My experience living in Mr. Beast's makeshift city
The world's biggest YouTuber created his own small city. Other creators should do the same.
A few months ago, I competed in “Beast Games” against 1,999 others trying to win $5 million. It was the largest game show in history.
I make it decently far in the competition, to the point where I spent a week living in “Beast City” - a massive open-air set that housed 500 of us throughout different points of the series.
While I didn’t win the grand prize, I became convinced that creators (likely YouTubers/streamers) will become the de facto leaders of massive cloud-first living communities. More on my experience and why I believe that below:
Beast City
Beast City was complete with sports facilities, a five-story tower, a cafe, cabin-style housing for 500, and a college-style quad.
Being here felt less like a high-stakes game and more like stepping into a fully-realized experimental society.
It was clearly designed with communal purpose. Sleeping quarters were positioned along the edges, while common gathering spaces occupied the center. This layout was simple but clever: it encouraged natural interactions, chance meetings, and shared moments that felt organic, not forced. Connections formed while we ate breakfast, strategized in small groups, or played sports in between official challenges.
While viewers at home watching Beast Games will remember the psychological twists, the monster trucks, and the private islands, the most enduring legacy of Beast City for the bulk of its residents will be the bonds they formed with other contestants.
As many would remark on Instagram or in groupchats afterwards “other people just won’t understand what it was like.” The bubble we lived in helped us become friends faster. Most folks there shared both 1) a common appreciation for Mr. Beast’s content and 2) a distinct experience participating in the games.
The experience helped reinforce a hypothesis of mine: creators are extremely well positioned to lead IRL experiences that foster organic connection, make money, and help address a loneliness crisis.
Creators should create themed overnight IRL experiences
1 in 5 US adults say they feel lonely every day. This is partially because of the decline of our in-person communities. Jobs are increasingly remote. School is online. Dating is in the DMs. This is not new information.
Our generation barely goes to church any more, but we do tune in to watch our favorite creators every week.
Creators have the distribution and loyalty to create themed IRL experiences and fill them with their fans. This advantage should not be overlooked. Elsewhere on the internet, coliving communities and startup cities attempting to host IRL experiences struggle to aggregate demand. Creators don’t have that challenge.
To some extent, this already happens. Jesser hosts basketball tournaments. The Botez sisters hosted an overnight chess tournament. I predict that these creator-led living experiences will get longer and support more people. It’s now very feasible that 1,000 people who follow a certain creator online could live in the same place for a whole year.
Balaji Srinivasan has a large audience on X where he also writes extensively about tech and Network States. A single tweet he wrote in August about a three month “Network School” pop-up (more on that in another forthcoming post) generated so much demand that we filled the first cohort of 150 people instantly and built a waitlist of 5,000 people with no other marketing.
Large creators will follow suit to host IRL longterm living experiences because it can be very profitable (not to mention, very fun). If they develop/rent a campus where housing units cost them $250-1,000/month, they can easily charge $2-4,000/month by including basic shared amenities and themed programming. Fans will pay the premium to live near a community of like-minded folks. That margin is a great business model, and I can think of a few obvious examples:
I imagine that Bryan Johnson will build a longevity-focused living community that prioritizes great sleep conditions and healthy foods.
Video game creators will might creating the ideal configuration for gaming with each other with e-sports arenas and gigabit internet connections.
Musicians can host songwriting camps and longer-term housing organized around recording studios so that they can make songs whenever genius strikes.
We’re happiest surrounded by people we admire or love. YouTubers and other creators with large, engaged audiences are best positioned to use their internet audiences to aggregate demand into themed massive living experiences that will profitably help participants feel the same belonging we all crave.
If you’re a creator hoping to do something like that, let me know how I can help.
I’m not too familiar with some of the individuals and trends you discuss here, but I feel there are many parallels today with the interest in communes and group lifestyle experiments during the late 60s and early 70s, albeit with a wider range of interests and ideologies this time around. People are feeling a potent mix of disillusionment and enchantment, and the line between cult and culture is blurry. It might be a lot of fun, if people stay honest and safe.
This is insightful, Jackson, particularly as I've long examined how tech capabilities (the internet) are disrupting societal structures while forming new ones.
Like you, I've also long been interested in Próspera for this reason and plan to revisit there in 2025. But I hadn't considered how influencers/creators with an audience could and would have a hand in these all-new manifestations of societies. It makes a lot of sense, though, given, like you said, how much people enjoy living near like-minded people, which influencer-led communities support.
As a YouTuber, I've even been enjoying that Mr. Beast series. I'll look for you:) (Are you in Ep. 1-3?)
Thanks again!