• Tom742 [comrade/them]@hexbear.net
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    2 months ago

    Something I was thinking on yesterday:

    David Dobrik’s big thing on youtube was how “generous” he was. His vlogs would frequently feature him dropping large gifts of houses, cars, electronics, and cash on his “vlog squad” usually, but also giveaways to strangers. He used that gift giving to charity wash a lot of the wrong he was doing, and his supporters would defend him through his “charitable acts.” Dobrik made millions off his channel thanks in large part to his vlog squad, and none of them made a cent off being monetized by him. Their compensation was largely tied to those gifts.

    Mr. Beast is similar in a lot of ways, but most notably also employing charity washing.

    When dobrik quit youtube, he also quit all of his “charity” work, lmao. No more large gifts to his friends, despite his defense prior being “I’m just a generous person and love gift giving.” So one could make the argument, “dobrik you’re still rich, why are not still donating and giving gifts?” We all know the answer there.

    What’s interesting to me is that Mr. Beast seems to have learned from that and insulated himself from that kind of criticism by tying in the viewers mind (like 80% are literal children) that the money he donates through various videos only consists of the money he made through previous videos, and that he himself is minimalist and doesn’t take an extravagant salary. That ignores the fact that he lives in an 80million dollar flat and drives exotic cars, but it really seems to have insulated him a little from the same type of criticism that dobrik would get.

    If he indeed does have political aspirations he could jettison the beast channel, stop any type of donations and gifts, and have a defense for it.

    Just a ramble, not sure where I was going with that.