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MrBeast meets the right-wing culture wars
A cheery YouTuber faces a hell of accusations
The largest YouTube channel in the world has spent days in brand crisis. I saw talk of “grooming” and pedophilia. I was ready to report the most filthy, disgusting details with the MrBeast scandal.
But I’m left trying to understand the problem. The story seems to be that a crew member on the channel, Chris Tyson, came out as transgender. The MrBeast brand is seen as vaguely Evangelical Christian.
So that meant trouble.
In July 2023, Chris Tyson came out as ‘Kris’ or ‘Ava’.
Seeing a familiar male figure going by female pronouns and increasingly dedicated to queer activism, the American right was deeply aggravated.
Another MrBeast crew member, Chandler Hallow, did Bible studies on TikTok. A regular point made on right-wing discourse, as often on X, was comparing the two, imagined as two possible paths for Western civilization.
MrBeast himself, aka Jimmy Donaldson, stepped up for some defense.
But it was a mania that would only grow the more it was fed.
The typical right-wing idea is that transgender people are pedophiles.
It naturally followed that Chris, Kris or Ava Tyson was keeping dark sexual secrets. Research began—and there were some hits.
She’d had an interest in an anime artist whose larger body of work had included some with child-porn-like…
