstrably, Beast Industries is being piloted by just some dudes

45:36 who actually well and truly do not have a plan.

45:40 Christ, I'm recording this line right now because we have

45:43 to keep going back to revise chunks of the script

45:46 because Jimmy just can't stop releasing embarrassing documentaries all

45:50 about how bad they are at making a game show.

45:53 I was kinder to the awful Smart Challenge originally where they played Simon.

45:57 I was willing to blow right past it.

45:59 But then we learned it wasn't just a bad game.

46:02 It was also profoundly miserable to shoot because it took all night.

46:06 My source for that is Jimmy Beast.

46:08 James himself is the one who told me in a video he published.

46:13 He's doing my job for me.

46:15 [Michael] When we were doing the blocks game,

46:17 I'm living in that moment right now, like, sweating bullets.

46:20 Like guys, we've spent twice what we

46:22 were budgeted to today and we're still going.

46:24 [Jon] How much longer do you think we'll go tonight?

46:26 [Chandler] I don't know what's going on.

46:28 [Dan] MrBeast has a brand of chocolate bars, Feastables,

46:30 that he would tell you is one of his passion projects.

46:33 [Jimmy] I've poured thousands of hours,

46:35 more than you could ever imagine, into perfecting this product.

46:37 [Dan] But Jimmy says that in the same video

46:40 where he announces version 3.0 of his candy bars,

46:42 because the first version featured multiple critical design flaws.

46:46 [Jimmy] There's a reason why like chocolate bars have

46:48 these like break points here where they like break easily.

46:50 I didn't know that.

46:51 Um, and so mine was just one solid sheet of chocolate,

46:54 but that's almost like a piece of glass,

46:56 whereas if you drop it, it just shatters into like a bunch of little pieces.

47:00 And um, and I also didn't know

47:02 that there's a thing called a- a package engineer.

47:04 If this was sitting on a shelf, when you grab this one,

47:07 these would all slide forward and then they would

47:09 fall out of the box and, or the box

47:11 would fall off the shelf because of the weight

47:13 and so they would fall out like that.

47:15 Um, and then the bars because we didn't

47:17 have the natural break points would shatter like glass.

47:19 [Dan] You may have seen Feastable Bars littering the floor

47:21 of your local grocery store, and this was why.

47:24 Jimmy actually got himself in a bit of hot

47:26 water because he put out an ill-considered call

47:28 for viewers to clean up the Feastable displays

47:31 and send him photos in order to enter a giveaway.

47:34 A few people got worked up about that, but it's it's mostly just embarrassing.

47:39 So, while Team Beast did identify the problems in their product,

47:42 they had to see them manifest out in the real world first.

47:45 This example suggests not only that they did

47:48 not consult experts in launching Jimmy's coveted chocolate bar,

47:51 but that no one so much as set up a prototype in a breakroom

47:55 and eat through a box organically in order

47:58 to experience these immediate and universal problems.

48:01 [Jimmy] I've poured thousands of hours,

48:03 more than you could ever imagine, into perfecting this product.

48:05 [Dan] This is all just a means to the ultimate

48:07 end of Beast Industry's ambition of being a $100 billion company.

48:12 This is actually one of the "rules of Team Beast"

48:14 presented on bold posters in the halls of Beast Studios.

48:17 See the value.

48:18 We are building the next 100 billion dollar company.

48:22 If you don't believe in us, you shouldn't be here.

48:25 Now, that's ambitious.

48:26 That's very ambitious.

48:28 For context, Netflix wants to buy Warner

48:31 Brothers Discovery for a poultry $82.7 billion.

48:34 So, they have to expand.

48:36 The road to 100 billion isn't just paved with candy bars and YouTube videos.

48:40 It's also toys like a whole line

48:43 of tiny plastic choking hazards called MrBeast Labs.

48:45 Here's one of them.

48:56 This is the rationale that justifies 600 GoPros.

49:00 Be the biggest at everything at all costs.

49:03 And this whole process is toxic to the production.

49:06 The need to not just be big,

49:08 but to say that you're big ends up dictating the creative process

49:11 at the expense of things like knowing when your episodes are going to end.

49:15 Because everything becomes a measure of clout.

49:17 Saying you have the most cameras,

49:19 saying you bring in experts before making your merch,

49:22 saying you want to be a hundred billion dollar YouTube company.

