You pay for my surgery?
>> Yes.
>> Seriously?
>> You know what?
Here's 10,000 dollars.
[SOUND]
[MUSIC]
>> Is she okay? >> We're to go fix more people's eyesight.
>> But he's squeezing hard.
>> The widely popular YouTuber, known as MrBeast,
has faced some pretty ridiculous backlash after he decided to pay for
eye surgery for 1000 people, so they can see again.
Sounds like a great thing, but before we get to the backlash and why people are mad
at him about this, I think it's important to understand what he did.
So let's get to those details.
So the surgery that he paid for is cataract surgery, essentially, right?
The surgery, or in the surgery, the cataract,
which clouds the normally clear lens of the eye is vacuumed out.
Following this, the cataract is replaced with a new artificial lens,
which allows the individual having the surgery to see again.
So this eight-minute long video profiles, multiple individuals
who had the surgery done because of MrBeast charitable effort here.
And so that led to a lot of backlash from people on the left on Twitter
specifically.
Now. >> You are right by the way.
>> Well, the right wing is going to do what it does, okay?
But I wanna focus mostly on the left, because I think there's a way of handling
these kinds of stories that makes a lot more sense than attacking an individual.
But before we get to that,
I want to give you an example of someone who was impacted by this effort.
So one man, who was blind for 62 years,
expressed gratitude toward MrBeast for the procedure.
Another man, who lost his job because his vision was impaired,
was thrilled to be able to work again.
A teenage boy who has been blind since his birth was ecstatic to be able to drive for
the first time.
Look, at the end of the day, regardless of what you think MrBeast motivation was for
doing this in the first place.
He had a real impact on these people's lives.
It is a good thing, I don't care what he's done in the past or
what kind of criticism you might have.
You can take a look at one thing that someone has done and judge it for
what it is.
It was a good thing to do, a kind thing to do, but
you wouldn't know it based on some of the stuff I've seen online.
So I'm gonna give you a few examples, and there's a lot of this stuff.
So here's one person who says, he is literally the antichrist.
He's performing our society's equivalent of miracles through these excessive acts
of faux generosity, and is garnering everyone's undivided love and
admiration in doing so.
He will start subverting Christ's teachings next and preaching self action.
I mean, this thread was so unhinged that I had to give you a few examples.
>> That's gonna be on the right wing, all right?
>> No, he's on the left and I'll prove it.
Let me give you more.
Let me give you more, he thinks he's on the left.
Okay, the reason I dislike him so
much is because he paints this disingenuous veneer of altruism and
goodwill over content that's primary purpose is to appeal to the senses and
satiate the viewer's insatiable appetite for opulence and the material.
>> Okay, there we go.
Back to the left.
>> Yeah, 100 percent.
There's more, he is similar to Andrew Tate.
>> What?
>> Who, by the way, got arrested for human trafficking, okay?
In the sense that his content appeals to the most shallow level of reality, and
is a vehicle through which his audience vicariously lives out their desire for
wealth.
But Andrew Tate is at least somewhat open about this, MrBeast is more subtle opting
to instead unconsciously encourage materialism by associating it with virtue,
thereby undoing the wildly, or I'm sorry, widely held notion that there is
a fundamental disconnect between capitalism and altruism, bro.
Put the textbook down for a second.
>> 100 percent. >> And live in the real world,
he did something nice, and
attacking someone who did something nice is stupid in my opinion.
There should be a critique on our system that has
literal Americans rely on the whims of wealthy people.
So instead of going after one person that you seem to be a little envious of,
let's just keep it real.
It would be far better to make a critique, an accurate critique about how our
health care system is so broken, that Americans are living honestly
lives that are worse than those living in undeveloped countries.
>> Yeah, all right, I have a lot to say about this.
Number one, envy is a hell of a drug.
So get off the crack of envy, and it's here,
I got two words you should say to MrBeast.
Thank you.
1000 people can see now because of what he did.
They couldn't see before.
There's a kid who never saw, and now he sees the world.
Are you insane to criticize that?
There's people who lost their sight, couldn't work any more, impoverished.
Now can go back to work and go on and on.
Because there's 1000 of those stories, they couldn't see, and
now they can, and you want to criticize that?
