MrBeast seems like YouTube’s poster child: generous, kind, & wildly creative. But, the closer you look, the more you realize the dots don’t quite connect: how did a poor, sick kid turn into a billionaire media mogul overnight? The answer is hiding in plain sight. To find it, we must reveal the dark side of YouTube, MrBeast’s influence, and his army of clones (a trend of hyper-paced videos called “MrBeastification” by ‪@Pinely‬ ).

A collaboration with Michelle Jia: http://sundogg.ca/

We’ll take a journey through MrBeast’s childhood obsession with baseball, the weird rise of YouTube as a dating site, the ReplyGirls who shaped it, and the “retention” obsession MrBeast inadvertently helped spark. We'll expose MrBeast's attention-trapping secret trick, and the millions of dollars in advertising revenue that helped spark it.

Ultimately, we'll ask, "Who is the game of YouTube for? And who gets to decide?" We'll look at how creators like ‪@ryan‬ and ‪@MichelleKhare‬ find new measures of success, metrics & "charts" beyond retention (watch time) that promote creative diversity and just plain awesome videos.

Illustrations by J. Collier Design. They're amazing to work with, would definitely recommend working with them!
https://www.jcollierdesign.com/

A shoutout to fellow YouTubers ‪@AmenDuggal‬ and ‪@Mohamed-Hamouda‬ who helped craft this video.

Here are a few of the YouTubers I show in this video, who you may not know but should check out:
‪@BarknoorZ‬
‪@miacole‬
‪@dr.fatima‬
‪@JazzEmu‬
‪@roramdin‬
‪@Tirrrb‬

Chapters
00:00 How did a sick kid become a billionaire?
01:18 The Beast is Born
08:17 How ReplyGirls broke YouTube
12:50 The chart that transformed MrBeast.. and YouTube
16:35 MrBeast's retention secret weapon
19:22 The lie YouTube implanted in MrBeast
25:00 How we escape MrBeast-ification