131–140 of 291 posts
Many people are ignoring some interesting aspects of Mr. Beasts business and instead are focusing on the content which is mostly attention grabbing, silly, ridiculous game show premises. The content isn't for me or likely many HNers but I see similarities with startups and his business model. From watching a couple of interviews, things I've picked up - when his youtube videos were grossing $20-30k a month he started…
Perhaps the problem isn't the algorithms of yt and Tik Tok, but rather the people who decide to watch these things instead of moving on?
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…
the “world” may not owe anyone anything, but do we as individuals, groups, tribes, governments, and a species owe each other some attempt at that?
how does this view extend into discussions about marginalized, disabled, the idea of social safety nets?
> "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…
agree —- i kept waiting for the author to spend more time on the indignity and exploitation Mr. Beast is dispensing. there are desperate people out there that will leap at a chance for this much cash. how long until we see a Mr. Beast version of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Running_Man_(King_novel) (the arnold movie is ultra cheesey and fun too)
It strikes me that he doesnt have competition in youtube currently, because nobody else (?) makes videos with somewhat substantial budgeting that feel like TV. So his videos get all the attention among the various podcast/travel/other kinds of slow-paced, monothematic videos. BUT he might start a trend here of big budget youtube productions. This will depend on his margins, but I m not sure that the relatively small payout of youtube will allow such trend
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I thought of bumfights when writing this, and decided that no, it's not ethical, because homeless people often suffer from mental illnesses which violates one of the assumptions that I laid out.
What if the person isn't mentally ill, but doesn't reliably have enough to eat to survive adequately, and can get it by fighting for the entertainment of others (who do have plenty to eat, and more to spare). Is that ethical, because it's a rational cost-benefit analysis? There are few people in the US who don't have enough to eat to fuel their bodies, but in other countries there are more. I am not trying to describ…
But is it unkind? You're giving them a benefit (+$) and taking a cost (-dignity), and they've calculated that $ > dignity. Assuming their calculation was accurate, aren't you actually being kind? You are increasing their utility.
> I also don't in fact think that people can be divided, in binary fashion, into those who are "rational" and "not rational".
Yes, there isn't a clear dividing line between those who are capable of rationally calculating what's in their true best interest, and those who aren't. A dose of pragmatism is obviously needed. Homeless people are statistically much more likely to suffer from a mental illness which erodes their ability to rationally calculate costs and benefits more than others.
>Their strict standards resulted in content that was homogeneous and boring, but safe. It’s terrifying that a man spent one hundred days in a small circle in an empty field. This isn't terrifying. People do much worse for 100x less. Prostitution and porn, for example, many times drive people to suicide. People stay on ships for months at a time without seeing their family, not too long ago, sailors would go years on…
IS this real?
Everyone is entitled to their opinion. Personally I'm pretty sure its all fake. The reactions are not quite right for people winning so much money. I'm pretty sure I've seen some of the winners as extras in other videos. He got caught handing out fake money which he claimed was for "security".
If you were Mr Beast would you really give away $500k plus the costs of spending a full 100 days of filming when you could just get some actors to do it in a week?
Especially when you would get the same view count either way.
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…
I'm not that badly off and have never watched a Mr. Beast video prior to this. I would gladly stay within a 300ft circle for 100 days while some dude blasted clown noises at me in return for $500k. There's a library, a garden, some exercise bands, stationery, and 3000cal/day of food. I did 21 days isolation in an apartment at the start of the pandemic, which is 20% of the way there except with less floorspace. There'…
> 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.
That’s nothing special at all, he simply rediscovered the concept of “loss leader”. He not doing those videos despite their lack of profit, he’s doing the because they’re the reason he has profitable content to begin with. It would be like a shaving company saying “I know it seems crazy, but we lose so much money on these shaving handles, but we do it anyway!” Everyone knows what’s really going on there, what the business model really is.