By Jeffrey Blehar
Wednesday, November 08, 2023
Since I am what is known officially to the kids these
days as an “Old,” I will confess I don’t spend a lot of time in the world of
“YouTube stars” and internet celebrities, people who are famous for basically
living their entire lives out loud, in public, and online. I myself, after all,
have both Twitter and National
Review’s Slack channel for that. But beyond that, the entire format is just
appallingly gauche to Gen X sensibilities, even when it isn’t revealing of the
utter intellectual banality of an entire younger generation of media
influencers who travel almost entirely under the radar of mainstream media
awareness. (“So be sure to smash that like button and subscribe!”)
Therefore, I’m not the one to bring you up to speed on
the prior adventures of one “MrBeast” (real name: Jimmy Donaldson), a YouTuber
of some repute — 208 million subscribers is a lot of eyeballs — except to note
that the last few times his hyperactively shouty voice has crossed my transom,
I rapidly hit the “back” button on my browser. All of his videos have the
exact same “wide-eyed wacky-faced reaction shot” to sell “MrBeast does
a staged prank/way cool thing!!” Perhaps this sort of entertainment is for you
. . . it is not for me. (I strongly recommend watching this GIF of the
Toronto Raptors mascot attempting to rollerblade on repeat instead.)
So what obnoxious stunt did this jerk go and do this
time? Did he “pay a real assassin to try and kill” him? Go on a “30-day”
fast? (You will notice my use of scare quotes.) Take up MMA fighting or
allegedly start a sex-trafficking ring? No, it’s even worse than
that: This miserable self-promoting bastard went to Kenya and built a hundred wells for
impoverished rural Africans who live without easy access to fresh water.
And — the absolute nerve of the guy — he filmed himself doing it. The video itself is,
of course, a horror show of white privilege: a loud-talker backed by a very
professional drilling team flying all over Kenya, north and south, east and
west, like some arrogant 19th-century colonialist, just giving away access
to water to people. As expected from such vile propaganda, there were a
sickening number of shots of happy villagers and children — all paid actors or
sad dupes, one must assume — pretending to “celebrate” this new source of clean
water. Who in the hell does this guy think he is?
The criticisms were of course swift and justifiably
harsh, as one might expect for such arrant acts of imperialism. Kenyan
politician Francis
Gaitho pounced on how MrBeast was perpetuating racist stereotypes and
the “white savior” narrative, which of course he is as an owner of white skin
doing insultingly effective good works in Africa. “These mzungus are
very disgusting, because they are trying to validate the stereotype that Kenya
or Africa is a ‘dark continent’, dependent on handouts, dependent on
philanthropic interventions.”
What’s worse is that many seem to have completely missed
Gaitho’s point, and been deceived by MrBeast’s inexcusable good deed: Kenyan
activist Boniface Mwangi, clearly in the grip of the white settler narrative
himself, chose to criticize his government’s elected officials instead of
putting the blame where it properly belongs: “Every five years we give newly
elected members of parliament, and senators a Sh5 million car grant ($33,000),
fuel those cars every month but we have no money to drill boreholes for our
people?” Others seem to have internalized their oppression as well; Kenyan
journalist Ferdinand Omondi noted that “it’s embarrassing that a YouTuber
jetted into Kenya on a charity tour to perform tasks our taxes should have
completed years ago.”
But those who properly understand what’s at stake here
thankfully aren’t afraid to speak out. Non-governmental organizations rarely
will steer a person wrong on this subject (they are the true experts, after
all), so it’s important to “center” the critique of Saran Kaba Jones of FACE
Africa, who points out “overnight, this person comes along, who happens to be a
white male figure with a huge platform, and all of a sudden, he gets all of the
attention. It’s kind of frustrating, but it’s also understanding the nature of
how the world is.” One insightful commentator queried, with real
justification: “Why didn’t he simply provide positive stereotypes for the
people to drink instead?” I think we can all agree that, in the long run,
they’d have been better off that way.
Prior to yesterday, I didn’t really know the first thing
about MrBeast, and I can confidently say that I hope to never find my son
subscribing to his YouTube channel in the upcoming years. Not because
clickmongers living a bizarre world of performative self-regard put me off
personally, but because I wouldn’t want to see someone rewarded so disgustingly
just for getting on a jet, flying to Africa, and spending hundreds of thousands
of dollars in time, material, and logistical planning to give impoverished people
life necessities. We don’t need that sort of embarrassment in a world where our
NGOs and activists — many of whom have both the right skin tone and two more
degrees — are already doing the best they possibly can. Please, MrBeast, no
more charity stunts: you’re making the rest of the world look bad.
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