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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

#141

Post by flerchin »

sweetheart wrote: post #103
Vt71fcAqt7 wrote: post #66

>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…

> 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?

The folks working on farms, few though they are in the modern world, deserve compensation. What will the people not working on the farm do to deserve the fruits of their labor? Whatever it will be, will be work. Same for the folks building houses, and all the rest of modern infrastructure that we depend upon to live.

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

#142

Post by mcv »

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.

I think the comparison with Squid Game is apt. Of course he's not killing anyone, it's all voluntary, legal, and far more benign than what the Frontman in Squid Game does, but in essence it's still using extreme monetary reward to tempt people to subject themselves to treatment they wouldn't otherwise consider.

Then again, if you keep scaling down like that, in what way is regular work any better?

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

#143

Post by snowwrestler »

M4v3R wrote: post #115
sweetheart wrote: post #103

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’s a challenging time in human history because we’re now capable of producing enough food, clothing, shelter, and other necessities for every human on Earth. That will only get more true as population growth slows while innovation continues to drive productivity improvements.

But we’re still culturally in the mindset you’re describing: that we must each individually wrest life out of the wilderness day by day.

As a result we seem to be inventing more and more complex and bizarre ways of forcing that reality to still exist. Like pointless YouTube challenge videos done solely to provide ad inventory so well-off people can sell things to other well-off people.

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

#144

Post by mcv »

mattbrewsbytes wrote: post #51
dustedcodes wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 o…

> You don't see rich people showing up to get on game shows.

You do, but on different ones. On shows that make them look good.

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

#145

Post by prepend »

sweetheart wrote: post #103
Vt71fcAqt7 wrote: post #66

>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…

> 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?

> Why is it childish to want a life in which you don’t need to labor to have everything you need to be happy?

The same way it’s childish to want my parents to provide for all my needs. Or to want dragons to be real.

It’s not realistic and is counterproductive to being creative and providing for myself.

We can’t all be trust fund kids, thankfully as all the ones I’ve known have been insufferable.

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

#146

Post by CaptArmchair »

sumedh wrote: post #91
CaptArmchair wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problematic part is that Mr Beast offers little if any critical reflection about the systems that create wealth inequality, pollution, etc. and even less regarding his own role as a perceived philanthropist within that context. It's not that it's inherently morally wrong to clean up the ocean, open a free bank or handing someone 500k for staying 100 days in a 100ft circle. It's the manifest obliviousness of not c…

> Mr Beast offers little if any critical reflection about the systems that create wealth inequality Why should he?

For the exact same reason why we teach little kids to throw their litter in the garbage bin instead of the ground, and hope that it will stick into adulthood: a range of values and ideas that display a due sense of caring and compassion.

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

#147

Post by mcv »

sumedh wrote: post #91
CaptArmchair wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problematic part is that Mr Beast offers little if any critical reflection about the systems that create wealth inequality, pollution, etc. and even less regarding his own role as a perceived philanthropist within that context. It's not that it's inherently morally wrong to clean up the ocean, open a free bank or handing someone 500k for staying 100 days in a 100ft circle. It's the manifest obliviousness of not c…

> Mr Beast offers little if any critical reflection about the systems that create wealth inequality Why should he?

Everyone should, but he seems to be particularly in a position to do so.

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

#148

Post by generalizations »

neoromantique wrote: post #130
M4v3R wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Yes, it's increasingly easier. The ratio of (people consuming) / (people producing) has been growing massively. However, it's impossible for (people producing) to reach zero. And, unless (people producing) = 0, there will always be a cost to the goods produced, and (people consuming) has to pay that.

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

#149

Post by prepend »

jccalhoun wrote: post #125
prepend wrote: 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.

> If it is just in terms of what he gets from youtube and not advertising then it is easier to imagine.

Well this is an odd way to measure profitable. What’s the benefit to this method?

Imagine if Google said “we lose money on every search run. Unless you count the advertising, then we make billions. But we lose money on most of our activities.”

This just seems naively stupid. Because “most videos” is a dumb metric. Imagine if your VC answered the question “Are you rich from your fund?” with “Well we lost money on most of our investments.”

This is either a dodge or just a lucky fool. Mr Beast doesn’t seem like an imbecile so I assume he’s just trying to be humble or deflective.

Just from doing the YouTube napkin math if you saw his balance sheet he would have hundreds of millions.

Because trust me, the world would know if he donated to charity.

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

#150

Post by prepend »

ZephyrBlu wrote: post #112
prepend wrote: 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…

He spends hundreds of thousands to millions on producing videos, it's very likely he doesn't make a profit on a lot of them. It also seems like he's expanding at a pretty incredible rate. > In this case it was a simple, boring task and 100/100 anyone dropped into that circle would stay for 100 days to get $500k Crazy how the video of this simple, boring task has 32M views. Mr Beast manages to make this kind of stuff…

It is kind of crazy, but people like it.

The Kardasians tv show gets bizarre (to me) views as well. People find it engaging.

That’s ok, people can like their thing. But that doesn’t make it bullshit. Lots of people read The Secret and like it. It doesn’t stop the book from being absolute poppycock.

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