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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

#201

Post by giantg2 »

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…

"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."

But that's only true with incentive to work.

Their point wasn't anything to do with wilderness. It was if you had your needs met without the requirement of work, that a significant portion of people would not work. Without those workers, we would no long have enough production.

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

#202

Post by antasvara »

hombre_fatal wrote: post #180
antasvara wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some people fundamentally have an issue with the idea of making money off of what essentially amounts to embarrassment or (depending on the challenge) light mental torture. Mr. Beast's motives are irrelevant if that's the belief you're operating under.

Those views seem inconsistent unless those people also disagree with compensated labor. There’s already a type of degradation in a conventional job: someone having power over you that you can’t question, you have to degrade yourself by being agreeable to nonsense, you have to whore out your time and attention and energy, etc. Spending 100 days in isolation is less degrading to me than all the things people take for g…

There's a spectrum of embarrassment/torture between "100 days in a circle" and "sitting in boring Zoom meetings," wouldn't you agree?

A person that has no problem with paid labor but does have an issue with 100 days in a circle could have a consistent view if they believe that the former doesn't rise to the level of "torture" or "embarrassment."

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

#203

Post by thisoneworks »

Karsteski wrote: post #169
mihaic wrote: post #152

I think one thing most posts saying "he optimizes for the algorithm" ignore is that content also slowly influences our desired and our culture. It's all a gigantic and relatively slow-moving feedback loop, where content influences culture and desires, which again influences content. MrBeast's videos I find particularly damaging to culture, since it's incredibly dehumanizing and stripped of any nuance of the labor/val…

> It's sad that I've become less and less confident that people can be trusted with what they consume -- food, content, anything. Can you elaborate more on what you mean by this?

I think they are talking about our proclivity to get addicted to something similar to high fructose corn syrup in any shape or form.

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

#204

Post by criley2 »

elil17 wrote: post #182
micromacrofoot wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Creating content that millions will enjoy in exchange for six figures of cash is something that has a point.

The internet wasn't laughing at that dude.

I assume most people here are too good to watch Mr Beast /this video and are simply inserting into it whatever is most convenient to their argument.

The dude is amazing. It was a fun enough video. His family is beautiful and watching how he "survived" based on the strength of his love of family was great.

Better than 95% of the garbage on youtube.

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

#205

Post by suoduandao2 »

hombre_fatal wrote: post #180
antasvara wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some people fundamentally have an issue with the idea of making money off of what essentially amounts to embarrassment or (depending on the challenge) light mental torture. Mr. Beast's motives are irrelevant if that's the belief you're operating under.

Those views seem inconsistent unless those people also disagree with compensated labor. There’s already a type of degradation in a conventional job: someone having power over you that you can’t question, you have to degrade yourself by being agreeable to nonsense, you have to whore out your time and attention and energy, etc. Spending 100 days in isolation is less degrading to me than all the things people take for g…

Looking at the comments of the people who hate MrBeast, I suspect a large amount of them do disagree with compensated labour. It's like MrBeast has become an avatar for capitalism in people's minds.

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

#206

Post by mihaic »

Karsteski wrote: post #169
mihaic wrote: post #152

I think one thing most posts saying "he optimizes for the algorithm" ignore is that content also slowly influences our desired and our culture. It's all a gigantic and relatively slow-moving feedback loop, where content influences culture and desires, which again influences content. MrBeast's videos I find particularly damaging to culture, since it's incredibly dehumanizing and stripped of any nuance of the labor/val…

> It's sad that I've become less and less confident that people can be trusted with what they consume -- food, content, anything. Can you elaborate more on what you mean by this?

I mean, the more complex the world become, the worse our choices are in free market, since we don't see the long term consequences of some decisions. For instance, getting a streaming-service subscription is convenient for the consumer, but in practice it seems like making a customer binary (either on board or out) has made content more a race-to-the-bottom.

In the end, I think that gatekeeping of some kind can increase both quality and the tastes of the average consumer. The fact that it's hard has led us to abandon it completely though, similarly to how people say now "the government can't make anything".

I also know that I'm a weak creature, and could use some external help to not deliver me constant temptations. If you see content as food for your mind, I find it easy to binge junk, only to be left with a feeling of emptiness after a while.

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

#207

Post by ryan93 »

mcv wrote: post #151
lawrenceyan wrote: post #43

Is this the algorithm or just late-stage capitalism / pre-post scarcity economics? I think situations like these will only become increasingly prevalent as time passes thanks to technological development decreasing the raw resource cost of goods and services. Because while we have a good mechanism for reliably increasing productivity and efficiency, no analogous mechanism exists for distribution. Thus profit / wealth…

> I have no idea how you actually come up with a reasonable solution for this since communism/socialism clearly failed. You could simply give people more than just some drips that keep them on the edge of desperation. Whether or not you consider that socialism, it has been quite successful in a lot of countries. The failure of a totalitarian dictatorship in no way implies that excessive wealth inequality is the only…

However much money your imagined society gives out people will still gladly do game shows for extra cash. Unless you want to be honest and say no one should have even a single extra penny to spend how they please

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

#208

Post by bestcoder69 »

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…

> 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 want to continue living on it we have to earn it.

That's just, like, your opinion, man. But, IRL there are plenty of people that require care-taking, who we never expect any labor from.

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

#209

Post by DangitBobby »

pjc50 wrote: post #185
SkipperCat wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 chal…

The other difference is that anyone can do them. I don't think you could have competitions about things that are at all useful and necessary that are accessible to everyone.

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

#210

Post by strken »

isitmadeofglass wrote: post #139
strken wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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'…

Sure, people enter in willingly. And you’d be able to find quite a lot of Poot people who’d do really shitty stuff and let you be extremely shitty to them for money. But so what? He’s still kidnapping and terrorizing poor people and excusing it by paying them off. And Better yet he’s doing so for profit, but he’s effectively have them sign a contract that means they don’t get paid if he gets them to break. It screams…

"So what" is that pretty much everyone I know, poor or not, would do it. It's $500k for hanging out in a house reading and digging in the garden all day for 100 days and occasionally having kids mess with you. That's not necessarily easy, but it's a hell of a lot easier than the other things I'd have to do to earn $500k in four months.

I think you're getting offended on behalf of other people, when most of the world would think it was a sweet deal. This is just reality TV for people who were born after 2000, except the prize is better, the format is shorter, and it's less cut-throat. Nobody's kidnapped, there are no victims, and "sick games" is a bit of a stretch.

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