It's something about material world, and
I've got verbal diarrhea here, and I think I'm so smart,
I'm gonna use all these words to make an incredibly kind gesture look evil?
>> Let me, let me.
>> No, no, you're a loser.
Okay, and so go cry about that.
No, the guy did something wonderful, and
I've never heard of MrBeast doing anything wrong before.
I'm not saying he's an angel.
But where are people getting this stuff?
>> They seem to have a problem with him creating content about this, right?
>> What did you want him to do?
Put it and do it in a cave?
>> I guess so.
I don't know, but I don't care, I don't care, it's not about MrBeast, okay?
If there's anything to criticize here, it is about systems.
It is not about an individual, okay?
MrBeast is not a literal antichrist, that is insane.
Here's another example.
>> Well that was a dead giveaway that you're a lunatic.
So I mean, and
there's tons of these people calling him antichrist because his name is MrBeast.
God, how mentally weak do you have to be?
His name is MrBeast and he helped people, so he must be the antichrist.
Okay, all right.
Well, Jake apparently he engages in something known as Philanthrocapitalism as
this one Twitter user says.
Philanthrocapitalism, he is exploiting poor people's problems for views and
money and giving them basic human needs in return,
never addressing why they don't have these in the first place.
Now, that very last part I think is a totally fine critique, okay?
But MrBeast, doesn't do political analysis, he's not some Marxist,
he's not putting out Marxist content on tweets and YouTube and stuff, right?
He does something completely different.
I would have liked to see that critique of our health care system and
how it leads to that.
There was a little bit of it in one of his tweets and
a little bit of it in his video, which I'll get to in just a second.
But before I do, I think it's important to think of the fact that well,
there's a lot of claim that he's making money off of these efforts.
But I looked into this, and it turns out that, so,
he runs a second YouTube channel called Beast Philanthropy.
Where all profits from ad revenue merch sales and
sponsorships goes toward various charitable efforts, including a food
pantry that he opened in 2021 because he's a really bad guy, like really bad guy.
>> No, no, you can't.
Ana, you don't understand if you're a bad guy like oil executives, and
you're destroying the planet and making 72 billion dollars a year,
like Chevron just did.
Okay, you're a bad guy, it's okay.
Now you make a lot of money doing good in the world, you fix people's eyesight,
you feed them et cetera.
You're also bad.
Wait, why are they both bad?
Because some on the left have this insane idea that if anyone's doing good in
the world, they should immediately give away all their money and
all of their power and go hide in a cave, that way they can't help anybody any more.
But that guy's gonna feel better because he's not gonna feel as much envy, okay?
The critic is going to feel great.
Good MrBeast isn't helping anyone anymore.
And- >> No, honestly the real fighters
are the ones on Twitter criticizing him because they actually accomplished him.
>> Yeah, how many eyes did you fix?
So, I don't know.
>> How many people did you help?
>> But guys look again, my point isn't to even though we've been pretty vicious
toward these tweets and I don't regret it, it's not about any individual.
I want the left to just be smarter in how they engage in discourse,
especially online, because they love attacking one another.
They love attacking individuals, not all leftists.
I think there are a lot of people on the left who are principled and
understand the critique lies in how our systems are set up, right?
But when you go after a person trying to do a good thing and
you make it about the individual, you start losing the argument, right?
It's a massive distraction.
It's unnecessary.
I think Hassan had a good reaction to this.
He critiqued, he's immediately said, and I think this is the right comment, right?
I can't believe we live in a country where people have to rely on a content creator
to get a surgery that, honestly, it takes 10 minutes for this surgery, right?
And just going back to MrBeast and some of what he had to say,
one part of his video kind of very briefly touched on how screwed up the system is.
Let's watch that real quick.
>> They can't see, but we have all the technology to fix it.
>> Yeah, half of all the blindness in the world is people who need a 10
minute surgery.
>> Crazy. >> Yeah.
>> So not only are we helping people here in America,
but we're also going to other places around the world.
Because, unfortunately, nearly half the population with curable blindness doesn't
have access to this surgery.
So I wanted to provide this to as many people as possible.
>> So it would have been really nice for him to elaborate on that further.
Why, why is it, right?
