How good is philanthropy if you’re only doing it for social capital?
A hot topic among “netizens” is a term called “Performative Philanthropy,” but what is it?
Philanthropy is the general desire to promote the welfare of others, expressed especially by donating money to good causes. In the case of performative philanthropy, the underlying motivation for helping is only to appear as though you are a good person–when in reality you are only doing it for your gain.
Mr. Beast is a popular YouTuber whose philanthropy videos have skyrocketed him into near unattainable popularity- pulling billions of views across his channel. Mr. Beast has ranked on the Forbes list for the highest-paid YouTube creator in 2022 and has an estimated net worth of $500 million. I want to explore why philanthropy influencers, or ‘kindness content’ might be morally wrong. Watching a homeless person receive monetary help from an influencer might feel great, but it doesn’t feel as great when you get the whole picture. Would this person still be giving out money to the homeless if it didn’t benefit them? How does it feel as a homeless person to have a camera shoved in your face to be exploited for content? Does he truly care about his fans, or is he just virtue-signaling?
A year ago, in 2023, Mr. Beast made a video titled ‘1,000 blind people see for the first time.’ In the video, he cured 1000 patients of blindness with surgery, because they couldn’t afford it. The truth is, if this was such an amazing piece of altruism from Jimmy, he should have just done it without making the video. When these poor people are filmed by Mr. Beast, there is an intense power imbalance between the two. Not only are they pressured to act more ‘sad’ for the camera, but It can even be incredibly dehumanizing. Intense emotional experiences being commercialized by a billionaire is nothing less than torture.
That’s not the only way he’s exploited people who are less fortunate. Even destroying Jake Weddle’s, one of his former employees, car. Of course, he bought him a new one, but he was not able to afford the insurance on the new car Jimmy wanted him to get. And he ended up with a worse car. Mr. Beast also had Jake Weddle participate in a challenge where he was locked in a white room for 30 days. He wasn’t able to sleep, due to the lights being turned on constantly, (Never turned off due to the fact it would mess up the time lapse) leading to severe sleep deprivation. They made him run on a treadmill for hours until he got blisters on his feet, and he was essentially manipulated into staying. Of course, he’d get $10,000 per day to stay in the room. As a broke kid with big aspirations, Jake Weddle agreed but reportedly had traumatic flashbacks after the incident and had to receive therapy.
This situation is nothing short of disgusting. Torturing an employee who you have a severe power imbalance over for money sounds like something that only a cartoon supervillain could manage. Mr Beast clearly cares about profit first, and his employees second.
Mr. Beast has also come into negative press recently due to the release of a collab with KSI and Logan Paul for a Lunchables-inspired product. The lunch packet comes in three variations. Pizza, Nachos, and ‘Turkey stack-ems’. Each meal comes with a prime drink and a Feastables chocolate bar on the side. While Mr.Beast is marketing this meal as a ‘healthier alternative’ to Lunchables, this likely isn’t the case. Prime allegedly has heavy metal contamination, according to the Environmental Research Center which filed a Notice of Violation of California Law Proposition 65, against Prime Hydration, LLC on November 1, 2023. Feastables also has been praised for being a healthy chocolate bar. But the formula has been re-made and is now allegedly less healthy.
Taking a quick glance at this situation, it’s obvious that ‘Lunchly’ is a cash grab. It would be perfectly fine to release a product you made and advertise it to fans, but the difference is that they’re marketing it as healthy when this isn’t the case. Lunchly is not any healthier than Lunchables, they both include overly processed meat–and sugary drinks and candy. (Seriously, who on earth thinks pizza, an energy drink, and a chocolate bar can be considered healthy??) If Mr. Beast truly cared about his fans and wasn’t doing this for money, he’d spend time creating a genuinely healthy Lunchables alternative. And he wouldn’t work with a known scammer, Logan Paul, who filmed a dead body and posted it to his channel for children to see and also uses predatory ad practices to influence his audience which is mostly children.
Ultimately, Mr. Beast is not the worst person on this planet. He is putting good into the world, but I implore readers to think about the background of the kind of content they are watching. Is it possible it’s staged? Is the content you’re consuming truly that moral? Is it possible the creator is exploiting the actors?
Is it philanthropy, or is it performative?