49:26 It's all just clout.

49:27 It's clout all the way down.

49:30 While this frame might look innocuous,

49:32 it actually represents the most expensive single day

49:36 of recording a video essay in Calgary, Alberta.

49:40 An already impressive feat.

49:43 But that's not all.

49:44 We've got even more firsts for you.

49:46 This is the first video essay ever recorded

49:49 with a bouncy castle in a tuxedo on Super 8mm film.

49:53 Isn't that right, certification dude?

49:56 Let's go!

49:58 [dubstep] [dubstep fades into melancholy music]

50:26 I find the MrBeast style creatively repulsive.

50:29 Jimmy is undeniably a savant at algorithmic optimization,

50:32 but he has built a machine that is utterly

50:35 incapable of comprehending its own work as a creative endeavor.

50:40 The standard output of Beast Industries has no narrative structure,

50:44 no buildup, no calm.

50:45 It's just a wall of indistinct visual and auditory noise.

50:50 Open a modern MrBeast video and Jimmy

50:52 is screaming at you in literal milliseconds.

50:55 [Jimmy] We just got dropped off on this 2,000-year-old ancient temple!

50:59 [Dan] That much is clear from the outside,

51:01 but perhaps the biggest revelation of the whole

51:05 tour is how uncontroversial this status quo is.

51:08 MrBeast videos begin as a title and thumbnail.

51:11 That is the measure by which concepts are pitched and green lit.

51:14 This practice isn't a cardinal sin in isolation.

51:18 It's a pragmatic reality of YouTube.

51:20 Professional YouTubers need to put a lot of thought

51:23 into the title and thumbnail because we want to eat.

51:27 And yeah, sometimes the creative impetus behind a video

51:29 really is that it'd make for a killer thumbnail.

51:32 But it's rare that any of us will admit that, because

51:35 we know that it's a bit naughty, a bit tacky.

51:38 Because it's starting with the marketing

51:40 and working backwards to create the product.

51:42 It's cynical.

51:43 Dare I say, it's anti-art.

51:46 It wasn't shocking to learn that MrBeast videos typically begin as thumbnails,

51:50 but it was shocking how open the team was to that admission.

51:54 They were cagey about so, so many things,

51:57 but this was said without a hint of concern.

52:00 It's not a dirty secret,

52:01 nor is it an open secret because it's not a secret at all.

52:05 It's public knowledge.

52:06 He goes, "We obsess." He's like, "We build 20,

52:09 30, 40 thumbnails, and once we like a thumbnail,

52:11 we go build the video and the idea around it." They had a poster on a wall,

52:15 one that I tragically didn't get any footage

52:17 of, that laid bare the mandate of the writer's room.

52:20 Is this a 100 million view idea?

52:30 This mindset where ideas are conceptualized as views and no

52:35 idea can be more complex than a 10-word title, is nakedly anti-art.

52:40 Again though, creativity will always exist in some sort

52:43 of tension with commerce because we need to eat.

52:47 Now, you might counter by pointing out that Team Beast

52:50 is just emulating the cold calculus you find in Hollywood,

52:54 AAA gaming, and pop music.

52:56 What I'd say to that is, sure,

52:58 Hollywood executives have their equivalent to the 100 million view idea,

53:02 and large-scale art, the equivalent of MrBeast,

53:05 is absolutely dominated by commercial interests.

53:09 But you will always find some sort

53:12 of delineation between the suits and the creatives.

53:14 If you want Sinners, the only way to get it is to humor Ryan

53:18 Coogler when he insists on shooting on Ultra Panavision 70.

53:21 The smart business decision is to eventually step back and let Ryan cook.

53:26 But on the other end of the spectrum,

53:28 even the most corporate schlock fences off the artist from the commercial.

53:32 Call of Duty does not want its writers or animators

53:35 making business decisions because business decisions are for the businessmen.

53:39 The core difference between all these ghouls

53:42 and Beast Industries is that the business

53:44 people and the creative people at Beast Industries are the same people.

53:49 Separation is not only physically impossible, it's a crime.

53:54 When a member of the content team has an idea,

53:57 they turn their head and see this sign

53:59 and are immediately challenged to make a business decision.

54:03 They then begin workshopping the title and thumbnail, another business decision.

54:07 And if the idea gets approval,

54:09 it's handed off to the feasibility team whose job is

54:11 to make business decisions on whether the concept is viable.

