in the belly of the MrBeast

It’s been a year since I sent off the proofs for The YouTube Apparatus (now free to download!), and I haven’t been following the platform as closely while I was focused more on Twitch, TikTok and moving to Italy.

One nice thing about studying social media through the lens of creators and influencers is that some of them are quite forthcoming about their experiences; that’s the nature of the gig. But others are more committed to their persona, to maintaining some distance between themselves and the content.

The most famous of these is, of course, the world-conquering MrBeast, owner of the most-subscribed YouTube channel (343 million). MrBeast rose to fame through outrageous acts of charity, and occasionally engages in stunt-giving. This is a meaty phenomenon for wordcels trying to understand MrBeast; we can bring any number of critical frames to bear on questions of whether this is altruistic, whether it actually has good effects, what the normative experience of the viewer is…what it means to fit out 2,000 amputees with new protheses, like in the most recent video.

This is a mistake. As I argued in the conclusion of The YouTube Apparatus, “Communication within the YouTube Apparatus has no meaning.” The rapid feedback loop between creators and audiences (as constructed by platform metrics) means that the system more and more responds to itself. Rather than trying to go somewhere (as is the case with political ideology), the creator seeks simply intensification, to draw more and more of the world into his whirlpool of content.

Last fall, an onboarding guide for MrBeast’s production company was ostensibly “leaked” online.¹ The document offers an explicit description of MrBeast’s content creation strategy — and I confess that I feel vindicated by the analytic approach in the book. Let’s walk through it.

beauty and the MrBeast

Your goal here is to make the best YOUTUBE videos possible. That’s the number one goal of this production company. It’s not to make the best produced videos. Not to make the funniest videos. Not to make the best looking videos. Not the highest quality videos.. It’s to make the best YOUTUBE videos possible.

This is MrBeast’s thesis. The medium is the message. The content only makes sense within the context of the platform. Aesthetic evaluations of the content are simply a category error. Beauty, here, is harmony between the content, the platform architecture, and viewer preferences.

99% of movies or tv shows would flop on Youtube. On top of that they’d be wildly unprofitable, have no flexibility, and long lead times that can’t adapt to trends. We arn’t [sic] here to make a small movie once or twice a year, I want to make one a week lol. Which is why you need to be nimble and produce content OUR way, not the way you were taught before.

This beauty is an ever-shifting target. The platform architecture and viewer preferences can change overnight; in cybernetic terms, a long lag time in production is deadly. MrBeast needs to be able to adapt to trends, vindicating my audience-driven framework for understanding YouTube.

But remember that the audience doesn’t exist — it is a creation of human actions inscribed through platform metrics.

the number(s) of the MrBeast

I spent basically 5 years of my life locked in a room studying virality on Youtube. Some days me and some other nerds would spend 20 hours straight studying the most minor thing: like is there a correlation between better lighting at the start of the video and less viewer drop off (there is, have good lighting at the start of the video haha) or other tiny things like that. And the result of those probably 20,000 to 30,000 hours of studying is I’d say I have a good grasp on what makes Youtube videos do well. The three metrics you guys need to care about is Click Thru Rate (CTR), Average View Duration (AVD), and Average View Percentage (AVP).

I spent all this time writing a book and he just…tweeted it out. The secret to MrBeast’s success is a monomaniacal obsession with understanding YouTube’s advanced audience metrics.

He has, proudly, turned himself and an ever-growing production company into human marionettes, contorting themselves to the tiniest tugs of CTR and AVD numbers. A qualitative, theoretical vision of creation is worse than useless — it distracts from the pursuit of beauty as it is constructed through platform metrics.

People on average watched this video a minute and 38 seconds longer than the other video of the same length!! OF COURSE IT GOT TRIPLE THE VIEWS, IT’S CLEAR AS DAY FOR YOUTUBE THAT PEOPLE LIKED THIS VIDEO MUCH MORE! For your videos to do well you must get their AVD and AVP as high as possible. The longer people watch, the better a video will do.

