For approximately 90 minutes last night, two advertising billboards in a suburb of Chicago displayed anti-Israel messages bearing the name MrBeast. The billboards were located next to a highway in north Chicago and read “Curse Israel” and “Death to Israel” above the Palestinian flag. At the bottom of the billboards there was a message “Paid for by MrBeast LLC”. In one of the images, MrBeast is pulling a face, wearing a soy hat seen in many of his YouTube thumbnails. With his mouth wide open and his eyes glaring, MrBeast looks like he is shouting “Curse Israel”.
The MrBeast team did not respond to Gizmodo’s request for comment, but told local news outlet Fox 32 that they had no connection to the billboards. They said: “MrBeast did not pay for this billboard, and after learning of it, we contacted our lawyers and authorities on how to remove it immediately”.
Oh my god pic.twitter.com/ZSwQb54irr
– Experiment 626: “Stitch” (@s626ch) 17 October 2024
The billboards were LED-type that are hard to miss. The first images of the billboards started appearing on social media around 5:30 pm. By 7 pm, OUTFRONT Media – who owns and controls the content of the billboards – had shut them down. Later that evening, they released their own statement about the incident on social media.
“We have learned that two of our billboards displayed inappropriate and unauthorized content this evening”. The statement said. “We take this matter very seriously. The version that was not approved or overlooked by OUTFRONT or our advertisers has been removed. The situation is being investigated and we are notifying all relevant local and national authorities”.
I am aware of the vile and antisemitic billboards on the Edens Spur Tollroad in Northbrook, one saying “F*$% ISRAEL” and the other saying “Death to Israel”.
This disgusting and frightening display has no place in the Tenth District, or anywhere in America.
– Rep. Brad Schneider (@RepSchneider) 16 October 2024
Local police told Fox 32 that they are investigating the situation and suspect the billboards may have been hacked. Congressman Brad Schneider, representing the district, condemned these messages in a post on X. He said: “This disgusting and frightening display has no place in the Tenth District, or anywhere in America”. “It is worth noting that this billboard is in a community with a large Jewish population, near a Jewish day school, at the beginning of the Jewish holiday of Sukkot”.
Hacking billboards is a form of cultural disruption that predates the emergence of digital billboards by a long time. As large billboards gained fame in the United States in the 1960s, artists and political activists began to climb them and paint their own messages. Then came digital billboards and things got weirder.
One of the first instances of a billboard hack occurred in 2009 when trespassers took over a billboard at work on the road and changed it to say “Beware! Zombies! Ahead!!!” In 2015, someone hacked a digital billboard in Atlanta to show a man mooning. In 2019 outside of Detroit, a billboard displayed pornography to traffic on Saturday night.
