MrBeast is the biggest YouTuber in the world, but his empire took a hit in recent weeks with serious allegations of sexual misconduct, mistreatment of contestants, and now… Geneva Convention violations?
A video uploaded last night by a former MrBeast employee who goes by DogPack404 documents the harrowing conditions a second former MrBeast employee went through in a solitary confinement challenge video.
These types of videos are a staple of MrBeast’s channel, but the experience that Jake Weddle details is an account of sleep deprivation, which usually doesn’t make the final cut.
The video was the second one DogPack404 dropped alleging unethical behavior by MrBeast, including unsanctioned lotteries aimed at children, fake videos, and questionable hiring decisions.
Jake Weddle, a stand-up comedian who says he worked as a writer for MrBeast and appeared in videos on his channel, recounted his time working for Donaldson, including the video in question.
He breaks down crying while recounting the experience multiple times in the video.
“I had no access to sun, I had no access to clock … the lights are on me all the time!” Weddle explained about filming the video, which was pitched to him as a 100-day solitary confinement challenge. Weddle says that behind the scenes they agreed he’d do the challenge for 30 days and earn $10,000 for each day he stayed in.
Weddle participated in the challenge after he was fired from MrBeast. In Weddle’s account, he asked for more money and better terms along with another writer, but the company didn’t meet his demands.
But they still kept him around, occasionally asking him to do videos, though he complained that he was often edited out. When the solitary confinement challenge came up, he said it was an opportunity to finally make the final cut—and pay off his student loans.
“I wasn’t sleeping, I could not sleep. And I have insomnia problems now, but they might have started there,” Weddle said.
“I had good people looking out for me,” Weddle continued, before exhaling and holding back tears. “I had a lot of good people looking out saying … we got to stop.”
“I just wanted to turn the lights off,” Weddle explained, “and I’m vocalizing to people, ‘I wish the lights would turn off.’ And I go up to … my good friend, and I go, ‘they’re not turning the lights off,’ he goes, ‘WHAT!? That’s a war crime! We’re not allowed to do that to terrorists!”
“Oh good! 24 hours breaking the Geneva Convention, I guess, is what we’re doing,” Weddle joked.
A Maryland Law Review article on sleep deprivation as a form of torture discussed lights, including their use by military interrogators in black sites in Afghanistan and Iraq, where loud music and flashing lights interfered with detainees’ sleep.
Weddle makes it clear that he wasn’t exactly a prisoner, so he probably isn’t subject to the Geneva Conventions, which govern the treatment of prisoners of war. But in the video, he explains how he grew up poor in North Carolina and saw his involvement with MrBeast as a way out.
Weddle also said that Donaldson had him run a marathon on a treadmill in a video, which left him with joint pain and blisters all over his feet.
According to screenshots of text messages Weddle shared in the video, other employees at MrBeast were concerned about the way he’d been treated and upset that, after they pulled the plug early on the video because of Weddle’s declining health, Donaldson didn’t pay him the full prize money.
Weddle didn’t immediately respond to an inquiry from the Daily Dot.
However, @DramaAlert reported that Donaldson recently sent an internal email to the company’s team announcing the hiring of a new Chief HR Officer; mandatory training on safety, sexual harassment, LGBTQ issues, diversity, sensitivity, and workplace conduct; listening sessions within the company; an anonymous reporting mechanism; and an external review of the company by an “independent firm.”
“I wanted to update all of you on the recent concerns that have been raised online and in the press,” the email reads. “As I mentioned in my tweet a couple of weeks ago, we’ve hired Quinn Emanuel, a top tier law firm, to do a full investigation of the Ava Tyson allegations. We also asked them to expand the scope to include a full assessment of our internal Culture and to investigate allegations of inappropriate behavior by people in the company.”
MrBeast didn’t immediately respond to questions from the Daily Dot.
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