What is it that MrBeast, as a “creator,” is “creating”? The obvious answer would be “content.” Content, after all, is what we talk about when we talk about digital media. It’s certainly what MrBeast talks about. But the more I think about online programming, the more I’m convinced that content isn’t what matters. What matters is form. Digital media aspires to, and often achieves, a state of contentlessness. Spend some time on MrBeast’s channel, or scroll down your Instagram feed or your X feed or your Apple News feed, or swipe through your For You page on TikTok. What you’re seeing is the repetition of a pattern, a pattern that has been statistically determined to have the highest odds of holding your attention. What fills the pattern at any given instant—what we call content—is fungible and disposable. It’s not important. It’s the pattern, the form the content fits and replicates, that’s important.
Thus: “AI-generated slop marks the triumph of machine formalism.”