54:15 It's a process that is incapable of producing

54:17 anything other than the hollow shell of art.

54:20 The outward form devoid of substance,

54:23 pure content birthed into the world by the raw pursuit of metrics.

54:28 The way that Jimmy and by extension the rest of team beast use the phrase

54:32 'passion project' simply can't escape the gravity well

54:35 of their mercenary commitment to metrics above all.

54:38 It becomes a shadow over everything.

54:41 Most Beast stuff from Beast Games to Feastables gets

54:44 called a passion project at one point or another.

54:47 Maybe this isn't even lying.

54:48 Maybe Jimmy is legitimately passionate for cheap

54:52 plastic toys and mediocre candy bars.

54:54 But even the philanthropy projects catch strays here.

54:58 Beast Philanthropy is one of the many

55:00 spin-off channels under the umbrella of Team Beast.

55:02 Though the separation is hazy at best since Beast Philanthropy videos all

55:07 still hinge on the same ostentatious spectacle that defines the main channel.

55:12 It's something of a boy who cried wolf situation.

55:14 Jimmy may truly believe in Beast Philanthropy and may genuinely

55:18 see Beast Industries as a vehicle to ultimately end world hunger.

55:22 But these ideals sit directly alongside answering the question

55:25 of if an octogenarian can win a foot race against

55:29 a 12-year-old or how much money is needed to convince

55:32 two randos to spend a month living chained to their ex.

55:35 The philanthropy stuff is weird.

55:37 I don't want to get caught up in the weeds here.

55:39 Beast philanthropy has its share of scandals.

55:41 But no matter how tacky and naive Jimmy may

55:44 be while he points a camera at his altruism,

55:47 it's hard for me to get worked up about

55:50 this in a world beset by billionaires behaving like literal vampires.

55:54 I suppose the oddness is rooted in how the philanthropy

55:57 side of things emerged from the swamp of Jimmy's early career.

56:02 The earliest stuff involved several different channels where

56:05 he attempted a dizzying array of styles and formats.

56:08 But his first success on YouTube came on a video titled "I counted

56:13 to 100,000" where Jimmy counted from 1 to 100,000 in a single 48 hour session.

56:21 [Jimmy counting in a barely coherent slur] Just recently,

56:25 Jimmy Beast went on Jimmy Fallon and admitted that the impetus behind the video

56:30 came from wanting to find a way to make money while watching Game of Thrones.

56:35 [Jimmy] I really I thought about this.

56:36 I'm not even joking.

56:37 How can I make money while watching shows I like?

56:39 And I was like, well, what if I while I watch it?

56:42 I just record myself counting.

56:43 And it worked out.

56:44 [Dan] And so MrBeast's first viral

56:46 hit was the purest possible business decision.

56:49 It was trash.

56:50 An utterly lifeless creative work with nothing

56:52 to say beyond its title and thumbnail.

56:54 Simply a vehicle for making money.

56:57 Beast Industries is the pure embodiment of that philosophy.

57:01 In that sense, Jimmy never stopped counting.

57:05 [Jimmy counting in a barely coherent slur] Beast

57:15 Games is transparently a derivative of Squid Game.

57:18 It's another open secret that could benefit from being

57:20 at least a little bit of a secret.

57:23 When Squid Game first came out on Netflix, the MrBeast brand was all over it.

57:27 The premise of the show is that contestants have to do very simplistic,

57:30 childish challenges under highstakes circumstances.

57:33 So, the dovetail with the MrBeast brand was basically baked in.

57:37 Initially, they just recreated the show in Minecraft

57:40 for the MrBeast gaming channel while they assembled, shot, cut,

57:43 and released '$456,000 Squid Game in real life' for the main

57:48 channel in less than two and a half months.

57:51 That video is to this day MrBeast's most viewed video and not by a small margin.

57:57 Hence, we got Beast Games, the non-IP-infringing Amazon Prime counterpart.

58:02 What I find fascinating, though, is how Jimmy seems both resistant

58:06 to and frustrated by comparisons to Squid Game.

58:10 [Jimmy] First off, we didn't kill people.

58:11 [Dan] During our preview of Beast Games,

58:13 Jimmy snuck into the theater and was present for the following debrief.

58:16 When I raised the subject of Squid Game, he became quite worked up.

