MrBeast’s rural North Carolina location exploits New South economic geography

Evidence

MrBeast’s physical location, an hour east of Raleigh, positions him in an unusual location specific to late capitalist development in North Carolina—namely, he can maintain a proximity to Raleigh (its tech industries, which include gaming and esports, fields that he could potentially leverage as sponsors) while also maintaining a proximity toward economically depressed areas outside the larger urban centers of the New South. The entertainment of watching people compete for—or just be given—large sums of money is a form that is specific to the political and cultural economy of late capitalism, especially that of the American South, where the city becomes a space of technological, postindustrial “innovation” and the country is left behind. — Grant Bollmer, Katherine Guinness, The Influencer Factory, 329

Categorization

• XREF: This is exactly the kind of concrete geographic pinning needed for the reader’s planned case study applying the book’s four infrastructures to a real creator.