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On Mr. Beast and being alone in a circle for 100 days

coldhealing.substack.com

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Re: On Mr. Beast and being alone in a circle for 100 days

#51

Post by mattbrewsbytes »

dustedcodes wrote: post #30
gjulianm wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While I'm no fan of him, I think you might be too harsh. > is to imagine he’d given them the money up front and told them that to leave his enter-torture-ment they have to pay up a ransom matching the initial gift. People enter those challenges fully knowing how they're going to go. It's random, rules don't matter, you might get money you don't expect or not get money you expected. The point at which they get the mon…

MrBeast is pushing the boundaries on the ethics and morals of how easily people with money can coerce poor people who are in dire need to perform extremely questionable things for the sake of his own amusement. Personally I don’t think this is good in any meaningful way. You could only rationalise such behaviour with the same arguments that other forms of exploitation are explained.

The premise is mostly the same as a lot of game shows. You don't see rich people showing up to get on game shows. From glimpses I've seen of Japanese game shows, Mr Beast's takes a lot from them with the ridiculousness and over the top entertainment factor, the money involved is much more.

Another counterpoint is that they do good as well - 30+ million pounds of trash cleaned out the ocean with TeamSeas. Go see the one where they take over a bank in his hometown, no game show antics just handing out money in an entertaining way.

Re: On Mr. Beast and being alone in a circle for 100 days

#52

Post by shitloadofbooks »

I watch most of Mr Beasts videos (primarily because "the algorithm" throws them at my face until I give in), but his recent interview with Graham Stephen[1] shows another side of him.

He lives in his office, doesn't care about personal wealth and is absolutely dedicated to making YouTube videos. He's definitely an odd fellow.

[1] https://youtu.be/yADi4cs4Dhw

Re: On Mr. Beast and being alone in a circle for 100 days

#53

Post by mensetmanusman »

wil421 wrote: post #19
zemvpferreira wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a content creator Mr Beast only acts as a conduit for what we, the audience, are willing to pay for. It's not he who is the monster but us.

That’s like saying it’s OK to create CP or torture someone because there’s an audience. Complete nonsense.

No, it’s not like that.

Re: On Mr. Beast and being alone in a circle for 100 days

#54

Post by 6stringmerc »

It’s right there in the name - Mr. Beast.

I wouldn’t seek out a personal trainer who chooses the name Mr. Hyde personally.

Play stupid games, win stupid prizes - the $500k isn’t stupid, but the psychological effects are forever. Hope some of that money got earmarked for therapy and counseling! Not kidding, I am an advocate for CBT and I’m pretty sure this situation is pretty similar to stories where lottery winners end up with mo money mo problems.

Re: On Mr. Beast and being alone in a circle for 100 days

#55

Post by hackerlight »

dustedcodes wrote: post #30
gjulianm wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While I'm no fan of him, I think you might be too harsh. > is to imagine he’d given them the money up front and told them that to leave his enter-torture-ment they have to pay up a ransom matching the initial gift. People enter those challenges fully knowing how they're going to go. It's random, rules don't matter, you might get money you don't expect or not get money you expected. The point at which they get the mon…

MrBeast is pushing the boundaries on the ethics and morals of how easily people with money can coerce poor people who are in dire need to perform extremely questionable things for the sake of his own amusement. Personally I don’t think this is good in any meaningful way. You could only rationalise such behaviour with the same arguments that other forms of exploitation are explained.

How can it be unethical if the person knows full well what's coming with no surprises, and the person judged that it was in their best interest to do it? That'd be saying it's unethical to provide someone with a benefit-cost > 0 which they've agreed to, and I don't see why that should be true.

I'd agree it's unethical only if their cognition was compromised (meaning he wasn't capable of analyzing the costs and benefits and deciding if it was in his interest) or if there were surprises hidden (meaning he didn't really agree to what happened) or if it's a particular type of decision where people are known to not be capable of factoring in long-term costs properly into their decision making. But we don't know if any of this is true, do we?

An argument I would be sympathetic to would be that it's unethical not because of what happened to the subject in particular (after all, he net benefited if the above assumptions are met), but because of the negative flow-on impacts to culture and the social fabric.