58:21 In his mind, Squid Game kills people and Beast Games makes millionaires.

58:25 So, they're not remotely similar in the comparison is offensive.

58:29 And that is strictly true.

58:31 Amazon hasn't given Jimmy clearance to murder his participants,

58:34 maybe that's a season 4 thing, but come on, man.

58:38 Beast Games is a Squid Game ripoff- that would have been

58:42 impossible to deny even if you hadn't actually made Squid Game IRL.

58:48 This isn't a purely semantic argument.

58:51 It has a tangible effect on the end product.

58:54 When you make a sincere adaptation of the satirical

58:57 fictional murder game show from the anti-capitalist classic,

59:00 Do Not Build the Murder Game Show, you're going to import...

59:05 the bad stuff.

59:06 I don't need to belabor this point.

59:08 Beast Games has taken a satire of reality game shows as humiliation

59:12 rituals for the desperate and taken that as their starting position.

59:16 Regardless of how altruistic the show's spirit may or may not be,

59:20 the vibes were doomed to be gross from the start.

59:24 But fine, Jimmy thinks the Squid Game comparison is unfair.

59:28 Fine, whatever.

59:29 [Jimmy] First off, we didn't kill people.

59:31 [Dan] The remark I found more upsetting came

59:33 from one of the tour guides earlier in the day.

59:35 We were told repeatedly that the philosophy of Beast Games wasn't

59:39 to shape cast into stories or make them characters in editing,

59:43 but to put them into scenarios that would expose who they really were.

59:48 [Jimmy] Beast Games, in its purest form, its existence is a simulation.

59:54 This simulated world can be cold, brutal, and is entirely controlled by choices.

1:00:01 [Dan] This echoes the sentiment that Beast

1:00:03 Games is some kind of grand social experiment.

1:00:06 A social experiment centered overwhelmingly around two things.

1:00:10 Money and lying for money.

1:00:13 [Jim] I'm getting more money for you, JC.

1:00:15 I'm getting you more money, man.

1:00:16 [JC] More money.

1:00:18 [Monkia] Can you give Nick three more K?

1:00:19 You know what?

1:00:20 I'll give Nick three more.

1:00:21 [Jim] For what?

1:00:21 [Monika] I don't know.

1:00:22 He wants more money.

1:00:23 [Dan] The idea that Beast Games

1:00:25 exposes some truth about individuals or collectives

1:00:28 is deeply insulting and shows an ignorance to not just the product they created,

1:00:33 but their chosen career.

1:00:35 The social experiment thesis fails from first principles.

1:00:38 It's a game show.

1:00:39 While we get glimpses into human nature through peer pressure and the like,

1:00:42 what we're seeing is predominantly the rules

1:00:45 of Beast Games playing out in front of us.

1:00:48 I think most viewers pick up on the game theory in Beast Games just intuitively.

1:00:53 Everyone is here to make money and long odds

1:00:55 are you will never see any of these people again.

1:00:58 Thus, you should always take the money.

1:01:01 Your Beast Games integrity doesn't spend here.

1:01:03 But the show is willfully blind to this idea.

1:01:07 Beast Games loves the thought of people

1:01:09 betraying their friends and allies for money.

1:01:12 [Jimmy] If you don't think Cory has it, this is your chance to switch teams.

1:01:16 Are you going to tell her what you told everyone else?

1:01:18 But if you guys once again refuse to lie to each other,

1:01:22 you'll give me no choice but to go to my plan B.

1:01:26 And I promise you none of you are going to like plan B.

1:01:29 [Dan] The only reason that narrative plays at all is that like,

1:01:33 yeah, after a month of living together,

1:01:35 there is a base amount of courtesy between the contestants that makes

1:01:38 them feel bad about playing the game that they're there to play.

1:01:43 Peer pressure is powerful in even small doses.

1:01:47 What Beast Games considers tests of integrity or selfishness or whatever are,

1:01:51 to me at least, better understood simply as exercises in coercion.

1:01:55 A contestant makes a promise to someone else.

1:01:58 And it's about finding a dollar value high enough to compel that contestant

1:02:01 to go back on their word and make a liar out of them.

1:02:04 [Brett] I didn't hold true to my word.

1:02:07 And I feel bad.

1:02:09 I feel somber.

1:02:10 I don't even want to touch it.

1:02:12 It feels dirty to me.

