If you're on Twitter, you may have seen the hotly debated controversy involving Jimmy Donaldson, whom you might know better as MrBeast.
MrBeast is the most subscribed-to person on YouTube so it's safe to say that his reach and influence are pretty large. But recently, people are conflicted over his latest video, in which his team flew to South Africa to donate 20,000 pairs of shoes to school children:
View this video on YouTube
In the video, he explains that thousands of children in Cape Town walk miles to get to school but due to the "extreme poverty" in the country, many of them are without shoes and have to walk barefoot.
The video then goes on to show MrBeast and a local nonprofit team up to produce and distribute 20,000 pairs of shoes to 9 different schools in the city.
By the end of the video, we see the shoes being passed out to smiling young children, as well as teachers expressing their appreciation toward MrBeast and his contribution to their schools.
In the concluding scenes, MrBeast talks about how he felt watching the entire process take place. "To witness these kids wear their first pairs of shoes was really emotional," he said.
However, people had veeery mixed feelings about the video. One person took to Twitter to post their qualms about the situation. “This type of aid is counterproductive,” they wrote and continued to suggest that by accepting aid, the people in the community may be under the will of those who provide.
MrBeast giving 20 thousand shoes to children in Africa may seem like a good deed on the surface, but it speaks directly to the critique that Thomas Sankara raised against "foreign aid". Africa is held in an indefinite chokehold. This type of aid is counterproductive.
Another person had a similar opinion, explaining that while MrBeast's act of philanthropy may seem positive overall, it may do more harm than good. The idea that developing countries rely on charity from the West to function is essentially at play in the video, the user argues.
A lot of y'all with your 50+k followers who are defending mr beast donating shoes really need to look into what "poverty porn" is and maybe realize the image that donation is giving to Africa and how it actually makes it harder for people actively trying to do good over there
Others, however, disagree and argue that MrBeast is doing a good thing with his money, which can't be said for many people with wealth.
Seeing people hate on Mr.Beast is wild to me. Theres people who have never donated a single dollar to charity yet hate him for giving kids in Africa 20,000 pairs of shoes.
And news commenter Philip DeFranco argued that people should be mad at the system that allows children to not have basic needs, not MrBeast who is working to do what he can within that system.
Elsewhere on the internet, some were under the impression that MrBeast was just getting richer off of his philanthropy by profiting from YouTube ad revenue…
People praising things like this like “good guy Mr Beast” ignore the reality that he makes a profit from these types of videos. This isn’t really charity. https://t.co/ICn8rPwTRm
…but MrBeast himself stepped in to clarify:
@UpwardBoss No hate, you prob just haven’t seen this channel but it actually is a charity, and I obviously don’t profit from it. 100% of all revenue from beast philanthropy goes towards running my food banks and helping ease human suffering, and since inception I’ve personally put in… https://t.co/nLq54TR0wO
"No hate, you prob just haven’t seen this channel but it actually is a charity, and I obviously don’t profit from it. 100% of all revenue from beast philanthropy goes towards running my food banks and helping ease human suffering, and since inception I’ve personally put in millions into beast philanthropy. That’s the whole point, make content around helping people to generate more money to help more people," he tweeted.
Interestingly, this type of backlash is nothing new for MrBeast. Last month, MrBeast posted a video in which he paid for the cataract surgeries of 1,000 blind people, which unsurprisingly spurred a lot of similar criticism.
