By Tory Andrews
After posting a picture of her smoking a joint grown from her father’s ashes, exposing MrBeast in a multiple-part YouTube series, and reporting him to the FBI, this fun-sized baker quickly makes her way back into everyone’s heart. But just who is Rosanna Pansino? And what the hell is going on?
Unless you live under a rock, almost everybody has seen this iconic video of Rosanna Pansino and Markiplier making Carl the Cupcake from the wildly popular video game Five Nights at Freddy’s. Or maybe you’ve seen her video baking cookies with Cookie Monster? Or… maybe you’ve seen her video making Anna and Elsa cakes?
However you may know her, nothing prepared the internet for the exposé of a lifetime.
On October 26, 2023, Trisha Paytas uploaded episode 26 of her podcast ‘JUST TRISH’ with special guest Rosanna Pansino. Within the episode's two-hour and 36-minute run time, Rosanna recounts her time on ‘Creator Games,’ a competitive game show created by fellow YouTuber and entrepreneur Jimmy Donaldson, know as MrBeast. While she was a part of both Creator Games 1&2 digitally, due to COVID-19, the third was in person, during the 24-hour-long game of hide-and-seek at the SoFi Stadium in Los Angeles.
Once the video was released, the winners of the challenges were Logan Paul, Larray, and Zack King. Oddly enough, Pansino’s friends pointed out that she was edited out nearly halfway through the video and appeared to be eliminated much sooner than she was.
“Despite Jimmy [MrBeast] editing out the only female in the top three, I was very proud of what I achieved.”
According to Pansino, out of 10 contestants, she was 3rd to last to be found during the game. Originally, those who placed first and second were Zach King and Quackity. You can read her official statement here.
If that wasn’t bad enough, don’t worry; it gets worse.
On November 19th, Prime Video announced the release date of MrBeasts’ Beast Games. The Squid-Games-inspired game show invites 1,000 contestants, young to old, to compete in a series of challenges for a grand prize of $5,000,000. The show will premiere on December 19 and will release a new episode weekly.
But back on July 26th, Pansino uploaded a series of shorts discussing that contestants of the show were reaching out to her to talk about the inhumane conditions they were meant to live in while competing. To sum the videos up, former and current contestants appear to report that people were being denied medications, which led to multiple seizures; contestants were being fed ‘meals’ consisting of around 400 calories. Additionally, it's alleged that food and water scarcity led to food hoarding and fights breaking out, feminine products being denied, and the contestants only being allowed to sleep for three or four hours.
In regards to the game itself, there are reports that the games were rigged in favor of the young and athletic males, unfair team assignments, and men tackling women in competition without facing repercussions.
On August 6, Pansino uploaded a much longer video diving deep into all of the allegations that have been reported. She begins by calling to notice how serious these allegations are, the fact that a lot of other high-profile content creators refuse to speak on this, and why it’s all to still be able to work with MrBeast in the future– disregarding the harm that has been done to countless people during the filming of these games.
“As someone who has done three of these 'Beast Colabs’... let me tell you, it’s a complete waste of time.” Pansino remarks.
She begins the video by expressing that the previous shorts she uploaded to both YouTube and TikTok have been blocked in all countries except America. Additionally, comments made about this situation in defense of the victims or condemning MrBeast have been deleted from his videos, off his Subreddit, and Twitter.
Pansino then indicates that many news articles are currently writing about this situation. However, she focuses on one article by the New York Times, in which they interviewed contestants of the Beast Games series and discussed why they competed, what they experienced, and the crew's behavior.
“We signed up for the show, but we didn’t sign up for not being fed or watered or treated like human beings,” one of the contestants told the New York Times.
Many of the people who competed in the games did so solely for the monetary value of $5,000,000 rather than to have fun or for fame. That amount of money would have gone to pay for hospital and medical bills, student loan debt, and other things. But once everybody got to set, they found out from a video message from Beast that there would be 2,000 contestants instead of 1,000. The contestants felt the odds of winning were much smaller than they thought.
“...And so, to dangle this really high-priced carrot in front of people’s faces who really need these finances, and then, to do this to them, it really seems…cheap,” Pansino adds.
The food that was served on set had its own number of issues. For starters, the contestants say they weren't allowed to have their phones or watches, so they estimated they were fed twice a day, but one contestant said she had gone over 20 hours without food during filming. One of the meals consisted of cold oatmeal, one hard-boiled egg, and a few pieces of raw vegetables. However, a spokesperson for the MrBeast brand said the contestants were fed three meals a day. The staff would occasionally pass around Feastables chocolate bars, a brand created by MrBeast, and some contestants would be filmed praising the candy.
There were also reported issues of erving people with food allergies and dietary restrictions. A form was given to the contestants, asking them to fill in what they can and cannot eat. But when a document listing the FAQs about this event came out, it stated their food restrictions would be ‘taken into consideration’. Several food-restrictive contestants claim they were served food they were either allergic to or could not have, and no alternatives had been provided.
One contestant asked production about getting more underwear, as she had started her period, but production told her it wasn’t a medical emergency and allegedly laughed at the woman’s pleading. Another contestant said they went a couple of days without fresh menstrual products – which could have resulted in toxic shock syndrome.
The denial of human needs for the purpose of so-called entertainment maybe will probably worry the average person. But since MrBeast’s brand is about supporting and caring about those less fortunate than himself, some of his viewers outright deny these events are happening, even with the contestants’ statements.
And yet those contestants who made it through the first round continued in the game:
“We are grateful that virtually all of those invited to Toronto for our next production have enthusiastically accepted our invitation,” the MrBeast spokesperson wrote.
Unfortunately, this story is far from over. This is part one.
The claims and events described in this article are allegations and remain unverified. All individuals mentioned are entitled to the presumption of innocence unless proven otherwise.