1:02:14 [Dan] And sorry, I don't think that process says anything

1:02:18 noteworthy about society or even Nick the Wrestler as an individual.

1:02:24 It's just juicing humans for content.

1:02:26 Due to the magic of editing, it will always be about whatever the producers

1:02:31 decide it will be about after the fact.

1:02:34 When someone steals the money, it becomes a story of greed.

1:02:37 When they hold the line, it becomes a testament to human integrity.

1:02:42 To be really tacky and quote myself,

1:02:44 they will always be able to use the whole bird.

1:02:48 And you'd think that a team working in reality

1:02:50 TV would be awake to this aspect of the genre,

1:02:53 aware that it is literally impossible for them to not

1:02:56 present a constructed story without posting the raw 24/7 footage.

1:03:01 It's also just a bizarre thing to say to a room full of media critics

1:03:04 and fans of reality TV who don't engage with the genre as if it's genuine.

1:03:10 We know it's a show.

1:03:11 We know what the sausage is made of.

1:03:13 It is rude to talk to us like we're their audience

1:03:16 and don't know where mommy goes when she holds up the dish towel.

1:03:20 This is part of a pattern of behavior with Beast Industries where the system

1:03:24 as it is set up is constitutionally incapable

1:03:27 of processing the optics of its own behavior.

1:03:30 It's honestly not even malicious so much as it is supremely credulous.

1:03:35 It's the kind of thoughtlessness that leads

1:03:37 to leaving a Twitter Philanthropy Award

1:03:39 on display from conman and Bed Bath and Beyond stock grifter Bill Pulte,

1:03:43 seen here on stage with meme stock failson PPseeds.

1:03:47 [Bill Pulte] Does every- has anybody here heard of Twitter Philanthropy?

1:03:51 ['woo' from crowd] [clapping] [Dan] It's

1:03:56 the absent-mindedness that leads to continually

1:03:58 releasing behind-the-scenes clips that make you look bad at your job.

1:04:01 It's a boys-being-boys attitude running a $5 billion company like

1:04:05 you're still four dudes d*cking around with leafblowers in your backyard,

1:04:09 that fosters an environment of passive callousness

1:04:12 that leads to the kind of heinous stuff

1:04:14 that happened on Beast Games season 1 that we just don't have time to go into.

1:04:19 Hoots Hootman has a whole chapter dedicated

1:04:21 to this in her video about Beast Burger, I don't need to retread her work.

1:04:25 [Hoots] Because within this 54-page class action lawsuit,

1:04:27 by far the most heavily redacted pages released to the public are

1:04:30 those that have to do with the sexual harassment of five women working

1:04:33 on the set of a television show produced by the biggest company

1:04:36 in the world and a YouTuber that statistically

1:04:39 your middle school age son is watching.

1:04:41 I think this excerpt is particularly damning.

1:04:45 [Dan] It's the lack of critical thought

1:04:47 that leads to gormlessly flying the entire remaining cast of Beast Games off

1:04:51 to Saudi Arabia to drive Lamborghinis around Riyadh,

1:04:54 witlessly participating in the Saudi

1:04:56 government's public image reformation campaign

1:04:58 along with star-studded comedy festivals and a chintzy MrBeast theme park.

1:05:03 Like this is just wholly sincere advertisement.

1:05:07 This is product placement.

1:05:09 [Tareq] Bro, this city is incredible.

1:05:10 [Tyler] Better than Beast City for sure.

1:05:11 [Jim] This city looks like it's from the future.

1:05:13 This is crazy.

1:05:16 One of the odd contradictions of MrBeast is that he

1:05:19 doesn't have a fandom remotely proportional to his actual viewership.

1:05:22 In theory, with his viewership of almost 4 billion views a month,

1:05:26 he is on par with any major franchise,

1:05:29 up in the same range as professional sports.

1:05:31 He should be utterly inescapable.

1:05:34 But instead, he's just kind of lingering in the quagmire of the culture.

1:05:38 To use Reddit as a very loose proxy for fandom,

1:05:41 Beastgame's dominant subreddit has 19,400 members.

1:05:46 Pretty modest.

1:05:47 By comparison, the major subreddit for The Pitt has over a 100,000.

1:05:52 Beast Game season 2 is a show that uses more gear than the Olympics,

1:05:56 and The Pitt is a show you may only have heard of because

1:05:59 some beardy YouTuber told you it's good and that you should be watching it.

