Mark of the (Mr.) Beast

Stephen King’s 1979 novel “The Long Walk” is an allegory for the Vietnam War draft. During a time of financial hardship, a group of young men apply each year to compete in “the long walk.” The rules are simple: All contestants must walk at a pace of 4 miles per hour, without breaks, until only one contestant is left walking. The losers are shot and killed. The winner receives a large cash prize and one wish fulfilled. 

The novel’s first film adaptation was released this year. Its theme of civilians participating in televised endurance challenges anticipates the upcoming reboot of another King novel, “The Running Man.” “The Running Man’s” original adaptation, released in 1987 and rewritten to fit the zeitgeist of Reagan’s America, cast Arnold Schwarzenegger as a tough cop who is forced into the murderous “Running Man” game show by state forces. Edgar Wright’s 2025 version, by contrast, is said to be faithful to the original short novel and much more in tune with 2025: If I were to guess, this “faithfulness” will be apparent in the protagonist, Ben Richards, willingly signing up for the game show in order to buy medication for his terminally ill child, as in the original story. 

A perverse fascination with other people’s endurance — or rather, other people’s suffering as they fight to endure — in times of financial and social desperation is nothing new. Horace McCoy’s Depression-era novel “They Shoot Horses, Don’t They?” — adapted in 1969 into a film by Sidney Pollack — depicts dance competitions of the time that could go on for weeks, with cash prizes for the couple with the most stamina. (The prize in “They Shoot Horses” is about $30,000 in today’s money.) In 1997, director S.R. Bindler released a documentary, “Hands on a Hard Body,” which follows a group of Texans competing in a car dealership ad campaign to see who can keep their hand on a brand new truck the longest. The film was enormously popular, running for over a year at the Dobie Theater in Austin. 

All of the aforementioned films make entertainment from physically and psychologically draining “challenges” that offer a ticket out of debt and despair. They invariably involve presumably “normal” people without any special skills. The goal is to be the last man (or couple) standing, by being the best at an act that almost anyone can do: slow dancing, walking, keeping a hand on the hood of a truck. Because everyone likes a spectacle, these films usually also incorporate subplots of cult fandom — fans with signs appear during “The Long Walk,” dancing couples are sponsored by brands, small crowds gather to cheer on specific hands placed on specific hard bodies. 

The modern king of what might be called the endurance-attention economy is, of course, MrBeast, a YouTuber whose “challenges” have gained him 442 million subscribers and the ability to rack up a billion views on a single video, most of which are variations on the same formula: “Win [massive amount of money] by [suffering through this extreme experience]”.  

In his early days, MrBeast served as his own endurance guinea pig. He would attempt to eat 100,000 calories in a day, or livestream himself counting to 10,000 while fighting sleep and performing natural bodily functions. Eventually, MrBeast began roping in civilian contestants. Contestants often have stories of varying desperation: a pregnant wife, a lost job, a life with no car that very much requires a car.  

One of MrBeast’s most recent videos, “Would You Risk Dying For $500,000?”, depicts a man strapped to a chair in a burning room. MrBeast stands next to him while hawking his new branded beef jerky sticks. In the comments, he assures everyone that they take many safety precautions. (When someone dies of a heart attack in “They Shoot Horses, Don’t They?,” the emcee lies, assuring the rest of the group that the on-call nurses would ensure his survival). None of MrBeast’s videos are really about the victory of securing the purse; rather, they turn on the process of getting there. As in “The Long Walk,” the only options are to win or lose. And while no one in MrBeast’s videos is dying, we are meant to believe they are putting themselves in extreme physical or psychological distress. We are kept in our seat not by the outcome so much as morbid curiosity. In the same way I am curious to see what obstacles will weed out the losers in “The Long Walk,” there is a sick fascination in guessing the final straw after months in a bunker with a stranger, or a full day buried alive (both classic and regularly utilized MrBeast premises). 

MrBeast’s videos are edited with a frantic, cartoon-like energy, including animated nuclear explosions over the locations of competitions after they are completed. The message is clear: Once MrBeast has extracted all that he can from one location (and consequently, from his contestant’s distress) the space is useless to him. It deserves obliteration. 

Whether or not MrBeast’s contestants are “real” (many accuse MrBeast of hiring actors), or if they are actually being buried alive for 24 hours (many accuse MrBeast of fudging both wins and losses in the final edits), is irrelevant. What matters is that he feeds us the story that emotional and physical distress has a quantifiable dollar value. He feeds us this story to justify conditions that cultivate fruitless distress and the exploitation of desperate people.

In “The Long Walk,” the boys muse over the fact that there isn’t really another “option” to signing up for the walk. Times are too tough to not throw your hat into the ring. Similarly, there are endless comments on each of MrBeast’s videos begging for a chance to be placed in a challenge. For those who don’t want to be buried alive or placed in a nuclear bunker there is always the option of trying to become another MrBeast. Forbes estimates MrBeast’s net worth at around $500 million, the result of his hard work stick-and-carroting desperate people. We have created a society where the options are suffering for a chance at the cash prize golden ticket (that for many will be used just to access basic needs) — or being the far wealthier emcee that orchestrates the suffering of others.