MrBeast meets the right-wing culture wars
A cheery YouTuber faces a hell of accusations
Published in
5 min readJul 25, 2024
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.