1:06:03 I am that beardy YouTuber.

1:06:05 Go watch it.

1:06:06 We checked the main MrBeast subreddit the day after the Beast

1:06:09 Games finale aired to find two posts in the last 24 hours, both about Minecraft,

1:06:14 with a combined total of six comments and 15

1:06:18 upvotes between them from a sub with 1.4 million followers.

1:06:23 The sub is dead.

1:06:25 And MrBeast's comments on the YouTube channel are just...

1:06:28 a comment section.

1:06:30 Anecdotally, it feels like MrBeast's most diehard fans

1:06:33 today come from the hustle culture side of things;

1:06:35 people invested in Jimmy's bootstrap story and the fantasy

1:06:39 of a small YouTuber building a media empire with his boys.

1:06:43 People who share Jimmy's admiration of Steve Jobs and Elon Musk.

1:06:47 But those people aren't consumers.

1:06:50 They watch Jimmy's podcast appearances, they don't watch MrBeast.

1:06:54 Sincere MrBeast fans do exist,

1:06:56 but there's nowhere for them to properly congregate

1:07:00 and make MrBeast feel like a living cultural entity.

1:07:04 I think the influencer IShowSpeed makes for a really illustrative comparison.

1:07:09 IShowSpeed has 51 million subscribers at time of writing,

1:07:12 a fraction of MrBeast's 468 million at the same point in time.

1:07:18 IShowSpeed is mobbed wherever he goes.

1:07:21 He can proc a stream in Kenya and it

1:07:23 looks like the second coming of Jesus Christ.

1:07:26 It's actually a little concerning.

1:07:28 Speed reminds us just how big these numbers are.

1:07:32 By contrast, Jimmy's public appearances, even when organized,

1:07:35 pull in a fraction of this number.

1:07:38 And maybe it's a mark in Jimmy's favor that he

1:07:40 isn't out here causing human stampedes on the regular.

1:07:44 But whatever you may think of all of this, it's

1:07:46 clear that IShowSpeed has juice that Jimmy simply does not.

1:07:50 [Speed] I am now the mayor of Peru.

1:07:52 [crowd cheers] Jimmy Beast can be personable on Jimmy Fallon,

1:07:58 but Jimmy Beast is no Jimmy Jones.

1:08:01 IShowSpeed's content is even more transient and disposable than MrBeast.

1:08:06 It's a pure embodiment of stream of consciousness noise.

1:08:09 It's not even right to call it creative work.

1:08:11 It's a celebrity walking around and letting

1:08:14 the novelties of the world come to him.

1:08:17 So why does he feel so much bigger?

1:08:21 Well, such is the ephemeral nature of celebrity.

1:08:25 Back at Beast Industries,

1:08:26 right next to the poster proclaiming that employees need to embrace

1:08:30 the vision of being a 100 billion dollar company is a companion rule.

1:08:35 YouTube first.

1:08:37 We are here to make the best YouTube videos on Earth,

1:08:41 not the best produced videos.

1:08:43 If you don't know the difference, ask Jimmy.

1:08:46 There is baked into the company's values

1:08:49 an ideological divide between what they do and art.

1:08:53 Now, some people do in fact just think he's neat.

1:08:56 And Jimmy Donaldson, the man, is indeed very easy to like.

1:09:00 In actual conversation he's personable and laid back and does seem to show

1:09:04 a genuine interest in listening to other people talk about their expertise.

1:09:08 When he's not actively screaming at you through the magic of the internet,

1:09:12 Jimmy is mostly a frictionless individual.

1:09:15 He isn't going to challenge you.

1:09:18 Okay, he might literally challenge you to climb into a bucket of snakes,

1:09:22 but he's not a challenging figure.

1:09:24 But that's not enough.

1:09:27 If MrBeast wants to realize the aspiration of being a $100 billion company,

1:09:32 there are some extremely nontrivial hurdles to overcome.

1:09:36 One is that there is a plateau to what MrBeast can achieve in its current form.

1:09:40 There are simply a bounded number of 12-year-olds in the world.

1:09:44 If MrBeast is to exceed that plateau, it will need mass appeal.

1:09:48 It will need to be as mainstream as football.

1:09:52 It might feel like he's kind of already there, but not remotely.

