A MrBeast bank? One more step towards a dystopian future ruled by influencers

It’s difficult to see what more they could realistically touch. But as of last week we may have glimpsed where their sights are set. On 13 October, the world’s most popular YouTuber, Jimmy Donaldson – a 27-year-old American better known as MrBeast – filed a trademark application to start his own banking app, MrBeast Financial, which will provide users with cryptocurrency banking, investment banking and potentially credit cards as well as other financial services. Now influencers believe they can – and should – directly control our money.

It may be hard to imagine who in their right mind would bank with a man whose qualifications begin and end with an ability to film attention-grabbing stunts. (Recent videos from Donaldson’s channel include 100 Kids Vs World’s Strongest Man!; Survive 30 Days Chained To Your Ex, Win $250,000; and I Survived 100 Hours In An Ancient Temple).

But Donaldson is the type of celebrity many people over the age of 40 will have never encountered despite his being one of the most popular men on the planet. A twice-annual survey of more than 10,000 American teenagers by the investment bank Piper Sandler found this month that Donaldson is young people’s favourite influencer (the average surveyed age was 15.7). His YouTube channel is just a few million shy of half a billion subscribers; the videos I mentioned have had a cumulative 362m views. Donaldson has access to ample market data, which suggests that a venture like this would be successful particularly among his younger demographic of fans.

It’s already concerning that influencers and gurus determine so much of what we consume – spearheading our era of mindless, lowbrow entertainment – and even what many people believe about the world, popularising both good and bad politics, not to mention a host of conspiracy theories. But direct control over the systems which stretch past our screens and materially impact our lives is a sign of the dystopian future unravelling before us.

Opening a bank is one of a growing set of data points showing many of the super powerful aren’t interested just in wealth and fame but also in profitable dominance over every aspect of how we live.

While on paper Donaldson is an influencer, his influence and actions mirror other figures increasingly seeking to shape our culture – men like Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg and Jeff Bezos. Many dabble with effective altruism, a movement which argues that the best way to solve social ills, like poverty, is for the mega rich to become even richer and strategically apply their resources to help specific groups. (Much of Donaldson’s content, such as videos of him giving money and homes to homeless people or providing blind people with sight restoring surgery, is blatant charity porn.)

Donaldson has even begun pursuing the construction of a company town, the penchant of 19th-century industrialists who sought to have employees interminably trapped at work – something that has also recently been explored by Musk for his company SpaceX.

All of these projects – pitched with a pseudo-benevolent smile and a suggestion of good will – are part of a pervasive greed in which, even with so much control, these powerful figures race to acquire more. But beyond the chilling amount of trust we are handing to men like Donaldson, this also begs the question: are we really eager for a future that is run and imagined by online prankster nerds? The inherent dullness of these supposedly great innovators should cause us almost equal concern: we are handing over the destiny of our world to people with an embarrassingly limited view of it.

As the writer Rebecca Shaw wrote in a January piece for the Guardian headlined “I knew one day I’d have to watch powerful men burn the world down – I just didn’t expect them to be such losers: “Climate crises keep coming, genocides continue, women keep getting murdered, art is being strangled to death by AI, bigotry is on the rise … AND these men insist on being cringe? It’s a rotten cherry on top.” An online cryptocurrency bank – run by the funny video man – that allows you to rack up obscene credit-card debt isn’t a signal just of a predictably grim future but also of one that’s uglier, gluttonous and above all else incredibly lame.

We don’t know if MrBeast Financial will ever actually materialise. If it does, I’ll eat these words, having turned out to be a helpful, fresh approach to gen Z’s money. But whatever the technology, we should fight for a better world than one designed and dictated by the witless avarice of a few egomaniacal dorks.

Photograph by Amazon Prime Video