Yeah I'm sure those 100 people he helped get their eyesight back or those homeless people he gave a home are really upset at him for doing that.
In terms of how it's a net positive on the world, what does it matter if he's doing charitable acts only for clout vs out of the goodness of his heart?
I'd rather have my vision fixed by a douche than still be blind.
This is a ridiculous defense. Every major corporation with high-level profits like MrBeast's will do quite a bit of work that is technically charity, even if it's just as a writeoff; basically, at his level of profit, he would be an extreme
outlier if he couldn't point to some kind of community charities or donations.
But he doesn't just do charitable things; he uses it as a kind of exploitation, particularly to link it in with his fraudulent lottery-like message that "anyone could run into Jimmy and become a millionaire or have their disease cured overnight!" And his viewers are overwhelmingly young, who see him doing these things and idolize the brand and
all that cash which is his sole central theme since day one.
I've seen a few of his videos when my son has had them on. I never felt conned or felt my son was being exploited.
As a parent, I
absolutely saw MrBeast videos start to come up with our kids and their friends years ago (years before the Chris Tyson perversion, to be clear) and was immediately concerned. His whole channel is just filled with a disgusting cash obsession. "Spend 1 million in 5 minutes!" "I gave a random person 20k if they did something for me on camera!" etc.
As a parent; yes, he is one of the people most responsible for dragging YouTube further into debasement and exploitation of kids via flashing giant cash hordes and fantasies of being an instant millionaire.
Edit: text from the tweet - formatting appears to be lost, so probably best to click through if you actually want to read the series of rebuttals.
This doesn't rebut anything of substance. The former employee's video contained some specific factual bits about CGI etc, but that wasn't even close to its core contention. The point of the video is to show damningly how Jimmy's profits are driven by extremely questionable tactics of scamming the young. And he knows it; the interview clip at the beginning where he says "the f-ing idiots on their parent's account" is
exactly who he is, it's obvious.