It was at first a new trend on YouTube around 2015-2017, when YouTubers discovered that long-form video content can attract more followers. Initially, they tried to make different videos about sleeping in a closed store, staying awake for the entire day, or any other easier challenges.
Compared with the ones that keep us entertained, those were just filmed with minimal equipment, and sometimes unedited, but still were really successful.
Later, more experienced YouTube creators and YouTubers started to face more extreme challenges to raise the bar higher. YouTubers like MrBeast started to take the 24-hour challenges to the next level and try new extreme things, such as staying underwater for 24 hours, which at that time seemed almost impossible. Now that the video has 145M views, which is insane, even though he did not stay 24 hours underwater, but only 12 maybe. In this particular case, but for others also, it’s not important that these YouTubers did not finish a specific challenge, because they at least tried it as best as they could.
Right now, it seems that the short-form video content has managed to steal users’ hearts and attention, making them eager to see thousands of short videos every day. It’s true that now everyone does short-video content because it draws more attention, but these challenges remain an important part of YouTube.
These 24-hour challenges are created to become irresistible, making users basically glued to their screens, and if we look more closely, this feeling comes from the social pressure to know everything that is happening.
This way, the followers will always wonder if a certain YouTuber will succeed with his challenge. Questions like these are important because they make users watch until the end to see for themselves the big reveal. Besides that, a great part is represented by reliability. Usually, the viewers will ask themselves if they are capable of doing such a challenge, which makes them curious about how this content creator is going to make it.
As stated above, some users can experience Fear of Missing Out, known as FOMO, which contributes to making the 24-hour challenges feel urgent.
Mr.Beast
- He is an icon for YouTube, being the most followed content creator on this platform with 421 million subscribers.
- He gained popularity thanks to his extreme 24-hour challenges, one of the most famous being “24 Hours in the Most Haunted Place on Earth.” Mr.Beast spent the night inside the Ohio State Reformatory, which is considered a scary and creepy place.
Yes Theory
- This account is more focused on creating content about social experiments or videos where the comfort zone is pushed to the limits.
- Compared with Mr.Beast, their approach to the 24-hour challenge involves talking with strangers around the world or trying various extreme challenges, like spending 24 hours in another city without any money.
Zach King
- He started his content creation career on Vine and has quickly gained popularity based on his creative edits.
- Transitioning to YouTube, he started to create attractive videos on different topics, including 24-hour challenges.
So it seems that the formula behind the 24-hour challenge is pretty simple, but in reality, YouTubers need to come up with original and interesting ideas that can attract views and subscribers. It's not that simple to find a topic that will be captivating.
Now, YouTubers are trying to improve this concept by creating challenges that last more than 24 hours to increase the suspense. Now, challenge YouTube videos can go up to 100 hours to make the activity even more dangerous and extreme.
