Watching the new Folding Ideas video and I can't stop thinking that Mr Beast is unsatisfied because he doesn't have a fandom. He is dying to understand where to throw money to make fandom happen. It gives me great pleasure to know that we hold the power to keep mr. Beast miserable
When Dan Olson said that Mr Beast's people asked him and a bunch of other youtubers "How do you create fandom", I experienced a moment of terror so visceral that my heart jumped into my throat. But luckily what followed was a thorough reassurance that he would never be able to understand the answer to that question.
The reason WHY Team Beast wants to "create fandom" is because they have an awareness that fandom is something that makes Number Go Up, and they want to have access that sort of loyalty and attention. But fandom isn't really something you create intentionally, it's more of a natural side effect of caring about something a lot, and going about the business of expressing how much you care, and finding community that cares in a similar way. But Mr Beast and his team do not actually care about anything at all, except Number Go Up. Everything Team Beast does is just a random exercise in throwing money at different ideas to see which makes Number Increase More.
Team Beast made chocolate bars because they know their audience of kids likes and buys candy, not because they liked candy or were interested in the process of making good candy. This is how they ended up making a chocolate bar that lacked the pre-sectioned bar shape that any other reputable candy maker has known and utilized for decades.
Team Beast made a reality show, because they know that reality shows are popular, and that Squid Game was a massive cross-cultural phenomenon, not because they care about reality shows, or are interested in telling stories about the limits of human cooperation and integrity in high stress, high rewards situations. This is how they ended up making a reality show with too many people to focus on any sort of interesting individual narratives, filled with elimination challenges that didn't work.
Team Beast is basically going down a checklist of "what activities that have the highest profits/highest level of public awareness associated with them" because they want that Simple Numerical Supremacy that comes from them, not because they care about the actual activities themselves. This also explains why Dan Olson was invited to Team Beast's studios to begin with. They probably only have a vague awareness of him as a guy on youtube with a million subscribers, and a 2 hour documentary about NFTs that is apocryphally regarded as the Film That Ended The Business. They don't actually care about what he or other youtubers consider important. They just want their fandoms.