1:09:56 The line that we're trying to navigate

1:09:58 here is the difference between scale and popularity.

1:10:01 Beast Industries is currently valued around $5 billion overall and skating

1:10:06 a little below half a billion per year in revenue, though not profitable.

1:10:12 So, their dream is to eventually 20x in scale.

1:10:16 That simply isn't achievable as a standalone YouTube channel.

1:10:21 So, Team Beast is attempting to leverage MrBeast as a launching

1:10:25 point for other commercial ventures such as the candy bars and toys.

1:10:29 But while Jimmy is a savant at YouTube, he does not have the Midas touch and has

1:10:34 arguably been racking up a quiet string of failures.

1:10:37 Beast Burger was marred by inconsistent execution, a grating premise,

1:10:42 and bad partnerships, leaving the whole thing mired in litigation.

1:10:45 Beast Labs has been described as "so far past shelf warming,

1:10:49 it's not even funny." Lunchly shipped rotten food.

1:10:53 But even if all of these were hits,

1:10:56 you don't get to 100 billion by selling candy bars in the grocery store.

1:11:01 You get there by being the grocery store.

1:11:04 The next hurdle in that journey is that adults broadly don't like MrBeast.

1:11:09 [Jimmy] I have a challenge for all of you!

1:11:14 [Dan] They find the brand actively repellent and associate it with low quality,

1:11:18 thoughtless products- things made cheaply and quickly,

1:11:21 candy bars that need two iterations to have molded break points.

1:11:24 The whole enterprise has a stank about it,

1:11:28 a manic desperation combined with a naked embrace

1:11:32 of everything repulsive in the metrics-driven attention economy.

1:11:36 MrBeast reeks of ambition (derogatory).

1:11:40 Maybe Beast Burger, Beast Labs, Lunchly,

1:11:43 and even Beast Games have been over-scrutinized.

1:11:46 Maybe there is an army of haters out there who just want to see Jimmy lose,

1:11:51 and Team Beast must navigate that every day.

1:11:54 But that is a cage of their own construction built one Honey ad at a time.

1:11:59 No one wants to see this guy win.

1:12:02 This is villain behavior.

1:12:04 [Jimmy] Go to every computer in your house.

1:12:06 Your mom's, your dad's, your sister, your brother's computer, and install honey.

1:12:09 [Dan] A staple of the channel is rooted

1:12:11 in giveaways and a participatory story of wealth distribution.

1:12:15 In a hodgepodge of videos ranging from daring Chandler to eat a cockroach

1:12:19 for $100 and giving homeless people bags full of cash on hidden

1:12:23 camera emerged a synthesis format where Team Beast round up X number

1:12:27 of Ys and have them compete in juvenile challenges for vast sums of money.

1:12:31 In the earliest days of this version of the channel,

1:12:34 proximity to MrBeast was literally the sorting factor

1:12:37 that could land you a sack full of bills.

1:12:40 But even as the pool of participants expanded,

1:12:42 the channel has never shaken the perception that one weird trick to getting rid

1:12:46 of your debt is to know someone

1:12:49 who knows someone in Team Beast's casting department.

1:12:52 Of course, that's extra hard to shake

1:12:55 when stuff like this keeps happening in 2025.

1:12:58 [Jimmy] Alongside the help of Coach and his best friend, Chandler.

1:13:01 [Jimmy] Chandler!

1:13:01 Chandler!

1:13:02 [Jim] Yo, let's go Chandler!

1:13:04 [Dan] And the subscriber giveaways are too numerous to count.

1:13:08 They're so impromptu that when he did the whole thing with recruiting kids

1:13:11 to clean up his merchandise in grocery stores for a chance to win something,

1:13:16 it barely even registered until it happened to break

1:13:19 containment and some adults noticed what was going on.

1:13:22 Everything that we've talked about,

1:13:24 the obsession with money, the poorly thoughtout games,

1:13:27 the cheapness of everything surrounding the giant pile of cash,

1:13:32 the thoughtless disposable nature of the end product,

1:13:35 the transactional subscribe for a cookie nature of the channel,

1:13:40 the sheer tackiness of giving a kid a MrBeast branded prosthetic.

1:13:45 People feel that.

1:13:47 Turns out sitting on piles of fake

1:13:50 money to signal wealth is actually very cheap.

1:13:53 Look, they even let us do it.

