61–70 of 565 posts
My kids love Mr Beast. I'm uncomfortable with it and can't put my finger on it. It feels like he makes life look like you stand a good chance of having someone walk in and give you $100,000. Maybe there is no harm in thinking that? But it feels like the same thing as buying a lottery ticket. I guess YouTube is free? But is the time spent on that channel worth it over doing other things? I admire the approach he takes…
You could not let them watch it if it makes you uncomfortable.
My kids love Mr Beast. I'm uncomfortable with it and can't put my finger on it. It feels like he makes life look like you stand a good chance of having someone walk in and give you $100,000. Maybe there is no harm in thinking that? But it feels like the same thing as buying a lottery ticket. I guess YouTube is free? But is the time spent on that channel worth it over doing other things? I admire the approach he takes…
https://twitter.com/pookleblinky/status/1309325764739858432?...
I find it interesting that people are upset that this, for lack of a better term, philanthropy achieved by MrBeast, while yes, its for the likes, the YouTube popularity, its a cottage industry of "feel good" that he's producing, is somehow bad? I wonder how sustainable this will be ultimately, but it seems like he's able to just give all this stuff away and help people, and yes, they have to agree to be being filmed…
I wonder how sustainable this will be ultimately, but it seems like he's able to just give all this stuff away and help people, and yes, they have to agree to be being filmed participating in some manner, but seriously, he's helping folks who need it. Every day people. the federal govt. spends trillions on aid without having to film people. The whole reason Mr Beast is able to give anything away at all is because of…
My kids love Mr Beast. I'm uncomfortable with it and can't put my finger on it. It feels like he makes life look like you stand a good chance of having someone walk in and give you $100,000. Maybe there is no harm in thinking that? But it feels like the same thing as buying a lottery ticket. I guess YouTube is free? But is the time spent on that channel worth it over doing other things? I admire the approach he takes…
I think the discomfort comes from a deep, pretty much unconscious understanding we all have about how capitalism, taken to it logical extremes, will always perpetuate inequality to the extreme degree, and how gross inequality donned up in the guise of philanthropy is still gross inequality . His content is a direct display of our economic system at the limit, at which point it becomes absurd. When you recognize that…
The same uncomfortablenesses would arise if this were videos of some govt leader going around granting early retirement to people.
My kids love Mr Beast. I'm uncomfortable with it and can't put my finger on it. It feels like he makes life look like you stand a good chance of having someone walk in and give you $100,000. Maybe there is no harm in thinking that? But it feels like the same thing as buying a lottery ticket. I guess YouTube is free? But is the time spent on that channel worth it over doing other things? I admire the approach he takes…
For me, the discomfort is that Mr Beast's content relies on exploiting people's desperation due to the lack of social safety net. It's not his fault that they're in such dire straits to begin with, but he's nonetheless behaving opportunistically and his actions have no chance of changing the system that landed these people in such tough situations
It's sort of like a recast economic version of colonial white savior ideology—"educate" the primitives—"donate" to the impoverished, all while ensuring the inequalities and social division persist.
I think a reason why people are uncomfortable about him is that boasting about giving to charity is very unchristian. "Be careful that you don't do your charitable. giving before men, to be seen by them, or else. you have no reward from your Father who is in heaven." Matthew 6:1 If you're not allowed to even tell people you give to charity, I can't imagine what God in the old testament would do to you if you profit f…
Also, this isn't strictly a Christian concept, but similar ideas exist in
Judaism: https://www.chabad.org/library/article_cdo/aid/256321/jewish...
Buddhism: https://www.learnreligions.com/perfection-of-giving-449724
Islam: https://www.quranexplorer.com/blog/Education-In-The-Light-Of...
Hinduism: https://www.hindupedia.com/en/Ideals_and_Values/Charity_and_...?
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I'm also uncomfortable with it. There's nothing inherently wrong with philanthropy but what I'm seeing is a very successful business with an enormous and very expensive campus. MrBeast himself is very rich. So what I'm seeing is a corporation claiming to do everything for the benefit of others while actually taking a lot of the money very visibly for themselves. His channel made $54m from youtube in 2021, and probabl…
His channel made $54m from youtube in 2021, and probably a lot more from corporate sponsors. Make no mistake, this is big business - not charity. that is is? that is a rounding error for almost any decent-sized tech company. We're talking a household name, and one of the most popular channels ever, which is on the front page of youtube by default. I would have thought it would be more. yes, he made $54 million, but s…
That's just his main channel, he has many other large channels (Beast Gaming, Beast Reacts) plus the other social platforms (TikTok, etc).
Then in the last 2 years he launched Beast Burger and Feastables (mostly chocolate bars currently). There are some public numbers about $10m revenue on feastables in the first few months and over $100m of revenue on beast burger orders sometime last year.
He spends a lot, talks about it a lot, $2-4 million per video on each main channel video. He has also talked a lot about re-investing everything back into the channel to grow and grow. Which seems evident by the growth rate if nothing else.
That's just snippets of info and I'm not remotely experienced enough in any of these spaces to make any attempt at a real number but between the increased views, feastables and beast burger I don't see how it's any less than 100s of millions of revenue at this point. My main point, though, is that he has grown a lot from 2021-2023 where that $54m number came from :)
But having said that.. he was still very popular and long on the front page of YouTube back in 2021 perhaps with those much more modest numbers.
Something like this is worth a watch. While I'm sure there is plenty he doesn't talk about, he talks about a lot publicly including money spent, strategies, statistics, etc: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WGrk7Mzm4uo
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think the discomfort comes from a deep, pretty much unconscious understanding we all have about how capitalism, taken to it logical extremes, will always perpetuate inequality to the extreme degree, and how gross inequality donned up in the guise of philanthropy is still gross inequality . His content is a direct display of our economic system at the limit, at which point it becomes absurd. When you recognize that…
This has nothing to do with capitalism, it does have to do with the power dynamic though when one person can easily have a significant impact on another person’s life though. The same uncomfortablenesses would arise if this were videos of some govt leader going around granting early retirement to people.
I'm sorry but to watch Mr Beast's videos and turn around and say "it has nothing to do with capitalism" stinks to me of the worst kind of kool-aid drinking and willful ignorance. This isn't an either/or game. You can remain a capitalist and still be aware of the inherent flaws of the approach when it lacks proper guardrails, acknowledge the real problems we have, and level critiques to try and make the system more equitable. People get so dogmatic about it, it's practically a religion.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> I find it interesting that people are upset that this, for lack of a better term, philanthropy achieved by MrBeast, while yes, its for the likes, the YouTube popularity, its a cottage industry of "feel good" that he's producing, is somehow bad? It depends on how it's done. It's one thing to be broadcasting what is essentially, poverty porn, where you, the hero of the world, come in to paradrop money on the problem.…
Are TV game shows (Jeopardy?) also poverty porn? How do you even know the contestants are poor and not participating just for fun?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
It’s shady because he puts his name on crap and doesn’t care because everything is BS. Would you start a burger business without quality control? Would you let random companies put your name on crap? That’s shady.
Licensing deals aren’t the same as starting a burger business. Clearly the partnering institutions aren’t living up to par but he’s just licensing and marketing which is a pretty common arrangement for these sorts of things. Not sure I agree it’s shady, egregious maybe.