I don't know what kind of person he really is, but I do know that there are tons of scammers that pretend to be him and are ripping off young folks. So your boys should be super careful around him and alleged giveaways.
Definitely better than Andrew Tate from what I've seen. While he's clearly a very savvy clout chaser, and he's overtaken Pewdie Pie as the most popular YouTuber, he has made a serious effort towards philanthropic acts. The fact that he's using these acts as a marketing tool to further increase his influence is clearly intentional, but he's doing real good with his clout. He's also shown considerable evolution throughout his career, including:
In an April 2022 interview with The Daily Beast, Donaldson announced that he was no longer an evangelical Christian and identified himself as an agnostic. He also stated that he had long disagreed with his church's position on homosexuality. He states that during the time he grew up in "the heart of the Bible Belt", he had religion "beat into [his] head every day", and was taught that "gay people are the reason God's going to come and burn this Earth". Although he considered anti-LGBT rhetoric to be normal growing up, he has disavowed it since then, stating: "I realized, 'Oh, this isn't normal. This is just a weird place I grew up in.' So, that type of thing, I [wish I could] go back in time and be like, 'Hey, stop'."
Donaldson considers himself strictly apolitical, saying that "I don't want to alienate Republicans and Democrats. ... I like having it where everyone can support [my] charity. My goal is to feed hundreds of millions of people ... it would be very silly of me to alienate basically half of America."
...and...
In April 2023, Chris Tyson came out publicly as gender non-conforming and revealed their struggles with gender dysphoria. In response to claims that they would become a "nightmare" and distraction for the channel, Donaldson defended Tyson and said, "Chris isn't my 'nightmare' he's my fucken [sic] friend and things are fine. All this transphobia is starting to piss me off."
This isn't to say he's perfect, but he's a helluva lot better than some other personalities your kids could be listening too.
Being better than Andrew Tate is like, the lowest possible bar that I could think of. 😆
But I don't disagree with your points.
"I don't want to alienate Republicans and Democrats. ... I like having it where everyone"
So he's a fascist. If you have 11 people trying not to alienate a fascist, you have 12 fascists.
Donaldson considers himself strictly apolitical
Refusing to take a side when one side has made the extermination of swaths of the population their stated policy goal is taking the side of oppression.
While I agree with your sentiment, it's not applicable in this context. He's stating a simple factor of most charity work (something I'm familiar with working in the non-profit world when I was younger). If you alienate your donators, you lose their donation. The easiest way to alienate someone is to declare a political stance, and the clumsiest way to do so is to do it by declaring an allegiance to a party rather than describing your support or opposition to policy specifics.
Ideological purity always conflicts with the tactical application of positive change. As an example, what would the US Senate look like if Franken hadn't resigned? What could have been accomplished? What positive changes were prevented? What would the Supreme Court look like now?
Secondly, your hyperbole obfuscates the fact that most Republicans are not pro-genocide, rather, extremists within their party are. Additionally, the identification of Republican or Democrat goes further than political identification in America - it's a cultural identification as well, one that splits along rural / urban lines. I know a number of rednecks from high school who are great guys, shoot their guns, love their gay and brown friends, support abortion, give to charity, and publicly identify as conservatives who hate Democrats... even when on a policy level, they agree with most progressive politics. A big factor in this is the conservative media landscape, which has actively fostered this level of cognitive dissonance, but that doesn't address the question of "how do you convince people to help you do good if they don't agree with your politics?"
Is it better to declare your politics and lose the donations that would allow you to do good?
Or is it better to keep your politics private, accept donations from all comers, and use those resources to make the world a better place?
In my opinion, the best path (and the one Mr. Beast appears to be following) is a middle ground. Don't declare your politics, accept donations, but if a donor has an agenda that conflicts with your politics or morals (like publicizing the donation to whitewash their reputation), reject them on a case by case basis. This lays out your support or opposition in specific instances rather than aligning your actions to the whims of a political party, and thus risk being aligned with the views of extremists within that party.
most Republicans are not pro-genocide, rather, extremists within their party are
There is no moderate wing of a party which caucuses with people who proffer genocide as a policy position.
