Mr. Beast seems like kind of an awesome person

@Ynotisay yeah but like, what's wrong with a good charity wank? It feels good to do good *edit* and to watch goodness being done in the world, and by showing off the charity you get to do more charity. LoL there really is no pleasing some people.

@Doomflower I think it comes to the end justifying the means. In this case I think it does But the reality is that this guy didn't start out with a charitable component. That wasn't what he was about. It evolved in to that. He was about views for money with different ways to get there. It appears that these kind of charitable efforts increase views which means more money. And sponsors like attaching themselves to charitable endeavors for the perception as well as the write off. He's taking a lot of the money from this arm of what he does, which is under a non-profit designation, and then turning it back in to charitable efforts with the corresponding cost to film them. So it runs like most charities. They're money making endeavors and lot of people don't know that if you give a charity a dollar there's no minimum on what needs to go the cause. It could be a nickel with 95 cents going to salaries and marketing to try and get more money.
In this case, I think water wells is a great use of that money. But my understanding, which could be wrong, is that the upkeep of those wells isn't in place. And that's a big part of it. My point was is that altruism isn't usually as cut and dry as just doing 'good.' It's how capitalistic societies work.

@Ynotisay yeah, that's kind of what I assumed. I remember him setting up crazy things like "we filled an entire swimming pool with squishmallows!" Kind of videos.

I can see how setting up the maintenence of the wells is necessary. And probably complex. Ugh. Now I am all blah.

It is my understanding that the Nigerian government is extremely corrupt to an almost comical degree (says the American) and resources are not well managed so even if installing maintenance and managing the ongoing upkeep were simple, the government as it exists is just not functionally capable of accomplishing the task.

@Doomflower You're so right about the corruption there. And it's not unique to them. And there probably is some truth to the backlash on this because corrupt governments don't like being called out for how ineffective they are when it comes to serving people. Best case scenario would be a 'thank you' and "we'll take it from here." But I'm not sure that'll happen. So then the easiest condemnation about him would be he used those people and their needs for views and then walked away. Even if the goal was pure it doesn't mean the outcome will be.