The YouTube video of MrBeast giving listening to aids to 1,000 deaf folks has the web divided — and now Elon Musk is concerned, too
- YouTube star MrBeast posted a video about serving to 1,000 deaf folks hear once more.
- Dividing customers, that is the second time since January that he is been accused of ‘inspiration porn.’
- Elon Musk Tweets in protection of MrBeast in opposition to the criticism.
Elon Musk Tweeted in protection of YouTuber MrBeast, who’s being criticized for “inspiration porn” along with his newest video “1,000 Deaf Folks Hear For The First Time.”
Within the video, MrBeast, whose actual identify is Jimmy Donaldson, reveals the YouTuber gifting folks new listening to aids of “cutting-edge listening to know-how” mentioned to be value $3 million.
Uploaded on Could 7 on his channel with over 151 million subscribers, the video has garnered over 36 million views and three million likes inside two days. Viewers are divided on Donaldson’s video.
And it is not the primary of its variety. Donaldson’s different video about “curing 1,000 folks’s blindness” posted on January 28 was additionally closely criticized.
This time, folks have as soon as once more come to Donaldson’s protection, notably Twitter’s CEO Elon Musk.
—Elon Musk (@elonmusk) May 7, 2023
“Folks undoubtedly should not be attacked for doing good. Is it actually only a query of cash to revive listening to?” Tweets Musk.
The SpaceX founder wrote that it is “very laborious to donate cash” if donors cared about it “doing precise good,” and never “merely the looks of it.”
However people who find themselves deaf or laborious of listening to are mentioning that MrBeast’s video caters to the latter level — it is “inspiration porn” that misleads folks and would not tackle points.
Inspiration porn is a time period coined by incapacity activist Stella Younger in a 2014 Ted Discuss outlined by the “objectifying [of] disabled folks for the advantage of non-disabled folks.”
—Cryssie 🇺🇦 (@eissyrc) May 7, 2023
“I have been referred to as a hater, witch, a dumb prick and different nasty names at present over making an attempt to coach listening to folks about listening to aids and the way they really work,” wrote Twitter consumer Cryssie Jones, @eissyrc, a Canada-based artist who’s deaf.
Jones additionally factors out that listening to aids are “not a treatment” and “don’t robotically restore listening to,” in contrast to the way it’s being portrayed in Donaldson’s viral video.
“There may be nothing in MrBeast’s video which acknowledges the fluctuating relationship we deaf folks have with listening to and listening,” Liam O’Dell, a journalist who’s deaf, wrote in an opinion piece for The Impartial.
“When watching MrBeast’s video, will the typical viewer be extra alert to the wants of deaf folks (in a means which is not some patronizing pity for a life many deaf folks really take pleasure in dwelling), or be drawn to the ‘heroic’ Donaldson going out of his strategy to splash the money on 1,000 folks out of the goodness of his coronary heart?” wrote O’Dell.
Insider has reached out to representatives of each Jimmy Donaldson and Elon Musk for remark.
