I keep getting sucked into watching the Mr. Beast drama that’s been going on for the last few weeks. Ava Tyson was called out for sending inappropriate Discord messages to minors and since then more and more former employees are coming out and revealing all sorts of greasy stuff about what goes on behind the scenes over there.

I don’t even watch their videos but it’s been so interesting to see it unfold because it’s the most beloved and successful YouTube channel to ever exist. I feel like it’s one of those “don’t meet your heroes” scenarios. If you look into the personal lives of celebrities, you might find a lot of sketchy or downright repulsive behavior.

Like John Lennon. He sang about peace but then he openly admitted to abusing his family.1 Or renowned actors like Kevin Spacey or Danny Masterson, who were eventually revealed to be vicious sexual predators. Lots of sexual predators in Hollywood.

The Ava Tyson allegations were the first dominoes to fall, but now there’s a former employee posting a deep dive series into all sorts of shady stuff. Like using gambling tactics to make money off of kids, for example. Or how people were going without basic hygiene products or other necessities like, I don’t know, food even on the set of the new Beast Games Amazon series.

The fucked up part is that no matter what happens, he’ll probably never face the music. Even in the middle of all this, the channel is still cranking out content as if nothing happened, and they’re still some of the best performing videos on the platform. His channel is just too profitable for YouTube to allow any consequences. People can be trash. That’s just business as usual, I guess.

It’s not that surprising. Promising mountains of cash to get people to do wild things isn’t the most humane behavior. People who make it a point to document every “good” thing they do usually aren’t the greatest people.

  1. You Don’t Have to ‘Imagine’ John Lennon Beat Women and Children—It’s Just a Fact, Lauren Oyler, Vice  ↩︎