He didn't because he's not a political person or political content creator,
from what I've seen so far, at least.
>> Yeah, he's not.
>> Okay. >> He is not,
I don't even know what his politics is, and I don't want to know, and
I don't care.
He brought attention to this issue.
He is not a political YouTuber, but he brought attention to an issue that
desperately needs attention, and it's not just about blindness guys,
our government does not have universal health care.
We're the only developed nation that doesn't have it.
>> And that is the problem.
>> And our system costs twice as much, if it didn't cost as much,
we could actually cure blindness for
all those people where it is curable in the country right now, just like that.
But our government is so brutal that it is choosing not to do what
a YouTuber just did, they're leaving it to YouTubers to fix
people's eyesight because our own representatives are scum.
Let us do the politics.
We'll tell you super clearly, Joe mentioned other discussing cinema,
all republicans, Joe Biden by the way, everyone who's against universal
healthcare, is saying I don't mind those people being blind.
Let alone the 45,000 people a year that die because they
don't have health insurance.
>> Exactly.
>> That's how we allow the death of a stadium full of people, and you know what?
If MrBeast saved 1000 of their lives, I guarantee you,
some bitter envious leftists would come out and go, he didn't do enough.
And why did he save their lives anyway?
He tried to make money off of it?
Why don't you just let them die and instead not have any money?
[LAUGH] That would be great if he didn't have any money.
What is wrong with you people?
Take the win.
It's called, thank you.
Look into it.
>> Finally, this quote from Michael Brooks comes up a lot for good reason, and
I want you guys to just remember it when you get tempted to attack individuals
because again, attacking individuals is a distraction.
And all it does is lead to infighting, and it leads to losing.
Which honestly the left does a great job with in the United States.
Be ruthless with systems, be kind to people.
That's it, that's the whole thing.
>> Look guys, last thing and the Andrew Tate's to the world, the Alex shows,
Crowder, all Temple, all those guys, they make tons of money by
spreading poison into our culture, racism, sexism, et cetera.
Over the top.
Misogyny, hate on top of hate, on top of fear, right?
Those are the right guys to fight.
Then you take a random guy who's making a ton of money and using it for good,
has a ton of attention, 130 million subscribers and using it for
good, and you attack him?
No, do better.
Do better.
Take the win.
When someone does something kind to their money, you should applaud that.
You should encourage that.
What do you want them to do?
All be scumbags?
>> By the way. >> You want them all to
take their money and use it for bad things and then be like, okay, good.
At least you're not a hypocrite, you're just a bad guy and everything you do.
No, you want them to use their money for good.
That's not a bad thing.
That's a good thing.
It's so simple.
>> Yeah, I mean look, and I'll put it in my context, okay?
The work I do, the research I do, the segments I put together and produce.
I do it because yeah, I want those videos to do real well, have a lot of viewership,
inform a lot of people and also contribute to my livelihood.
That doesn't make you a bad person, okay?
>> Yeah, well, now that you brought that up, let me add two things to it.
One, if you're a leftist, you're supposed to be in favor of people making a living.
So what is this weird standard whether the republicans in the right wing should be
super rich, but everyone trying to help folks on the left should be impoverished.
So you feel better.
What a weird, insane standard.
And for us, I view every video as a message in a bottle, and
so we reach on an average month, 400 million views, okay?
>> We're bad people, and we're literal antichrist.
>> That is 400 million messages in a bottle to do the right thing and
not the wrong thing.
And if you say no, you shouldn't do that because you make money.
The audio guy makes money, and John makes money, and the editor makes money.
But none of you should have a living.
Well, then we can't do the show and nobody ever gets the message.
Would that make you happier?
>> For some of them, yes.
>> Absolutely, for some of them, they would love that.
So just look in the mirror and be honest with yourself.
But anyway, MrBeast is not doing political messages.
He's not doing messages about it.
But what he is doing is reaching a broader audience that is non political,
130 million people, a lot of them, very young.
And what's the lesson that they just got?
Be decent to others.
Isn't it wonderful when you can give them a miracle of eyesight?
Hey, if you've got money, do something good with it, make people happy.
That's the message he put in a bottle.
Again, the correct response to that is thank you.