At long last, MrBeast may have gone too far. His Sept. 27 video “Would You Risk Dying For $500,000?” poses the question to professional stuntman Eric, who is put through a variety of fire-related “death traps.” Eric begins the video in a burning building, tied to a chair, and must fight his way out, scooping up bags of cash in the process. In subsequent and comparatively pedestrian challenges, Eric is launched from a human-sized cannon into a ring of fire and leaps from an elevated platform to swinging piles of cash. This video sparked outrage online – but that is nothing new for the 27-year-old YouTuber. MrBeast claims 400 million subscribers for content that could be described as recklessness with a side of philanthropy.
MrBeast feels like America in a man. He’s excessive and gaudy, but maintains a front of charitability. He’s entrepreneurial but also deeply nonaspirational. He doesn’t possess any immediately desirable traits, besides his wealth. Perhaps it is precisely this that is his strength: it seems like he could be anybody. But his success didn’t come from nowhere. He spent his teenage years consuming copious amounts of YouTube, which translated into a careful study of content creation and statistics like Click Thru Rate and Average View Duration. In MrBeast’s own words, per a leaked Beast Industries onboarding document: “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.” And so he does. The story of MrBeast is a fascinating manifestation of the American dream, a bootstraps approach like no other. There were no industry strings he pulled. He did his research; several videos were spent analyzing the success of namebrand YouTubers, as with “How Much Money Does PewDiePie Make?????” He tried and failed; his first video to gain measurable success, creatively entitled “I Counted to 100,000!” depicts just that. And eventually, MrBeast found a way to grow his influence, gaming the minutiae of the algorithm and entrapping audiences by way of sensory bombardment in the first minute of each video. In some ways, his channel feels like a video-by-video catalog of societal flaws. “1000 Blind People See For The First Time” — the lack of systemic support for the suffering. “Press This Button to Win $100,000” — the often arbitrary nature of the distribution of wealth. “Would You Risk Dying For $500,000?” — the exploitation of the financially disadvantaged for public entertainment.
Yet a less discussed aspect of MrBeast’s content — and a necessary piece in understanding his role in American culture — is the anonymity of his participants. Many of MrBeast’s videos do not deal with MrBeast himself. Rather, they rely on the reduction of individuals to a teeming mass of potential content, ripe for virality and public consumption. In his Amazon Prime-sponsored reality show “Beast Games” — which boasts the largest cash prize in reality television history, $5 million — participants are referred to primarily by the number on their jerseys. They are literally and figuratively anonymous. The individual stories of the 1000 formerly blind people are not told; indeed, they do not need to be for him to rack up views. MrBeast built his brand on his use — and abuse — of a vast quantity of mostly unknown participants. They have provided the bodies for BeastGames; for legitimate philanthropic ventures; and most recently, for “Would You Risk Dying for $500,000?” MrBeast’s business model of anonymity as an avenue for dehumanization was identified well in a New York Times article by Jon Caramanica discussing “BeastGames.”
“The show needs bodies, and it relies on their fundamental anonymity in order to execute its grand gestures,” Caramanica wrote.
Crucial to understanding the threat of humanization to MrBeast’s content is the oddly personal “Would You Risk Dying For $500,000?” The video is more individual than the typical Beastian affair; it focuses on one subject, rather than a mass of them. When stuntman Eric is asked about why he is trying so hard to land in the ring of fire — when launched, no less, from a human-sized cannon into a body of water — he turns reflective. He speaks about his father’s cancer; about his desire to provide his parents with a good retirement, with a better life. Perhaps it is that sudden loss of anonymity that calls the entire Beastian project into question. No more is the suffering and insanity of his content spread out over the 1,000 participants of BeastGames. It is concentrated in a singular individual, whose motives behind risking his life have now become known to us. And this is where MrBeast might just go too far.
“Would You Risk Dying For $500,000?” calls into question the framework of anonymity on which MrBeast’s platform is built. However, this framework isn’t just relevant for the consumption of content; anonymity has political consequences as well. President Donald Trump, most notably, relies on a systemic anonymization of his political subjects. And his exploitation of anonymity enables the current agenda of American conservatism. Trump has long relied on dehumanizing rhetoric to fundamentally estrange his political subjects. In June 2015, when Trump announced his first presidential bid, he attacked Mexico as “not sending the best” people. Since then, he has described immigrants as “poisoning the blood of our country,” “rough people,” “animals,” and as “some of the worst murderers and terrorists you’ve ever seen.” At a 2024 rally, Trump labeled immigrants “the worst criminals in the world… the most violent people on Earth.”
