“I was left haunted by a profound sense of tragedy. This glimpse inside a vast industrial machine that exists to produce nothing.“
— Dan Olson, “Why was I invited to Beast Studios?“
I just watched Folding Ideas’ latest video “Why was I invited to Beast Studios?”. As always with Dan Olson’s essays, it’s worth investing your time in it even if you, like I, have absolutely no interest in MrBeast (aka Jimmy Donaldson):
Because I’d just written my blog post about the current state of the Liberal Democrats, and because of how my brain works, I couldn’t help but notice some parallels.
As I said in my last piece, it’s quite remarkable how little political impact the Lib Dems are making despite having their largest share of MPs ever. In a previous draft, I critiqued this as “Parliamentmaxxing” and that increasing the size of the Lib Dem parliament party had simply become an aim in itself, before deciding that I did not want to be responsible for making “Parliamentmaxxing” a term.
Watching Folding Ideas’ video, it’s hard to not notice that this is uncannily similar to Beast Studios’ own “YouTube first” doctrine, where maximising views has become an end in itself. This has left the company floundering to move beyond videos aimed at children and into producing TV shows, toys and (by all accounts inedible) snacks.
The video pivots when Olson moves on to consider a question he was asked at the tour of Beast Studios: how do you create fandom?
In 2024, Phoenix Andrews wrote I Heart Politics, which looks at the parallels between fandom in the sense of actively supporting a celebrity or media franchise, and political support. It’s a book I had some mixed feelings about, mainly because he is a lot more sanguine about how the two have converged in recent years, but it contains a lot of interesting observations. I certainly agree with him that politicians need to at least consider the intersection, because political supporters are going to behave in fan-like ways whether you regard it or not.
Through that lens, it’s notable that the Lib Dems have a fandom problem. On the most superficial level, Davey I’d argue is the least “loved” — as distinct from respected — Lib Dem leader since Menzies Campbell. Ashdown and Kennedy had that in spades. Clegg rode a wave of fandom during the 2010 election, and even before then managed to project an easy charisma that his predecessor lacked. Both Farron and Swinson inspired passion among their supporters and even Cable, in my opinion the party’s least successful leader, could still dine out on his reputation as the “sage” of the 2008 financial crash.
In lieu of that, Davey’s attempts at popularity have been rather vacuous. Famously, he raised the party’s profile during the 2024 election campaign by performing numerous, ever more outrageous, publicity stunts. It is debatable that they helped and did not hinder the party’s campaign, which in any case was so focused on pavement politics, that it was probably marginal either way.
What’s notable is that the substance never followed. The fact that this remains the thing that he’s most known for, is indisputably a problem going forward.
As Olson explains about MrBeast, it’s notable that despite the truly eye watering viewing figures that Jimmy Donaldson notches up on YouTube, MrBeast is notable by its lack of fandom. Far smaller celebrities in terms of viewer metrics appear to inspire far more passionate fans. Indeed, most adults loathe him and just see him as a vacuous nobody with an eye for diverting gimmicks, void of substance. Are you seeing the connection here?
Ultimately, it’s not enough to simply focus on numbers and assume that it will lead to influence and being part of the national conversation. If you believe politics can be reduced to the line going up, you simply fail to understand the exercise.
By coincidence, Dan Olson’s celebrated previous video essay “Line Goes Up – The Problem With NFTs” probably did more to influence popular culture in a substantive way than any MrBeast video, despite having, at the time of writing, 1/500th the number of subscribers. It turns out that you can, in fact, achieve a lot more with less, if you focus on substance rather than metrics.
Leave a Reply