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MrBeast has become a viral sensation for his acts of altruism

nytimes.com

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Re: MrBeast has become a viral sensation for his acts of altruism

#71

Post by pictureofabear »

lagt_t wrote: post #20
zik wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Making philanthropy profitable is kinda genius.

The Susan G Komen foundation figured that out years ago.

Re: MrBeast has become a viral sensation for his acts of altruism

#72

Post by [deleted] »

sircastor wrote: post #60
PradeetPatel wrote: post #6

The biggest risk of exposing youth to MrBeast is that it devalues the concept of money and hard work. But there's no denial that he's doing some good work for those who are in need.

This may be unpopular, but maybe there’s something to be said for devaluing money and hard work? “Hard Work” is an inherited ethic from Puritanism in the western world. It is often implied that hard work will reap benefits, but the benefits are hit or miss and the rewards are sometimes promised salvation or riches in an afterlife. While I won’t comment on the latter, I think the ethic of hard work is often oversold,…

[deleted]

Re: MrBeast has become a viral sensation for his acts of altruism

#73

Post by mostly_lurks »

xrd wrote: post #4

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…

What makes me uncomfortable is the elitism running through many of his videos. Put 100 "poors" in a circle so they can fight it out for $500k [1]? It's just another rich person making poor people do demeaning things for his entertainment and profit. It's disgusting.

1. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zxYjTTXc-J8

Re: MrBeast has become a viral sensation for his acts of altruism

#74

Post by cm2012 »

scaredginger wrote: post #50
xrd wrote: post #4

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

Would it better if he paid the people to make beads or dig holes instead of entertaining his viewers?

Re: MrBeast has become a viral sensation for his acts of altruism

#76

Post by darepublic »

xrd wrote: post #4

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 I felt the same way. To clarify I was watching one of the videos where contestants compete for large sum of money. Part of it may be that the contestants don't do anything useful. They are paid to degrade themselves, albeit it in a G rated manner Also that he is an arbitrary judge jury and executioner so to speak. A benevolent dictator.

Re: MrBeast has become a viral sensation for his acts of altruism

#77

Post by sparrish »

sircastor wrote: post #60
PradeetPatel wrote: post #6

The biggest risk of exposing youth to MrBeast is that it devalues the concept of money and hard work. But there's no denial that he's doing some good work for those who are in need.

This may be unpopular, but maybe there’s something to be said for devaluing money and hard work? “Hard Work” is an inherited ethic from Puritanism in the western world. It is often implied that hard work will reap benefits, but the benefits are hit or miss and the rewards are sometimes promised salvation or riches in an afterlife. While I won’t comment on the latter, I think the ethic of hard work is often oversold,…

I was told growing up the measure of good work is that you produce more than you consume. That's how families and communities grow and prosper. If you consume more than you produce, you're a drain on your family and community and that's looked down on.

Maybe that is Puritan but my own observations have reinforced that and I think if everyone strived for it, our world would be a better place to live.

Re: MrBeast has become a viral sensation for his acts of altruism

#78

Post by ftxbro »

xrd wrote: post #4

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'm uncomfortable with it and can't put my finger on it."

orphan crushing machine

Re: MrBeast has become a viral sensation for his acts of altruism

#79

Post by jonny_eh »

no_wizard wrote: post #3

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…

It strikes me that people are simply jealous. Jealous that he’s both successful and well liked.

Re: MrBeast has become a viral sensation for his acts of altruism

#80

Post by chimen »

It's not altruism if it's your source of income. Sorry but I don't buy this bs. He's doing it to generate income, that's all. Altruism is "unselfish regard for or devotion to the welfare of others" but we have quite the opposite here - a selfish way of milking poor people for emotions in order to generate income. Real altruism is hard and done only by a few. Literally EVERY man/woman/child on this planet will say yes to receiving millions of dollars annually with the sole condition that they have to let go some part of it. The money he spends are just fuel for a marketing engine.

While I see he seems like a nice guy overall, his actions do more good than harm. His impact is very low, his "philanthropy" is localised down to the individual level and his impact is absolutely none on the actual problems that people who he targets face. The more negative side of this is that he inspires the next generations to only go by extreme things on Youtube and other social media platforms and these extreme things are, more often than not, on the negative side (stupid and dangerous pranks, throwing stuff at people from 20th floor etc).

He chose this path because his viewers were probably reacting to it the most. I'm not a hater but I feel like the real altruistic people doing good stuff on a much grander scheme don't get any recognition at all while this money making business man selling snake oil to children is getting everything from the table.

Despite throwing millions and millions, his impact is absolutely ZERO. I find it quite predatory.

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