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MrBeast (real name James Stephen Donaldson) is the most successful YouTuber of all time. As of June 2026, he has amassed a subscriber base of 500 million and accumulated over 129 billion views. While MrBeast has declared himself apolitical, he is undeniably influential on today’s youth. Among younger generations, the fame of traditional celebrities such as actors, musicians, and athletes is being overtaken by that of online influencers with MrBeast as the most recognizable name in this new celebrity class. For this reason, it’s worth paying attention to him and the messaging he broadcasts to his gargantuan audience.

On April 29, 2026, MrBeast posted the following poll on X:

Everyone on earth takes a private vote by pressing a red or blue button. If more than 50% of people press the blue button, everyone survives. If less than 50% of people press the blue button, only people who pressed the red button survive. Which button would you press? BE HONEST.

This thought experiment bears a resemblance to a famous model in game theory known as The Prisoner’s Dilemma. To fully understand the demented psychology behind MrBeast’s variation, it is necessary to first outline The Prisoner’s Dilemma, how it is related to this X poll, and also how it differs substantially in one fundamental way. From there, a picture of how this kind of twisted reasoning is influencing developments in the real world will begin to take shape.

The Prisoner’s Dilemma imagines a scenario in which two criminals have been arrested for a robbery which they had conspired to commit. They are put in separate interrogation rooms and given the opportunity to confess and testify against their accomplice. If both refuse to talk to the police and remain silent, they will each receive a sentence of two years in prison. If one confesses and testifies against the other, the one who took the deal will receive one year in prison and the other one who didn’t will receive eight years. If both accept the deal and confess, they will both receive five years in prison.

From the perspective of the prisoners, the optimal collective outcome would be achieved by both conspirators remaining silent. They would each serve two years in prison, making the collective years served four. However, from the individual perspective of each of the prisoners, it is in their rational self-interest to rat out their accomplice under any scenario. If their accomplice takes the deal, they get five years if they do the same versus eight years if they remain silent. If their accomplice remains silent, they can reduce their sentence from two years to one year by taking the deal. With the idea in mind that the other prison will do what is in their best interests, both will confess, resulting in the worst collective outcome of a combined ten years in prison with each serving five.

In MrBeast’s thought experiment, the blue button can be likened to the prisoners remaining silent while the red button can be likened to them taking the deal. However, there is one fundamental difference between these two models. In the Prisoner’s Dilemma there exists a rational incentive for remaining silent. Adopting a cooperative strategy would result in a better collective outcome for the two prisoners, reducing each of their sentences by three years from the scenario when they employ a competitive strategy and turn on each other. Under MrBeast’s variant, no such advantage exists. If the experiment were being done by only two people, both pressing red would result in neither incurring any loss. By pressing blue, they’d be betting their lives on the other doing the same, but for zero potential gain. To do so would be insane.

This may seem like over-analyzing a single social media post, but it’s worth remembering just how influential MrBeast is in today’s world and considering the results of the poll. Of the 312,448 people who answered the poll, 56% voted that they would press the blue button. Even though it is totally irrational under the parameters of game theory, there must have been some kind of motive for so many people to believe that staking their lives on the idea that the majority of people would be equally as foolish would be a good idea. It may just be a hypothetical thought experiment, but the results say something about mindset of those who responded.

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The decision to press blue would be predicated on a belief in universal human empathy and solidarity. Keeping in mind that there is no tangible benefit to over 50% pressing blue as opposed to 100% pressing red, the impetus is simply ideological vindication. It would essentially be a religious leap of faith that the majority of humanity shares this universalist moral code seeing as the potential positive of anyone pressing blue is zero, but the potential loss is catastrophic. Obviously, MrBeast’s X poll wasn’t a real test of this. The incentive was simply an opportunity to virtue signal on social media, and the sample of respondents certainly isn’t representative of the entire world, meaning the fact that over 50% voted blue can be ignored.

Now let’s imagine what would happen if this model were actually enacted in the real world. The vast majority of humanity does not hold a sense of universal empathy. An Afghan goat-herder does not feel any connection to or duty of care towards an African tribesman. The well-being of those living in a favela in Latin America is of no concern to a guy living in a 30-floor apartment block in China. If this experiment were actually conducted in real life, it can be guaranteed that the vast majority of people around the world would immediately press red without a second of hesitation. Therefore, anyone foolish enough to press blue would be pointlessly condemning themselves to certain death.

