The Commodification of Poverty via Entertainment & MrBeast

YouTuber MrBeast is recreating the concept of popular Netflix Original, Squid Game. Hundreds of participants will compete for a cash prize playing children games, which will be uploaded to YouTube as entertainment. This is similar to the original, where wealthy individuals bet on the winner. Except there’s no killing in this recreation.

There has been widespread criticism of MrBeast for recreating the show, as the show not only deconstructs this specific form of entertainment, but also the wider capitalist mode of production – systemic poverty to be precise. The anger here is justifiable.

With that being said, MrBeast is still giving money to individuals, frequently engaging in wider forms of philanthropy and environmental revitalisation. The problem remains that he still creates content optimised for algorithm using the extrinsic distribution of money, essentially capitalising and the need to own capital. Capitalism here is also (the most important entity) to blame; MrBeast couldn’t give nearly as much money if he didn’t let people participate in challenges for money, which in an even greater fatalist view is pointless as basically all money needs to cycle through the exploitative force of surplus labour.

He doesn’t strive for systemic change in both the economy and the environment. This would all be uncontroversial if MrBeast didn’t start recreating a metaphor as poignant as Squid Game itself — drawing attention to the problem without offering a better solution to the antagonising concept of the plot itself.