There is something not right with that guy. Apologies to all the Mr. Beast fans, but there it is.

The first time I ever even heard about him was from a news article about a year ago. Some disadvantaged little kid got pranked by people claiming to be on Mr. Beast’s staff promising him [something] that made him light up with joy, but was then deliberately stiffed on whatever the promise was, and of course it broke his little heart. It was clearly not a scam and the kid was just destroyed by it, so much so that it upset his community and finally hit the local media.

When contacted, Mr. Beast and his staff denied they had anything to do with it, which is entirely possible – but what really got my attention was just the callous kind of half-assed apology and oh well response the kid got from them. They could so easily have tossed the little guy some kind of bone; instead it was more of a shut-up-and-go-away response.

I have my YouTube subscriptions tightly curated so I rarely see any of the really popular stuff, but at some point after all this a Mr. Beast video was offered, and I remembered it was that guy. So I went and looked at his channel and ALL of it just seemed to have a very strong ick factor. Okay, maybe it’s just my poor taste, lol.

But now he’s on my radar, and I’ve noticed something else: I have never actually heard a completely positive word about him. There’s always some kind of controversy involved. Contrast that with other celebrities: there are many who never have a bad word spoken about them. Not this guy.

And now Elon Musk wants him on X. Keep in mind that Elon Musk is openly repelled by those he cannot manipulate, including anyone with working conscience who is disgusted by the kind of propagandistic hatred X serves up on the regular, and Musk tirades against that kind of ethical “wokeness” regularly. Yet he loves Mr. Beast enough to run Beast content (for free? as an ad?) to get Mr. Beast onto his platform. That’s not the kind of recommendation decent people get from Musk.

Yeah. @SnotFlickerman@lemmy.blahaj.zone is right. There’s something just NOT right about that guy.

EDITED TO ADD: I have also noted that several of the people who replied with disagreement also felt the need to obviously misquote me. Normally I don’t bother messing with that shit – if you won’t read well enough to quote correctly the first time, you won’t if I reply – but just because misquotes are now An Actual Theme in the replies, I’d like to point out you’re not helping your cause, no matter how good it sounds on comeback. To deliberately misquote someone in order to slay a strawman just means you never had a valid point to start with: you literally had to make one up to be able to cut it down. And in defense of this guy, too. Birds of a feather, lol.