I’ve managed to make it this far in my career having never written about James ‘MrBeast’ Donaldson, and I sincerely wanted that record to remain unblemished for as long as possible. Alas, I regularly report on internet culture and streaming celebrities, usually when they’re doing something terrible, but sometimes when they do something good, and my time to cover MrBeast is now.
MrBeast is an enigma, a man so obsessed with gaming the YouTube algorithms and creating content that he doesn’t stop for a second to think about what he’s doing. His charitable gifts are essentially tax write-offs, his donation of one pair of shoes to 20,000 children in Africa was tone deaf, perpetuated harmful stereotypes, and only offered short term changes for the people he helped – they’re better off for the length of the video, enough time for him to harvest his clicks, and not a lot longer – and he inserts himself into the forefront of everything as some kind of Tony Stark-esque billionaire philanthropist. In the early days he pulled stunts like spending 44 hours counting to 100,000, and now he has legions of fans rearranging his chocolate bars on supermarket shelves out of blind loyalty. His workers all live on the same street, and it wouldn’t surprise me if he started paying the inhabitants of his content mill village in scrip. But the whole time, he’s been gaming algorithms and gaining fans.
His appalling levels of media literacy led him to making a ‘real-life Squid Game’, thinking that was a good message to take away from the Netflix show. His philanthropy, such as showering subscribers with cash for staying in a house for 100 days or fixing 100 peoples’ eyesight from cataracts, often comes across as hollow due to how he presents the videos. It never feels genuine, just a vehicle for views.
That’s why people are confused about a recent tweet, in which MrBeast says that he was invited onto the Titan, the submarine which recently imploded on a tour of the Titanic wreckage. “I was invited earlier this month to ride the titanic submarine,” the YouTuber wrote on Twitter. “I said no. Kind of scary that I could have been on it”. However, the attached screenshot tells a different story.
The screenshot shows a message in a blue bubble, which reads: “Also, I’m going to the Titanic in a submarine late this month. The team would be stoked to have you along.” The final line is cropped out, but clearly reads, “I’m sure you’re also welcome to join.”
The tweet and screenshot don’t add up, and it all comes down to the colour of that bubble. Blue bubbles on iMessage show that you have sent the message, or in this case, that MrBeast sent the message. This suggests that he wasn’t invited on the ill-fated expedition, but was inviting someone else? How could he make such a mistake?
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There are two schools of thought for what’s happened. The first, and most charitable response, is that MrBeast was invited onto the sub and also allowed to invite a friend, who he was texting in this screenshot. But his tweet doesn’t say that, his tweet says that he declined the opportunity, whereas his text suggests he accepted it. Maybe he couldn’t make the dates work because he was too busy curing 100 bouts of diarrhea or something, but that’s not what he said. Kind of scary, or kind of misleading?
The second option suggests more lies. Many people believe that MrBeast made up the opportunity in order to gain some clout or likes or some other form of ephemeral internet points. He tried to pretend that he received this text, and messed up the screenshot. It feels like a harsh interpretation of events, but what else could explain the blue bubble and weird crop? When MrBeast’s entire career is built on maximising engagement with misleading thumbnails (those people weren’t blind, they had cataracts) and sensationalist titles (read any of them, come on), why wouldn’t he insert himself into the biggest news story of the year?
MrBeast’s explanation is thus: “My friend sent me the screenshot of when he invited me. Didn’t think to scroll up and screenshot our old texts myself.” Make of that what you will, but I wouldn’t leave any room for confusion if such a traumatic and deadly experience had nearly happened to me.
It doesn’t matter though, because as MrBeast is getting clowned in the quote tweets, his army of stans are staunchly defending him in the trenches of the replies. “The universe said ‘not today Mr Beast, you're meant to make videos’”, writes one fan, seemingly without a shred of irony. He’s got a near-miss sob story to further endear himself to his legion, who will hopefully buy another BeastBurger to support him through this difficult time.
Even if it is true, and MrBeast was invited onto the Titan, why would you centre yourself in this story? Five people have died, and you want everyone to know that it could have been you? Even the people making memes about the situation have more self-awareness than this. But then again, everything MrBeast does is about him, really. Every video where he gives away seven-figure lumps of cash or expensive cars that people then have to pay hefty tax bills on is for content. It’s to get more likes, more views, more opportunities. It’s to expand his team and his mill town, it’s to gain more subscribers and increase his cult of personality. The most-subscribed YouTuber on the planet nearly died (kind of), but his tweet about it garnered half a million likes, so I doubt he’s too upset about it all.