How Mr. Beast Made Boring Content Go Viral Using 'Input Bias' [3.5M Views on Cutting a Table]
Mr. Beast, “the” YouTuber with 400M+ followers, spent 12 hours trying to cut a table in half with a plastic knife. It looked ridiculous. But you, I, and 3.5 million other people just can’t look away for some reason…
Most marketers think you need flashy tricks or a big budget to get noticed. The truth? Showing your perceived genuine effort is often what gets you watched, remembered—and trusted.
This article reveals how you can use input bias to make your own work stand out, even if you’re starting small.
What you’ll learn:
- The content strategy that turns boring into viral — Mr. Beast used it to get 3.5M views. And it’s simple and straightforward enough that you can start using it tomorrow.
- How to make people trust you before they even read your content — the website redesign principle that boosted our conversions every single time we applied it
- Why "I spent 400 hours on this" outperforms "Check out this detailed, indepth white paper report" — the secret psychology of costly signaling and how to apply it ethically.
Let's dive in...
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The Reason Mr. Beast Get's 100+ Million Views PER Video
Mr. Beast creates scenarios almost like a reality show host. He'll invite hundreds of people to play Squid Games in real life, with elimination rounds and high stakes. Right from the start, you're captivated. There's a lot of money and time invested. He has these quick emotional payoffs early in the video.
One technique he uses is called the open loop. That's when you start a story but don't finish it, leaving the audience wanting to know how it ends. (Read more about What is an Open Loop in our article here.)
People are left on a cliffhanger. They want to know the answer or see the result, so they keep watching.
Years Ago, Mr. Beast Earned 3.5 Million Views for This Super Boring Video Idea (and Here's The Tactic)
But before Mr. Beast was well known, he struggled to get views. He was trying everything—being funny, smart, whatever he could.
Then he stumbled on something weird. One of his first viral videos was him cutting a table in half with a plastic knife. It took hours.
The content was undeniably dull, yet it got 3.5 million views.
This was an "aha" moment. Why would people watch this? What principle was at work?
The answer: input bias. People value things more when they see the effort invested.
Mr. Beast's 12-Hour Table Experiment
This is how Mr. Beast described it:
"In high school, I put the plastic knife in my pocket for some reason. I don't remember why.
Then I just started scraping against the desk and I was like, 'Oh wow, I could cut this desk in half.'
Did this for like 5 minutes. The teacher was like, 'What are you doing? Stop.'
I was doing the calculations in my head. I was like, 'It would take me like 10 hours to cut through this.' I think that would be a video where people would be interested.
So I went to the store on the way home and I bought the cheapest plastic knives I could find. Then I just got this $20 foldout table, went in my room, hit record on the camera, and I just went to town. I think that took 12 hours."
The Copycat Who Got 988K Views
It was one of those moments where the struggle and commitment became the content. The audience saw the effort. They valued the video more.
To prove it wasn’t just a fluke, another YouTuber, Nick Kale YT, copied the formula.
He did the same thing and got almost a million views. He played up the effort.
He said, "It's 5:30 p.m. on Valentine's Day and I'm in my parents' basement sawing a plastic table in half. Dude, what am I doing with my life?"
It’s ridiculous, but that’s what makes it worth watching.
Why Extreme Effort Gets Attention
This is a great example of input bias. When people see extreme effort, time, cost, or resources invested, they value the content more. The tactic here is input bias.
Show the quality of your content through the effort, time, or cost you put in. It needs to be real and come through clearly. You can’t just write 10,000 words and expect people to notice unless you show the work.
How to Apply Input Bias
Now let's bring this back to you in terms of implementation. Chances are you don't have the type of budget that Mr. Beast has, but you can still leverage this principle to get more views for your social media content, blog articles, info products, or offers.
The simplest approach? Do something that requires ridiculous amounts of time, effort, and money—then make sure people know about it.
Emphasize the Input in Your Titles
With these title examples, you'll notice they emphasize the input—the effort, time, and investment. Here are proven formulas:
- "I called 1,000 businesses to learn this one thing."
- "I spent $5,000 testing ads to find the winning formula."
- "I spent 40 hours analyzing our top 100 clients to find this pattern."
- "We audited 500 landing pages to discover the one element that increases conversions."
Pro tip: You can scale these numbers even higher for greater impact. Could be 500 landing pages, could be 5,000. Jack those numbers up to be 10 times as much and they'll be even more impressive.
