The youtuber and philanthropist MrBeast, is known for his videos in which he shows disinterested attitudes and help towards the people around him, spending millions of dollars throughout his videos buying things for his friends, random people, or simply giving money away. However, the latest video of him is causing criticism on the internet, the reason? Help a thousand people with hearing disabilities to hear again.
Previously, MrBeast uploaded to his YouTube channel a video in which he helped a thousand people to recover their vision, something that was seen by internet users as a positive gesture from a “good person that we do not deserve.” After this success on the internet, the youtuber decided to up the ante, and on April 6 he uploaded a new video, in which MrBeast shows how he spent more than three million dollars to buy high-tech hearing aids, which would help a thousand people to recover their hearing. In the video, not only does he show the excitement of the participants at being able to hear again or for the first time, but MrBeast It also makes million-dollar gifts: ten thousand dollars for participants, unlimited toys for children, or a jet ski, in addition to donating one hundred thousand dollars to organizations around the world dedicated to teaching sign language. However, the content of the video was criticized by internet users, including those with hearing disabilities, for ‘objectifying deaf people’.
Despite the fact that MrBeast spent millions of dollars to help people in the United States, Mexico, Brazil, South Africa, Malawi and Australia, internet users did not take his gesture as something positive and considered it in bad taste, using hearing impaired people to create content. Mostly, They accuse that the video is an example of ‘ableness’, that is, expecting disabled people to be able to carry out activities that they could not before to satisfy a need of a group of people, without focusing on the process of living in a situation of disability.
Some of the cases also mention that this is part of a culture called ‘inspirational porn’, a term coined by Stella Young, a comedian and journalist with a disability, who uses the term ‘porn’ because people “objectify a group for the benefit of another group, and, in this case, objectify disabled people, for the benefit of other non-disabled people”. With this example, Twitter users seek to explain that, regardless of MrBeast’s intentions, his video only seeks to fill an emotional need by using hearing impairments to ‘create an example of self-improvement’, by helping deaf people with a solution that, however good it is, seeks to ‘fix’ people with a palliative solution, and the idea of ’fixing’ is ethically wrong.
The six-minute video has more than 30 million views and more than a hundred thousand comments, both positive and negative. For his part, MrBeast has already answered negative criticism of his videos in which he helps people in need, arguing that he was previously criticized for not using his money to help people, and now that he does, it’s a bad thing. In any case, thousands of people have already been helped by the eccentric youtuber, despite the fact that his actions open up a debate on ethics when it comes to creating content and fame in exchange for using people with disabilities.
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