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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

#121
post #29

This blogger is acting like traditional network television has never mentally tortured people for our viewing pleasure. Have they never seen an episode of Hell's Kitchen, Dr Phil, I'm a Celebrity Get Me Out of Here or Big Brother? Basically the entire reality TV genre is based on that premise. Edit: Seeing as they mention Joe Rogan, Fear Factor is another great example of a reality TV version of basically the same th…

Also radio. In 2007, Jennifer Strange died after drinking 2 gallons of water, in response to a KDND morning show that ran a contest called "Hold your wee for a Wii".

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water_intoxication

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

#122
post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

- Click 'not interested' whenever you see such a suggestion. - Never click the suggestion! - Like and subscribe to content that you want to see instead.

Not all videos have a 'not interested option'.

No post body was provided.

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

#123
post #68

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

He says he doesn’t care about personal wealth yet doesn’t donate to charity and instead amasses quite a bit of wealth. He’s not odd, he’s just a YouTuber who is really good at SEOing youtube and getting billions of views.

> yet doesn’t donate to charity

You obviously have no idea what are you talking about. He not only donates to charity, he actually set up a charity by himself called Beast Philanthropy where he supplies people in need with food, schools with supplies, etc.

He also spearheaded two huge ecological campaigns - Team Trees (to plant millions of trees around the globe) and Team Seas (to clean up tonnes of garbage from the sea).

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

#124
post #110
post #38

> "Whenever I watch these videos I’m awed and scared at the lengths to which humans in the twenty-first century will go to slurp up the drips of unimaginable wealth that the algorithm leaks out through Mr. Beast." That's it, isn't it? It's the exact opposite of dignity of labour: it's compensation for degradation. The "voluntary" part is just highlighting how willing people are to trade in unnecessary misery for the…

"Compensation for degradation" defines most kinds of labor. To labor means to suffer, and compensation is the other word for salary. So it's not certain this is the "exact opposite" of labor; maybe it's its ulterior incarnation.

They said "opposite of dignity of labour"; not "opposite of labour".

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

#125
post #65

> In interviews, he explains that many of his videos lose money, and he invests almost all of his earnings from You back into more videos I dont think this is true. He either doesn’t understand his revenue and costs or is misleading and spinning BS to seem more relatable. He’s the 5th most subscribed YouTube channel. He’s making gobs of money off all his videos. That’s why he’s quite wealthy now. He seems totally ful…

It depends on how he is measuring it. If it is just in terms of what he gets from youtube and not advertising then it is easier to imagine. Then there is also the fact that it is probably the case that for every one of these big budget videos that don't make money he has several smaller ones that do make money. The big ones bring in the audience and the small ones bring in the money.

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

#126

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

I’m not sure that aspect of his personality makes it any better. Think of any horrible corporate behavior that causes human suffering and imagine a CEO who genuinely, honestly says “I’m just obsessively driven to make may customers happy. I donate every last penny to charity”

That doesn’t really make the human suffering aspect any better.

(Side note: I want to be clear that I don’t think what Mr. Beast does can compare to the worst things that some corporations do, not at all. It’s just an apt comparison to explore the extent to which motives matter or not in things like this)

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

#127
post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nonsense. Mr. Beast isn't an unthinking tool, but an intelligent human being. Exploiting people for money is unethical no matter how much 'the audience' wants to see it.

I mean, so is something like Who Wants To Be a Millionare[0] exploitative as well? The whole idea is that people voluntarily sign up, to be "tortured" with difficult questions, for a chance to win some money. Of course the TV producers make money on the show, by broadcasting the whole thing for the audience's amusement. I'm just curious where you think the line lies between this and what Mr Beast is doing? [0] https:…

The air quotes around tortured are doing 100% of the work here. There may indeed be some nervousness associated with taking part in any sort of competition, but I think most people would stipulate that white collar adult professionals answering 15 multiple-choice questions in 30 minutes in a comfortable studio wearing clothes of their choice, preparing in a green room, given access to water and bathrooms is pretty low on the torture scale. Likewise, we don't typically consider, say, taking part in a poker tournament to be torture, or taking part in a 10K race or submitting something to an art contest.

There are, in fact, quiz shows that add torture elements. Rob Lowe hosts Mental Samurai, which is a quiz show where participants are put through physical disorientation[0]. This might be a closer parallel to what you are highlighting, but even still there are coherent and easily articulated ways in which this is not torture.

There are a great many reality programs that do actually involve a sort of physical depravation which is closer to torture. Big Brother and Survivor both involve not just physical challenges, but also punishments that are centered around depriving people of the sorts of creature comforts they are accustomed to in normal life. Even then you don't have torture, because again the vast majority of the experience involves being treated with comfort and dignity, the punishments that are small in scale and support systems in place to ensure they do not present real threat. So, for instance, you might have someone being awoken in the middle of the night as a part of a challenge, but they will be informed of that in advance, given additional time to sleep later, and the disruption will be minimal.

Mr. Beast's stuff has more in common with challenges like the Hands on a Hardbody challenge[1], where poor people go to a car dealership and have to touch a truck for an extended period of time to win the truck.[1] The contestant pool are mostly people who are quite poor, some of whom seem to be mentally ill, the willingness to do it for the prize almost surely implies they have inadequate access to transportation, and it's extremely undignified. But even this has hourly breaks.

It seems like a bit of feigned ignorance to respond to someone criticizing the Mr. Beast stuff by suggesting it is difficult or impossible to draw a coherent line in the sand, and then offering such a patently absurd example as something you think would have to be definitionally included. It comes off as playing language games rather than seriously engaging the substance of the criticism.

[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O3gglCEsvGg [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hands_on_a_Hardbody:_The_Docum...

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

#129

I never watched his videos. Do yourself a flavour by blocking his and similar channels they all produce nothing but crap.

I really try to block them but somehow Youtube keeps finding new ones to put in my feed every single day. How can I tell Youtube: * I will never watch a Mr. Beast video * I will never watch a music video * I will never watch a sports video * I will never watch a video about cars * I will never watch a video about Minecraft, or any video game at all

This is so odd to me because this isn't my experience with Youtube at all. I just opened the homepage and it's mostly content I subscribe to and music that I've listened to before (I use Youtube for listening to DJ sets/Live music a lot.) I scrolled for a while and didn't see any Mr. Beast videos recommended.

Maybe it's because I pay for Premium? I also don't use Youtube that much.

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

#130
post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The author wants to live in a world where everyone gets everything at no cost: that isn't even admiribale, it's childish. Why is it childish to want a life in which you don’t need to labor to have everything you need to be happy? It’s childish to think that human beings are born worthy of a happy peaceful safe life? Why do we need to earn those things? Are they not inherent within us?

Because at the end of the day you need to obtain food, clothing, shelter and other necessities to even survive to the next day, not even mentioning doing anything for pleasure. Either through labor of your own, or by doing labor to earn money to buy these for you possibly your family. Thinking that "human beings are born worthy of a happy peaceful safe life" is childish - the world doesn't owe us anything, and if we…

It is getting increasingly easier to provide these essentials as time goes on, so why is it unimaginable that there might be a day when those are default, and not something that you need labour for?
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