1:13:56 Whenever someone in a focus group asks you a question,

1:14:00 the question itself betrays an anxiety.

1:14:02 So being flown a couple thousand miles to be

1:14:05 asked by the most subscribed YouTuber in the history

1:14:07 of ever "how do you build fandom?" says

1:14:10 something very telling about how Team Beast sees itself,

1:14:13 its place in the culture, and its place in the future.

1:14:17 And you know, I don't have access to the MrBeast

1:14:20 dashboard beyond the screenshots Jimmy posts to social media,

1:14:24 but I'm something of a data guy myself.

1:14:27 Out of raw curiosity, I graphed the performance of every main channel MrBeast

1:14:31 video from his first viral counting video to present.

1:14:35 And well, there's a lot of caveats in these numbers,

1:14:38 and by any objective measure of YouTube

1:14:41 success these numbers are still incomprehensible, but...

1:14:46 there is a very interesting trend in the data.

1:14:55 Now, this is just a single axis of a very complex operation.

1:14:59 But if I were a metrics-obsessed business and I

1:15:03 saw this, I might get a little spooked.

1:15:09 I still don't actually know why I was invited to MrBeast Studios,

1:15:13 and at this point, I probably never will.

1:15:17 The exercise was supposed to be hype, clearly,

1:15:19 every interaction with the staff was infused with a delirious enthusiasm,

1:15:23 but I just left haunted by a profound sense of tragedy.

1:15:28 This glimpse inside a vast industrial machine that exists to produce nothing.

1:15:33 Beast Industries pumps things out in service

1:15:35 of a metric defined by its own existence.

1:15:38 It does philanthropy, but is blind to anything that can't be

1:15:41 encapsulated in a 10-word title and a thumbnail.

1:15:44 They will "rescue slaves", then shamelessly fly to Saudi Arabia so

1:15:48 Chandler can drive Jim around in a Lambo.

1:15:51 [Jim] Yo, let's go, Chandler.

1:15:54 And all of this compounds.

1:15:55 The inefficient operations obsessed with metrics lead to a business

1:15:59 that, as Jimmy keeps saying on talk shows,

1:16:02 isn't making any money because they spend it all.

1:16:04 The gilded cage of the channel's dominance

1:16:07 means they simply cannot stop making stuff.

1:16:09 And the deeply baked corporate culture of artlessness

1:16:12 means there's no room for experimentation or re-evaluation.

1:16:16 Despite the money, the whole thing is cheap and plastic.

1:16:19 Jimmy has in his career published dozens of videos

1:16:22 that any other channel would have simply scrapped in production.

1:16:26 This has been a successful strategy in terms of growth,

1:16:29 but has tainted the image.

1:16:30 The failure of the bluff game is embarrassing from a production standpoint,

1:16:34 just an absolutely entirely foreseeable own-goal

1:16:37 that heads should have rolled over,

1:16:40 but it had to go out the door as it was, too much was riding on it.

1:16:44 And it's not even a one-off,

1:16:46 the whole season is littered with moments like that.

1:16:49 It's just the poster child.

1:16:50 The brand is a hodgepodge of ill-considered basically

1:16:54 random ventures from toys to candy to meat snacks

1:16:57 to ghost kitchens to (soon) financial services with the only

1:17:01 common denominator being that it's directed at children.

1:17:05 How you build fandom is by making

1:17:07 something people want to watch because it's fun

1:17:10 or interesting or profound and not just

1:17:12 because it hacks the attention pathways of 9-year-olds.

1:17:16 The Beast Empire is comically precarious,

1:17:18 suffering from the conditions of its own success, and for a brief moment,

1:17:23 I got to drift past it, a flailing animal,

1:17:26 a great beast of the sea, ill-considered, impulsive, no real plan,

1:17:31 dysfunctional, obsessed with weird stuff, committed 100% to the immediate term,

1:17:37 hurtling itself forward into anything and everything

1:17:39 out of an existential fear that if

1:17:42 it ever stops swimming for long enough to get its bearings, it will die.

1:17:46 Team Beast spent $30,000 to fly 12 YouTubers

1:17:49 out to North Carolina to show them some fields,

1:17:53 feed them sandwiches, and ask them questions that could have been an email.

1:17:58 Why?

1:17:59 There is no why.

1:18:00 It's just what they do.

1:18:02 [upbeat music]