MrBeast gets fans to clean up his merch

MrBeast gets fans to clean up his merch

The Future. MrBeast’s chocolate bar brand, Feastables, is now available at Walmart… and they’re not being treated too well on the shelves. The influencer’s plea to fans to help clean things up has been met with passionate obedience from followers and head-scratching from almost everyone else. More than anything, it shows the power that digital stars have over their fanbase when a little money and attention are involved. Can it be harnessed for mass generosity?

Fancy Feast
MrBeast doesn’t want his Feastables treated like just any other candy bar, per Fast Company.

• After finding out that the new Walmart displays of his chocolate bars were a mess, the YouTuber called on his 18.8 million Twitter followers to help clean it up, noting that he was already in the process of putting a team together to do this.
• Unsurprisingly, his fans jumped at it, posting selfies of the re-organized shelves.

And, in a very MrBeast move, the Feastables brand turned the groundswell support into the “Shelfie Clean Up” campaign, where fan selfies tidying shelves up would be entered into a monthly $5,000 lottery.

Pay it forward
While MrBeast is extremely used to going viral (has he ever not gone viral?), reactions to a millionaire asking his not-millionaire fans to do free labor came with mixed reviews.

• Alex Turvy, memes and digital culture researcher at Tulane University, thought it was an abuse of online parasocial relationships, with just a little bit of a potential financial carrot to egg people on.
• David Craig, a clinical professor of communication at the University of Southern California, considered it more “for-profit online organizing” driven by fans who feel the tidying up is just giving back to the community they identify with.

Either way, MrBeast is throwing even more money to hopefully silence the critics — he tweeted, “To show how grateful I am to everyone that helped tidy things up, I’m going to donate $100,000 to charity. What charity should I donate to? Appreciate you all!”