Create Stakes and Tension
Here's what makes input bias so powerful: the investment creates implied stakes. When you show you've put in massive effort, viewers think: "What if it doesn't work? Will it work?" There's tension built right in.
But there's also immediate implied value: "Okay, if they're going to tell me what they learned from calling a thousand businesses, there's perhaps something valuable here."
Combine Input Bias + Open Loops
Notice how the example "I spent 400 hours analyzing our top 100 clients to find this pattern" creates an open loop? It begs the obvious question: What's the pattern?
This pattern reference is a perfect example of an open loop because people have to click through and watch or read to find out. You're combining two powerful techniques—input bias and open loops—to maximize engagement.
3 Ways to Show Your Work
It's not enough to just do the work—you need to convey it. Here's how:
1. Document the entire process. Show how long things actually take. For example, in my own business, when I created our Proven Sales Conversion Pack, I spent hundreds of hours building a database of credible A/B-tested case studies organized in a searchable format.
We curated real case studies (avoiding the BS ones), wrote original strategic interpretations, classified them by implementation time—many tactics take as little as 5 minutes but can have an outsized impact on conversion rates.
2. Highlight the struggle, the hours, the investment. When I made videos going over our 53-point conversion checklist or breaking down how we made $138,000 from a simple digital marketing funnel, I recorded for over an hour. The depth and time invested shows, and people notice.
3. Use it across all formats. This works for ads, content, blog articles, info products, and white papers. In my business, the more time my team and I invested in polishing our web design—making it simple, clear, and professional—the higher our conversion rate went.
Every single time we did a redesign, conversions went up. Why? Because it shows money and time have gone into the design, which is a direct reflection of our service quality.
How Input Bias and Costly Signaling Work
According to a HubSpot analysis of Mr. Beast's tactics, they identified two related principles:
Input bias: People value things more when they see the effort invested.
Costly signaling: The more money and resources someone spends to market their products and services, the more trust people will have in the brand.
It's essentially the same concept—one way you can stand out is to simply put in more human effort in terms of time, overall effort, and money. People are going to notice.
What Visible Effort Proves
When you show your work, you're proving you're not lazy. You're working hard because you care about the end result. You did the work so your audience doesn't have to.
This builds immediate credibility and trust because people can see you've invested real resources—not just thrown something together quickly.
How to Build Trust That Lasts Beyond the First Click
Here's the critical rule: You need to both set up the expectation AND then fulfill it.
If you purely set up the expectation but then it flops in terms of the payoff, you'll probably still get a decent amount of views initially, but in terms of building a long-term brand and trust, it won't pay off that much.
This is about building trust over time. Set up the expectation with your input-heavy titles and content, then deliver genuine value that justifies the effort you claimed.
Don't just claim effort—show results. If you say you audited 500 landing pages, you need to share the actual insights you discovered. If you spent 40 hours analyzing clients, reveal the pattern you found.
When you consistently deliver on your promises, you demonstrate that your time investment translates to real value for your audience. That's how you build a loyal following that trusts your content and keeps coming back.
Conclusion
Want to delegate all your marketing and funnel work done—without the headaches of hiring? Download our free guide: 33 Marketing Projects You Can Delegate to Growbo and discover how to save 100+ hours a month, grow faster, and scale without the overhead.
Input bias works because people notice effort and commitment. When you show your audience the work behind the scenes, you build trust, credibility, and engagement.
But you might be wondering how to put these ideas into practice without burning yourself out. That's where Growbo comes in.
With Growbo, you get an all-in-one marketing fulfillment team for less than the cost of a full-time virtual assistant. Delegate web design, copywriting, video editing, and ad management to specialized professionals—no hiring headaches, no management overhead.
There's no cap on monthly tasks, just a limit on concurrent projects based on your package.
This means you can have multiple high-effort, high-impact projects moving forward simultaneously, amplifying your brand's perceived value without personally investing all the hours.
Download our free 33 Examples PDF for actionable project ideas you can delegate right now. These examples help you showcase effort, polish, and quality in your marketing—proving to your audience that you go above and beyond.
Key Takeaways:
- People value content more when they see genuine effort invested
- Show your work—document the process, hours, and investment
- This principle works for anyone, not just big-budget creators
- Leverage a team like Growbo to multiply impact without burnout
If you found value in this article, please like, share, and comment below.
Go apply input bias today.
Keep Growing, Stay Focused,
Image Credits:
1. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0e3GPea1Tyg
2. https://www.youtube.com/shorts/HkXM-vQ2jNM3 http
