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

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

#181

Post by itsyaboi »

snowwrestler wrote: post #143
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’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…

>we’re now capable of producing enough food, clothing, shelter, and other necessities for every human on Earth

This should come with a footnote that it's only possible due to slave labor in third world countries. A much smaller subset of people would be buying iPhones if they were $5000.

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

#182

Post by elil17 »

micromacrofoot wrote: post #173
ycombinete wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Where's the dignity of working in a coal mine and getting black lung, the dignity of lifting heavy things all day and living with chronic pain through your later years, the dignity of fulfilling inane requests from rude customers? Far too often the idea of dignity is used to repress people who are simply busting their ass for someone else to afford a meager lifestyle.

There's some dignity in doing something that has a point. Doesn't negate the need for better, safer working conditions and good pay but there's a big psychological difference between digging coal (which you know will go on to heat homes) and sitting in a circle and having the internet laugh at you.

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

#183

Post by greatquux »

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?

Exactly - we all don't have to be doing that all the time. And MrBeast does not choose random people or even poor people for these challenges, he chooses only his own subscribers - people who are already interested in this content and presumably watch it regularly and are delighted to be in one of the videos.

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

#184

Post by warent »

There's a lot of severe, judgemental commenting going on here, stooping to actually name-calling Mr. Beast.

Guys, relax. He's an entertainment entrepreneur. He's a circus ringleader. He gives normal people a chance to be trapeze artists for a day. Is it easy? No. It's hard work. But it's a once in a lifetime experience that people sign up for, mostly for that experience, with the money being secondary.

Nobody gets hurt, and he pays his people extremely, extremely generously.

His business model isn't cruelty and torture. It's just a circus that gives away huge sums of money.

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

#185

Post by pjc50 »

SkipperCat wrote: post #81
pjc50 wrote: 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…

On many levels I agree with you. But, you can also look at this thru the paradigm of the "hero's journey". A normal person, plucked from the masses is given a harrowing mission. If they survive, there is glory ($$$), if not, then there is failure (Internet ridicule). Granted, Mr. Beast is not giving us the story of Luke Skywalker, but I can understand the rational of the person taking the challenge. For most people w…

Yes, but the difference here is that the mission is inherently unnecessary. Consider the JFK speech and what went before choosing to go to the moon:

"But why, some say, the moon? Why choose this as our goal? And they may well ask why climb the highest mountain? Why, 35 years ago, fly the Atlantic? Why does Rice play Texas?"

Perhaps we've conquered all the naturally "hard" things and are left only with artificial challenges to inflict on ourselves and others. Climbing the highest mountain for the first time has a kind of natural "because it's there" dignity to it. But it's become a littered tourist spot now.

> torture porn, but content providers have to give the people what they want to make a buck

Someone could quite easily write 1k words on what the word "porn" is doing in that sentence and how it relates to desire, suffering and spectacle.

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

#186

Post by greatquux »

pfisch wrote: post #13
Otek wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly. Don't hate the player. Hate the game. And the game is humanity, who wants this type of content. But overall i disagree that anyone is monster here. No one forces these people to be a part of these challenges.

You could get people to fight to the death with enough money as a reward. Is that ok?

No, but we're not talking about that. We're talking only about if these particular videos cross some kind of imaginary line which is different for everyone and constantly shifts in our minds based on the last comment we read on HN.

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

#187

Post by pjc50 »

micromacrofoot wrote: post #173
ycombinete wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Where's the dignity of working in a coal mine and getting black lung, the dignity of lifting heavy things all day and living with chronic pain through your later years, the dignity of fulfilling inane requests from rude customers? Far too often the idea of dignity is used to repress people who are simply busting their ass for someone else to afford a meager lifestyle.

I was hoping to find a Nye Bevan (former coal miner and inventor of the NHS) quote on the subject, but alas I can't. I will just note that a lot of early 20th century labour organising was built around not eradicating such work but making it appropriately compensated, safe, and respected.

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

#188

Post by ryan93 »

CaptArmchair wrote: post #146
sumedh wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

People don't want a world utterly suffused with politics. You are doing your movement harm by expecting it.

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

#190

Post by scruple »

mattbrewsbytes wrote: post #172
randac wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is similar to the Rogan interview, but I figured I'd mention it here too. MrBeast was just on Flagrant with Andrew Schulz for 4 hours, a day or so ago: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WGrk7Mzm4uo This was also an interesting and fun interview which I expected to skip over fairly quickly but ended up listening to in the entirety. Some discussion over how you would lose something like 3% of viewers if somebody sne…

Yeah the interview I saw a clip out of he or a staffer stated that any mention of peeing would drop viewership. I watch woodworking youtubers and a couple of them had a behind the scenes discussion about their channels and also came to the conclusion that any wind-down loses viewers and this affects a channel. The algorithms use metrics of how long someone watches so it makes sense to end abruptly rather than have 30…

That's interesting. I've observed the trend of abruptly ending videos is recently catching on and had been curious about it.
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