The goal of Trump’s rhetoric is to fundamentally estrange the subjects of his policy from his constituency — to systemically dehumanize them, to present them as anonymous and therefore not worthy of fair treatment. This use of political anonymity galvanizes Trump, and the right at large, in their policy. In 2016, nobody took Trump seriously. Few expected him to win. His “build the wall” message felt silly at best, racist at worst. But in the eight years since Trump has entered America’s political consciousness, his destructive views have become significantly more normalized and apparent in society. In a 2024 survey by KFF, nearly four in 10 immigrant adults said the way President Trump talked about immigrants in his campaign has had a negative effect on how they are treated.
Trump has used this rhetoric to prime America for his horrifying immigration policy and his politics of senseless violence and cruelty. The administration’s recent raid in Chicago, part of a broader federal crackdown on sanctuary cities through America, is a particularly appalling example of this. On Sept. 30, armed federal agents descended by helicopter onto an apartment building in Chicago; upon entering the building, they kicked down doors, threw flashbang grenades, and dragged men, women, and children from their beds. Gov. J.B. Pritzker accused the agents of using “military-style tactics” on children at the scene, including zip-tying their hands and separating them from their parents.
“They just treated us like we were nothing,” said Pertissue Fisher, an American citizen who lives in the apartment building, in an interview with ABC7 Chicago after the raid.
This perspective illuminates a broader truth to the right’s politics as of late: that its violence towards immigrants necessitates an understanding of the victims of that violence as anonymous.
Similarly crucial to understanding the power of political anonymity is the right’s reaction to Charlie Kirk’s death. The events of Sept. 10, 2025 made gun violence personal to conservatives. Social media was flooded with posts honoring Kirk’s legacy; Trump ordered flags around the country to half-mast. Shortly after Kirk’s death, and long before any information was released about the suspect for the crime, Trump took to blaming the rhetoric of the “radical left” for Kirk’s assassination, describing the left as “directly responsible for the terrorism that we’re seeing in our country today.” This is a stark contrast with the right’s typical reaction — or lack thereof — to gun violence. Indeed, the same day as Kirk’s death, a Colorado high school student shot himself and injured two others in an act of violence that received little attention from the right.
The disparity in these reactions reveals the dangers of anonymous politics — selective empathy for those within the camp, selective outrage only when the victim is known and identifiable. This is not to diminish Kirk’s death or the terrifying rise of political violence in this country. However, the right’s gun policy relies on an understanding of the victims of gun violence as fundamentally anonymous. The right’s proximity to Kirk’s death shook that foundation.
Underpinning both Trump’s right and MrBeast’s YouTube prowess is a separation of the creator from the subject. In Trump’s case, he — and the American right — is the creator of policy; his subjects are the American public. MrBeast creates content, and the participants in his videos are the subjects. The dehumanizing logic at the root of each of these schemes poses an immense threat to America as we know it. Indeed, the MrBeast model of entertainment has primed us for Trump’s terrifying brand of politics. We have grown so accustomed to the pace of social media production, to the presentation of real life online, that we are similarly immunized to the content of the news. This all comes as more Americans than ever before feel separated from those around them. Trust in mass media has hit a new low of 28 percent, according to a 2025 Gallup poll. Americans are less connected to each other than ever before. As a result, we are more susceptible to this politics of dehumanization. We are more inclined to take Trump’s utter cruelty as normal, and therefore as fact. Is this not the foundation of fascism: the acceptance of the horrible as normal, and even, eventually, as right?
We must remember, then, what seems to have been the tipping point for MrBeast, with “Would You Risk Dying for $500,000?”empathy. As we saw the intensity of the Beastian mode of entertainment concentrated in one person, whose name and face were known, it became difficult to accept his treatment as normal. And it is empathy that can serve as the antidote to Trumpian politics.
It is empathy that we must maintain, towards those who we see on our social media and in the news we consume. It is empathy that must guide us as we consume the horrors of Trump’s presidency online, as they grow closer to our doorstep, as UC Berkeley turns over 160 names to the administration for an investigation into suspected antisemitism. The project of the current American right is to distance us from the atrocities they are committing. To keep Americans ignorant, as Trump encourages universities to adopt his priorities in exchange for favorable funding. To keep us complacent, as Trump enacts increasing restrictions on international students, including social media investigations, visa revocations and travel delays. To instill in us a perspective of the subjects of mass deportation as impossibly removed from us, as a danger, as a threat, as an evil that must be expelled.
This is what vigilance means in 2025: rehumanizing the anonymous, rejecting the dehumanization of the victims of Trump’s actions. We cannot wait until these horrors come to our towns for us to recognize them as terrible. We cannot wait until we become the next target. We cannot wait until we begin to believe Trump’s doctrine to be the truth. What content, what policy, what atrocity is too far?
Let’s not find out.
Image Source: Rolling Stone
