Dark Pattern in Mr.Beast's Sponsored Segments

Mr.Beast, the #1 YouTuber in the world, has a clever psychological trick up his sleeve to keep you watching a sponsored segment of his video.

The fake progress bar in his ad part of the video:

• Starts fast for the first 10-20% of the ad.

• Then slows down as it reaches the last 80-100% of the ad.

It hits the half way mark at 10 seconds, then the next half takes 35 seconds to complete.

This makes you think the ad will be over quickly, so you decide not to skip it. Once you've decided not to skip, you're unlikely to change your mind.

Dark Patterns in Design

This simple tactic is known as a dark pattern. There is an entire subreddit for it at /r/darkpatterns and a website dedicated to it at Deceptive Design.

Dark patterns are design tricks that trick or coerce users into doing things they might not have done otherwise.

Examples of Dark Patterns

Pocket App

Pocket App does something similar: The scrollbar moves quickly for the first few scrolls, then it slows down for the rest of the article.

This keeps you engaged and less likely to leave the page if the article is long.

Mirrors in Elevator

Long back, building managers discovered a simple psychological hack to reduce elevator wait-time complaints.

They strategically installed mirrors near elevator lobbies, creating a clever distraction for waiting passengers. People could now look at themselves or watch others, which transformed the waiting experience.

This subtle visual intervention made the perceived wait time feel significantly shorter. As a result, fewer people complained about slow elevators, even though the actual elevator speed remained unchanged.

Both examples illustrate a key psychological concept of perception management.

The core idea is changing how people perceive time and experience without changing the underlying reality.

By using visual or cognitive tricks, one can significantly alter subjective experience and perception.

It's essentially saying: "Instead of just fixing the real problem (slow elevator), they created a distraction that made the problem feel less annoying."

This is different than fake loading bar in games as it isn't meant to be malicious since computers can't predict exactly how long something will take to load.

But Mr.Beast knows how long an ad will take and specifically employs this trick to keep the viewers engaged.

Credits to Rhys Sullivan for the insight.

Top Tweets of the day

1/

Teenagers grow accounts using tactics like this and then switch the niche to sell it for $10k-$20k.

Most celebrities/influencers buy such accounts to grow their pages fast.

2/

Reddit is #6 site in the world right now. Whatever you do, do not ignore Reddit as a marketing channel. Normies (innies, anyone?) trust it as a reliable source even though its infiltrated by smart marketers.

3/

Avoid telling yourself limiting beliefs about you. What you believe affects what you do. It happens subconciously unless you conciously question them. A short video that covers how psyop happens.

Rabbit Holes

1. 10 Startups w/ Stock Grants That’ll Make You A Millionaire by MFM

2. How To Write Viral Youtube Scripts That Make Millions On YouTube by Bryan Ng

3. How we got our first 1,000 users by Posthog

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