10 people having dinner with 1 nazi is 11 nazis and a party that has members pushing genocide is a genocidal party.
Is it better to declare your politics and lose the donations that would allow you to do good?
Legitimizing genocide as a "political belief" by refusing to call out, "We should do a genocide!" as bad is itself doing a bad.
That's my position as well. He does good, even if it's for self serving reasons, it's still good being done, but I don't know enough about him as a human being to make a statement either way.
he has made a serious effort towards philanthropic acts
Ehhhh. He engaged in a mix of pity porn and charity-as-self-promotion/criticism shield. Never trust a wealthy person's donations when they have their name attached to them; there's always a reasonable chance that they came with strings. Doubly so when those donations are to charities they actively control.
I can appreciate that he's funnelled his money into things people actually need, instead of into grants so charities can buy supplies from tech companies he's invested in, but it's still PR, not philanthropy.
it's still PR, not philanthropy
This is it right here.
Thats narrow minded, it can be both
That's naive. Leaving the rich in a position to "save" the poor is nothing more than enabling a power fantasy for them. It leaves them with all of the power and control.
Do you think the people who get the help see it the same way, or is just us privileged folk who feel uneasy?
The last sentence feels a little “perfect being the enemy of the good.” Outside of wanting purity of intention, what is the issue here, if the result is people being helped?
It reinforces the system that leave people needing help, and draws attention away from the need for changing that system.
People are getting helped, but none more so than the one getting good PR. And that's not charity, or philanthropy. That's just marketing.
We don't need more marketing. And relying on the graces of self-helping benefactors isn't "being helped". It's being financially abused.
None of this is ever going to change until regular people start voting for their own betterment, at least in America. There are more of us than them, but half of us are trapped in the idea that we're going to be millionaires someday. Or apathy.
If you publicise your philanthropy to gain my support for your philanthropy, does that magically make you non-philanthropic?
Yes. Yes it does.
It's not charity then. It's paid advertising.
Charities do a lot of paid advertising.
Yes, indeed. I'd heavily recommend Thoreau's critique of philantrophy: https://thecuriouspeople.wordpress.com/2014/06/03/thoreau-philanthropy-is-overrated-walden-44/ . While it's written 200 years ago and on a religious foundation, he has a point.
“Philanthropy is almost the only virtue which is sufficiently appreciated by mankind. Nay, it is greatly overrated; and it is our selfishness which overrates it.” — Henry David Thoreau, “Economy,” Walden
I let my kids, 8 & 9 watch his videos every once and a while. Out of most of the YouTubers out there he is the least problematic iny opinion. For the most part though I only allow educational stuff on YouTube with the occasional fun channels. Snake Discovery and anything about guitars are huge around here.
To me he always seemed off and disingenuous.
I think he does good work. Does that inherently make him a good person? Who's to say? None of us know him as a person, we only know him as a personality. We know about him only what he chooses to publish about himself, like most other celebrities.
Some people think that the fact that he only does good deeds on camera makes him a bad person. I think this is a short-sighted judgement, because his money comes from content creation. Without it, he wouldn't have the funding to spend on helping people in the first place. Is it exploitative of already-vulnerable people? Yeah, a little bit, but we shouldn't ignore the fact that those people he helped still got assistance from him that they couldn't afford on their own.
I don't think there's anything wrong with sharing the good deeds you do. If it funds future good deeds, and brings awareness that might make other people also contribute, then I think that's overall a net positive.
All that said, his burgers are trash.
I get some of the criticisms of his videos, but people who have a major hate on for him kind of amuse me - like he as done more to help more people than most of us ever will and I kind of feel like most of the haters haven't done much for anyone else themselves. Also if my kids are going to end up looking up to someone in this world, there are far far worse youtubers and influencers they could be inspired by.
I've personally been fascinated by the get money->give it away->get more money->Give it away content engine he's produced.
He's certainly a big ass clickbait bullshitter, which is enough for me to hate him and block his channel.
It would be good to know. But then Austin does it matter? There are plenty of terrible celebrities, as long as they are putting out decent role modelling for the kids, they get to keep their private life
He's very unthreatening at least.
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