The only portion of the world where this kind of universalism is prevalent is in the West, where this worldview constitutes the zeitgeist. The prevailing consensus pushes the notion it is immoral to prioritize one’s own in-group over the broad masses of global humanity. This is what is preached by prestigious institutions, though non-white minorities groups in Western countries are given an exception to this standard and are allowed to pursue their own group interests. It’s really only the white majorities who are expected to abandon any sense of group interests in favor of a universal empathy for all of mankind.

If the experiment described by MrBeast’s X poll were actually to be conducted, this morality would compel a great deal of people in the West to press the blue button. It figures that at least someone on Earth would be stupid enough to press blue. This would create a moral imperative among believers in the reigning consensus in the West to gamble their lives on the existence of universal empathy. It’s easy to imagine an idealistic yet naïve 19-year-old college girl pressing blue under this pretense. Knowing she’d be inclined to do so, her entire family and social circle would then be placed under immense pressure to do the same, lest they feel they are sending her to her death by pressing red.

Not only would a number of people in the West feel compelled to press blue, but there would also be an enormous hyper-moralistic campaign in the media and universities to coerce people into doing so. The message would be that pressing blue for the good of global humanity was the virtuous action and that those who pressed red were selfish and unempathetic monsters who were unbothered by the prospect of causing innumerable deaths for their own self-preservation. A moral consensus would be formed in Western countries which would emotionally blackmail the public into doing what is totally against their rational self-interests for no potential gain.

All of these efforts would, of course, be for naught. North America, Europe, and Oceania, the only places on Earth where pressing blue would receive any serious consideration, only constitute about 18% of the world’s population. The overwhelming majority of the rest of the world would press red without giving it any second though, ensuring that those who pressed blue would perish. The end result would be a society-wide Jonestown-style mass suicide in the West, killing a significant portion of the population while the rest of the world would hardly be affected at all. Even under the parameters of this universalist worldview, a massive loss would be incurred, albeit only in the West, but no benefit would be realized at all.

This outlandish hypothetical scenario is reminiscent of a novel which has become increasingly popular in recent years. The 1973 dystopian fiction The Camp of the Saints by Jean Raspail tells the story of an armada of ships filled with countless migrants which departs the Third World for the West. Debilitated by a devotion to the belief in the universal brotherhood of man, the white world allows the third-world hordes to disembark on their shores and overrun Western Civilization. The end result is not the world living in John Lennon’s Imagine, but the West simply becoming as violent, dirty, and impoverished as the rest of the world. As would be the case with MrBeast’s idiotic thought experiment, in Raspail’s novel, Western society is sacrificed on the alter of this quixotic universalist ideal for no tangible gain at all.

Both Camp of the Saints and this speculative enactment of MrBeast’s X poll may be hyperbolic doomsday conjectures. But do they not reflect the same logic behind policies in the real world? MrBeast’s numerous humanitarian projects in Africa come 40 years after Live Aid, when the most influential celebrities of the time campaigned for the First World to open their hearts (and their wallets) for the salvation of the famished continent. However, the trillions of dollars in expenditures from Western countries over the course of decades have not actually solved the problem. Instead, these efforts have just resulted in the number of starving Africans doubling each generation, thus doubling the financial and supposed moral burden imposed on the West under this worldview.

This same conundrum extends to the entirety of the dominant political consensus in the West today. The logic of globalism, along with its corresponding concepts such as universal human rights, multiculturalism, open borders, and sustainable development, presumes that it will be embraced globally. Through the vector of the prisoner’s dilemma, it considers the appeal of a cooperative strategy axiomatic, not based on a concrete benefit but on the assumption of the moral superiority of this universalist worldview. What it fails to consider is how, outside of this moral framework, there is no competitive advantage to pursuing these policies at all.

It’s only the West who have truly embraced this universalist value set and are suffering the consequences. The population of China is not being demographically replaced as a result of open-borders immigration policies. The Turks are not flagellating themselves with guilt over their history of slavery, conquest, and imperial rule. Foreigners are not gradually taking more and more political, economic, and cultural power in Saudi Arabia. Iran is not hampering its industrial capacity and jeopardizing its geopolitical strength in the name of sustainable development. All of these processes are only taking place in the West.

Even if one were to consider the universal good of all of humanity more important than that of their particular nation or civilization, nothing positive will be achieved in any real sense if this process is taken its conclusion. Violence, deprivation, and corruption won’t disappear from the rest of the world. They will simply become as commonplace in the West as they are in the Third World. All that would be accomplished would be the validation of this deranged suicide cult for its adherents before they cease to exist as a result. But this doesn’t need to happen. Rather than pressing blue and staking an entire civilization on the foolhardy belief in universal human empathy, it’s possible to just press red like the rest of the world, and no loss would be suffered whatsoever.