I don’t think that it boils down to him being a good or bad person. Is Jimmy the person who hit upon the idea of giving g money away to his mom a good person? Probably as much as anyone generally is. Is Mr. Beast the self promotion based, overexagerated youtube personality a good person? Is he even meant to be?

I think the best analogy is that the shows he produces are a lot like reality television. In that way they are based off the appeal of watchung people display “real” and “authentic” emotional reaction that you just can’t get out of actors. But behind the scenes, those are produced and somewhat manipulated to provoke these reactions, and that is the dishonest aspect of it. And while what he is doing is honestly not as bad as most reality television, I do think it is powered by that same kind of dishonesty.

I don’t think it is bad for children to watch this stuff, but I think you do have to explain how many subscribers he has and how many people watch his videos, and that the people he involves in his videos is such an astronomically small percentage of people. Kids seem really susceptible to “sweepstakes” stuff - I know I was as a kid. But my parents did a good job of explaining to me how I probable it was for me to win that stuff without judging me for wanting to.

I still think the best way to engage with children’s interest is to try to understand it, and then helping them understand more about the world.