Towards the end of last year, Zackary Smigel, a YouTube content creator, made a video titled “Why is YouTube like this?”. He was referring to the platform being full of videos with sensationalist titles, highly edited content, and very flashy thumbnails, often featuring the emotional face of a person.
A more concise way of putting it would be: Why is everyone on YouTube imitating MrBeast?
MrBeast—whose real name is Jimmy Donaldson—is the most popular YouTuber on the planet, with a stronghold on the younger (and internet-savvy) audience that can be challenging for some adults to comprehend. He produces videos known for their scale (“I recreated all the Squid Game scenarios in real life, and any of these 456 people who survive the longest will win $456,000!”) as well as for his adherence to growth strategies that he has meticulously developed.
When you click on any MrBeast video, he appears shouting to his 250 million subscribers to explain the video’s thesis. His face is featured in all thumbnails—these days with his mouth closed, which, according to him, attracts more clicks than thumbnails with an open mouth. The titles are written in the classic clickbait style aiming to go viral, like “This room will explode in 10 minutes!”
He is present in every video, but only physically. He has stated that he doesn’t want to show his real personality on camera because he believes the concept itself could limit his growth. In almost every aspect, he approaches YouTube as if it were a science.
As a demonstration of how well his methods have worked, imitators have sprung up all over the platform, using MrBeast-approved strategies for thumbnails, titles, and advertising tricks. Burnout among popular YouTube creators, where monetization began in 2007, has been widespread for obvious reasons: if you want your channel to be successful, you have to figure out how to please the platform’s algorithm. If you fail, by posting infrequently or incorrectly, your audience could disappear along with your livelihood.
So most creators have the option to optimize, follow the algorithm, and overwhelm the audience. Or, conversely, trust their viewers.
The “trust” approach is perhaps best embodied by Sam Sulek, a content creator focusing on exercise routines.
Sulek, who did not respond to multiple requests for comments, has amassed over three million subscribers in just over a year on the platform. He has become a fascination not only because he is physically massive and quite charming, but also because of his almost defiant commitment to a lo-fi strategy, which involves avoiding overly produced videos.
Each of Sulek’s videos follows the same simple title format (“Winter Bulk Day 92 – Legs”), the same structure (a monologue to the audience while heading to the gym, his actual workout, another monologue in the car, and occasionally a food segment filmed in his apartment), and the same thumbnail style (an unedited screenshot from the video).
He doesn’t use fast cuts, shouts, or anything too flashy. His videos have barely changed with the growth of his followers. His camera is better than in January 2023, and he has started attaching a microphone to his hat to improve sound quality. But he hasn’t moved to Los Angeles or started making collaboration videos with other creators. He remains an Ohio university student dedicated to his daily routines, most of which involve building muscle.
“Not all creators have the same goals,” Smigel said about videos that don’t conform to MrBeast’s protocols. “Some just want to use YouTube as a creative outlet. Others want to gain fame. Some want to use it to make money.”
“I think, ideally, the most important thing is to create a really good video and understand your audience,” he added. “And I think the views will come.”
Smigel, who has 125,000 subscribers on YouTube, referred to a video he made last December about the Sheetz gas station. Before posting it, he was worried that the topic was too dark to attract an audience, but it became one of his most viewed videos, with over two million views.
Some of that success is due to clever marketing, using some of MrBeast’s methods. The video could have flopped if it had been marketed as “Ken Burns: luxury gas stations,” but Smigel titled it “Surviving on Sheetz food for 30 days” and combined his commentary with his attempts to sustain himself solely on Sheetz food for a month.
However, others choose a vision and stick to it, like Sulek.
A good example is comedian Eddy Burback, whose channel has just under two million subscribers. Burback started on YouTube, posting videos every few weeks where he sat at a desk, John Oliver-style, and mocked, for example, Jake and Logan Paul, Jeff Bezos, or the pilot episode of Glee. But about two years ago, he decided he wanted to make a change.
Now, Burback goes months between his posts. The videos are often lengthy audiovisual essays, deeply researched—about the state of late-night television, ghost kitchens, or the Apple Vision Pro—or strange travel tales that take him to every Rainforest Cafe or Margaritaville in the country.
He posts fairly regularly, often several times a week, but only makes videos that he personally finds funny or interesting: board game reviews, videos where he tries every item on a fast-food menu, cooking tutorials with his mother, and an occasional theme. He says he has never used an edited thumbnail, inserted a mid-roll ad, or tried to follow any YouTube trends.
In other words, he only makes videos that he would like to watch. Why?
“I’m very lazy,” he said. “I don’t feel like pulling my hair out over production value, algorithms, and the possibility of clicks. I don’t care about any of that.”
YouTube is not Cho’s main source of income—his videos helped him break into the voice acting world—and that undoubtedly helps him ignore some of the incentive structures pushing other creators towards optimization. But he continues to post.
When dealing with the fickle YouTube algorithm—Cho said that despite his high number of subscribers, 90 percent of his views still come through the homepage rather than the subscribed tab—he believes the way to maintain a healthy balance is to approach posting like a stubborn artist.
“I think a lot of YouTube creators dream of having a successful YouTube channel, and they put all their effort, blood, sweat, and tears into that,” he said. “And I respect that. But on my channel, I like to have fun. I’ve always had the mentality of, ‘Well, these are the videos I like to make. And if you like watching them, great’.”
Illustrated video by The New York Times.
Video clips from Eddy Burback, SungWon Cho, Brent Rivera, Sambucha, Zackary Smigel, and Sam Sulek.