This example demonstrates a correct understanding of how the YouTube “algorithm” works. The primary goal of the algorithm is to show people beautiful videos, videos they want to watch. The actual difference between in viewtime is 6 minutes versus 7.5, but this represents a huge signal to the algorithm. MrBeast writes that it’s “clear as day for YouTube that people liked this video much more.” Thanks to the exponential distribution of content popularity, even these somewhat modest differences in watchtime translate to massive differences in views.

the MrBeast with two backs

haha just kidding. MrBeast does not have sex. YouTube doesn’t allow pornography, so what would be the point?

MrBeast’s bête noire

MrBeast is a business. YouTube views are one (massive) source of revenue, but so are mid-video “brand videos” (advertisements). The challenge is to understand the correct tradeoff between the primary resource and short-term profit. If MrBeast were to be bought out by a private equity company optimizing for quarterly revenue, we would expect to see a dramatic uptick in these brand videos. But because he understands the revenue maximizing principle from leaning into the logics of YouTube viewership, and because he doesn’t have shareholders to dilute his vision, he’s able to take the long-term view.

Now, again, the vision here doesn’t have any meaning. It is simply to grow his viewership numbers higher and higher.

the nature of the MrBeast

To excite me. The goal of our content is to excite me. That may sound weird to some of you, especially if you’re new but to me it’s what’s most important. If I'm not excited to get in front of that camera and film the video, it’s just simply not going to happen. I’m not fake and I will be authentic, that’s partly why the channel does so well. And if i’m not excited by the video, we’re fucked. Luckily, I’d say I’m a pretty predictable guy.

Even in this putatively private document, MrBeast emphasizes authenticity as an essential ingredient for a beautiful YouTube video. We’ve just seen how MrBeast optimizes every tiny detail of his content in pursuit of audience metrics, how every decision in his organization is reactive to trends and audience preferences. In what sense is any of this authentic?

As I wrote in the book, “If creators are speaking their authentic truths, how can they also be accountable to audience feedback? I am personally bemused to see “authenticity” invoked as a criterion for what is ultimately and obviously a performance; to be “authentic” in the DIY/punk ethos of my youth meant to refuse to “sell out,” to refuse to bow to audience demand and instead to remain committed to some higher artistic calling.”

If you share my bemusement, I recommend this excellent essay by Toby Shorin. At this point, we have to accept that younger generations—precisely the people who have been raised on quantified audience feedback for their every creative gesture—have an unrecognizable conception of authenticity.

The ideal creator has no distance between themselves and their persona. They have been interpellated by audience metrics; their subjective experience already takes audience reactions into account.

Or more simply, YouTubers are not “Creators” but Creations. Audiences, rationalized by the platform, and the vloggers who upload the videos those audiences consume are not separable either theoretically or empirically.

I wrote above that MrBeast is distinct from more confessional creators, the all-access influencers who turn their entire messy lives into content. But this is only true aesthetically, which again is a dimension which doesn’t matter. MrBeast also turns his entire life into content — by skipping the step of have a life outside of content.

The onboarding guide concludes with an extremely telling passage about information diets:

What you consume on social media, when you watch youtube, tv, the games you play, etc. are what I like to call your information diet. Chris Tyson (our first subscriber and the guy in the videos) is a wonderful example of an information diet being used to perfection. The dude is funny as fuck. I’ve never met anyone in my entire life that can make people laugh like he can and I never understood why he was so good at it until I lived with him for a few years. The dude watches an obscene amount of cartoons and stupid shit. His eyeballs exsist to inhail [uh..sic] copious amounts of just goofy, dumb, and brain numbing content.

Chris has turned himself into a pure vessel for “goofy, dumb and brain numbing content.” He has perfected his information diet. As a result, he is “fucken hilarious.” If he were to consume instead “stocks and investment advice…Do you think he’d be just as funny as he currently is? No. He in my opinion wouldn’t even be 20% as funny.” I’m enjoying thinking about how bad it would be to be 80%+ less funny.

“Luckily, I’d say I’m a pretty predictable guy.” Luck has nothing to do with it, Mr. MrBeast. Your predictability is the result of years of an information diet consisting of audience feedback metrics. You are the proudest creation of the YouTube Apparatus.

1. Frankly, because of how flattering MrBeast’s self-depiction is, how devoted to the job and to his audience, I’m not convinced that this “leak” wasn’t intentional.