I was at a “Future of Film & Television” conference at UCLA earlier this week and I got to be in a room with some of the most brilliant people that work in marketing, media and at huge platforms like TikTok and YouTube.

One of the main topics of conversation was how the fallout of Mr. Beast could affect the YouTube platform and the types of creators they push out in the next year to come.

Mr. Beast is getting hit from all sides right now. He is facing a class-action lawsuit for his “Beast Games” show with Prime Video over the treatment of contestants, his best friend and long-time collaborator, Ava Kris Tyson, has been accused of grooming minor fans of Mr. Beast in chat logs that Mr. Beast was a part of, and now, Mr. Beast is being investigated for an alleged “pump and dump” crypto scheme worth over $23 million.

Mr. Beast was YouTube’s golden child for years. But I have always been weary of creators who entire platform is challenge-based. Where each video has to be bigger and more extreme than the last.

We saw a similar fallout with David Dobrik when his friend, Jeff Wittek, was tragically injured and almost killed during a stunt for a David Dobrik vlog. The excavator that Jeff fell off, causing the injuries, was being operated by David Dobrik with a hand on the wheel and a camera in the other hand.

What happens when these challenge-youtubers run out of extreme lengths they can go to in a healthy and safe manner?

And what happens to creativity on a platform like YouTube when all the big creators have become carbon-copies of Mr. Beast with the same thumbnails, titles, intros and videos?

So what could the next generation of creators to rise on the YouTube platform look like if we see them make a pivot away from challenge-based creators in the next year?

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