Re: On Mr. Beast and being alone in a circle for 100 days

#56

Post by myaccount80 »

Reminds me of the story of Nasubi: “Tomoaki Hamatsu was challenged to stay alone, unclothed, in an apartment for Susunu! Denpa Shōnen (January 1998 – March 2002), a Japanese reality-television show on Nippon Television, after winning a lottery for a "show business related job". He was challenged to enter mail-in sweepstakes until he won ¥1 million (about US$10,000) in total. He started with nothing (including no clothes), was cut off from outside communication and broadcasting, and had nothing to keep him company except the magazines he combed through for sweepstakes entry forms. After spending 335 days to reach his target, he set the Guinness world record for the "longest time survived on competition winnings".”

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nasubi

https://youtu.be/DWWK05t98os

Re: On Mr. Beast and being alone in a circle for 100 days

#57

Post by a3w »

imperialdrive wrote: post #5

The author (coldhealing) sure can write. I've seen maybe 3 Mr. Beast vids in passing, but now I want to really watch a few more. His bit on Joe Rogan about translating content was pretty clever too.

> His bit on Joe Rogan

OT, but was Joe Rogan during that time (playing) an idiot that never second guesses blatant lies? I find it hard to watch obscure experts, that are either genius' or delusional, and not know what I heared/watched due to no classification by a reliable source, as any journalist should provide with any third party statement.

Therefore, I'd rather watch an interview elsewhere.

I think he now has a "fact checker" who googles questions (nope, not scholar.google.com, regular google queries), but interviews seem to stick to their obscure logic even if a house of cards was just debunked at the very foundation by five minutes of fact checking.

Re: On Mr. Beast and being alone in a circle for 100 days

#58

Post by tenpies »

bambax wrote: post #48

> How does Mr. Beast have the money to create these videos? He’s the fifth most subscribed to YouTube channel in the world. I had never heard of him or watched any of his videos. And now I have, and I'm afraid YT will recommend more. Not that I would ever watch one again except by accident, but still. I feel dirty. Also, about this: > t’s terrifying that a man spent one hundred days in a small circle in an empty fiel…

At this point he's quite likely the majority shareholder of a fast food empire, a chocolate bar company, and the owner of the Youtube channel. On top of that there is a layer of distribution deals and sub-channels (I mean there's even a Mr. Beast in Español channel).

I suspect that early on much of it was carried on the back of personal and business debt, but once the fast food division took off it all made more sense.

I also don't like where this is heading culturally, and while I find him odd, his crew or whatever the other members are seem incredibly annoying and vapid. It's also through watching Mr Beast videos, that every Westerner should immediately be able to understand why so much of the world has varying degrees of hate towards the West.

Re: On Mr. Beast and being alone in a circle for 100 days

#59

Post by ZephyrBlu »

This feels very doom and gloom. Mr Beast gets to make the videos he wants, viewers get to watch amazing videos and people who are featured in the videos generally get paid. Everyone wins.

Most of his videos are basically excuses to give people money and you rarely see participants not having a good time. Having the guy sit around for 100d is the most 'exploitative' video I've seen, but that really doesn't seem like the goal.

If he starts making real-life Hunger Games videos I'd be worried, but it doesn't feel like he's heading in that direction at all. More like a new version of game shows, except it's way less forced, more varied and very lighthearted.

Re: On Mr. Beast and being alone in a circle for 100 days

#60

Post by Aunche »

isitmadeofglass wrote: post #2

A lot of Mr. beasts content feel like reverse kidnapping and mental torture situations. And the only “mental trick” you need to pull to illustrate just how horrible a human being he is, is to imagine he’d given them the money up front and told them that to leave his enter-torture-ment they have to pay up a ransom matching the initial gift. That’s what he’s subjecting poor people too, for fun and profit, because he kn…

Mr. Beast himself used to subject himself to torture for profit, so it's not surprising that other people are happy to do the same. His first viral video was counting to 100,000. There was another video where he tried to spend 24 hours underwater and stopped because he had built to much CO2.
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