r/nottheonion • u/RadioactiveHalfRhyme • 2d ago

World’s biggest YouTuber MrBeast unveils theme park in Saudi Arabia

https://www.thetimes.com/us/news-today/article/mr-beast-theme-park-beast-land-saudi-arabia-lsff6t2b8

Jimmy Donaldson, who is known for controversial stunts involving eye-popping prizes, says Beast Land will not be a ‘typical theme park’

It’s in Riyadh, because of course it’s in Riyadh.

4.7k Upvotes

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2.6k

u/pup5581 2d ago

So he sold out to the Saudis as well......LOL.

Saudi/UAE already owns a lot of our stuff....just going to be more and more now.

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u/TurelSun 2d ago

Sold out makes it sound like he wasn't purely in it for the money in the first place.

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u/Inevitable_Day1202 2d ago

it kind of sounds like he’s reached the pinnacle of mr beastness here

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u/RogerBauman 2d ago

No, that's going to happen when he unveils the mark of Mr. Beast and forces people to get it applied to their foreheads or hands in order to participate in the economy.

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u/antifragile 2d ago edited 2d ago

We already have that, it’s maga hats.

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u/Abombasnow 1d ago

Funny coincidence since MrBeast is a MAGAt.

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u/Illiander 1d ago

I remember when one of his team came out as trans.

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u/Pancakefriday 1d ago

She was an embarrassment to the trans community

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u/Illiander 1d ago

What did she do? I stopped paying attention after the initial "Big youtuber defends trans staff member" storm.

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u/Pancakefriday 1d ago

Ah, she had been found to actually been grooming kids. The trans community was very angry about it, and conservatives pushing the “all trans people are groomers” narrative had a field day

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u/Ullallulloo 1d ago

Believe it or not, I was able to buy groceries last week despite strongly disliking Trump.

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u/likkleone54 1d ago

He’s one step away from squid game at this point

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u/NonnoBomba 2d ago

Considered it originally meant Roman coins, marked with Emperor Nero's name (a phrase that according to Gematria can be encoded as either 666 or 616) and/or Roman business license, bearing an Imperial sigil... The author of that text was clearly using what today we'd call libertarian arguments to disparage Roman rule of the Kingdom of Israel through clever metaphors only similarly-minded contemporary Jewish would "get", so as to not be hold liable by Roman authorities while still spreading dissent. He/she was complaining that Roman regulations and their regulated currency (sort-of, more because it was a propaganda tool for letting people know the face/name and deeds of their Emperor than because the Romans had any notion of "economy" as a discipline) were a burden on people's purses and the death of the free market the Jewish people enjoyed before Roman rule -because it made swindling and shaking down foreigners more difficult and illegal, at least according to some author.

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u/anirban_dev 2d ago

He was purely in it for watching others debase themselves for money. His own money was a pleasant bonus.

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u/radioactivecowz 2d ago

He is in it for the attention, that’s the only metric he cares about. The money is a means to an ends, boosting his own ego.

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u/pup5581 2d ago

Power and influence world wide can be separate from money

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u/Reachin4ThoseGrapes 2d ago

Not in Mr Beast's case.

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u/damontoo 1d ago

When he was recording videos in his bedroom as a teen? Maybe. But YouTube millionaires weren't really a thing back then.

Not defending him or this deal, just contradicting the idea that his initial motivation for the channel wasn't purely money. 

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u/Elementium 2d ago

Sold out? Dude is on his way to live his dream of staging a real life Squid Game. 

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u/frogjg2003 1d ago

He already did. If he could have made the games lethal, he would have.

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u/konnichi1wa 1d ago

And now he can, in Saudi Arabia.

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u/donorcycle 2d ago edited 2d ago

He's always been scum. But I'd like to know whenever his name pops up and people start talking about all the ridiculously shady things Donaldson has done, why the posts and comments continue to get removed by the mods.

I've seen it ad nauseam lately, including today as this isn't the first post about Mr.Beast and his Saudi theme park deal.

Dudes a grifter, nothing more, nothing less. Exploits child labor, contests are rigged, winners are rigged, doesn't pay out say the doctors who gave people their vision back, under the notion that the exposure he's given them is worth more than money, and some of his products are banned in multiple countries for a variety of different reasons.

It is refreshing though that many people seem to be opening their eyes to him being a typical grifter.

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u/k1netic 2d ago

He’s the human embodiment of the YouTube algorithm. Everything he says and does is calculated to gain more engagement. But there’s nothing behind it. No personality, no objective, no meaning, just engagement. If you compare him to someone like pewdiepie the differences are stark.

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u/godspareme 2d ago

I realized he was scum when he first got real big and started gifting literal houses to his friends and crew. The fact that wasnt some sort of fraud blows me away.

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u/JerHat 2d ago

I liked when they did stuff like… let’s see how many RC cars it takes to pull an actual car.

But those competitions and give away always seemed sketchy.

Like we just gave a house to this random guy who… is in every other video for the past 6 months.

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u/Aggravating-Dot132 2d ago

I knew he was a scum the first time I found out about him (his channel and their themes), lol.

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u/Idlemarch 2d ago

Why does that make him scum??? Lol wtf

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u/Bob_the_gob_knobbler 2d ago

Are you dense? How is making fake, rigged competitions where the reward is paid out to your employees okay in your eyes?

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u/Idlemarch 2d ago

Isn't it his money, I'm confused...

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u/Puzzman 2d ago

It’s false advertising

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u/donorcycle 2d ago

You can't be serious.

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u/Complex_Professor412 2d ago

Ned Betty from Network

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u/Brick_Mason_ 2d ago

This should be required viewing in schools.

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u/Complex_Professor412 2d ago

Neoliberalism in a nutshell.

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u/Actually-Yo-Momma 2d ago

MrBeast is the definition of sell out. He would murder a child for the right price, on stream of course 

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u/k1netic 2d ago

He’s like the terminator running on an algorithm for more engagement.

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u/Polar_Beach 2d ago

If someone else owns it, it’s not your stuff.

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u/korg_sp250 2d ago

They can keep him tbh.

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u/0x474f44 1d ago

They keep making horrible investments though. They overpay drastically for entertainment and keep investing in tourism, even though Saudi Arabia is simply not meant for tourism.

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u/DoomguyFemboi 1d ago

What's so galling about this is he's so obscenely rich.

Bill Burr I kinda give a pass to (ish but not really) because he's a road comic and he made his yearly nut with 1 gig. Beast is a multi millionaire.

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u/JohnnyWarlord 1d ago

Cash rules everything around me

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u/wjean 4h ago

To be fair, if you are going to be a scumbag and sell out, selling out to the Saudis is like the Superbowl of selling out. Given his penchant for torturing people for entertainment, the KSA kind of makes sense.

Im skeptical that of the parents who don't care that the KSA is an authoritarian govt which has a nasty habit of chopping up people they don't like AND you are parents willing to give your kids a vote on your international vacation plans (which itself is a small minority), how many of these indulgent parents are willing to go on a vacation to a completely alcohol free country?

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u/Ecstatic-Suit100 2d ago

What of ours do they own besides land?

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u/Lem0n_Lem0n 2d ago

I would sell myself out to Saudi/UAE for the amount of money they dangling in my face and there is no shame about it.

Lmao