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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

#131

Post by brvsft »

renewiltord wrote: post #57
prepend wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do you determine this? He’s not a charity so isn’t forced to file data so charitynavigator can determine his payout rate. What percent does he give to charity? And how is it audited? How does he compare to top charities?

Clever move since Charity Navigator rates you very highly if you spend almost all your charity money on growing yourself like the Harvard Management Company does. I don't outsource my moral judgment so I can safely conclude that HMC isn't a "good charity" as CN calls it.

Clever move since you didn't even attempt to prove your assertion at all.

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

#132

Post by Gigachad »

kcb wrote: post #102
pavlov wrote: post #100

It’s not altruism, it’s just the cost of goods sold for his entertainment brand. If he could have the same viewership by feeding $100 bills to crocodiles at lower cost, he’d do that.

Right, if you give away $100,000 then post a video about it that makes $200,000, I call this a 50% margin not altruism of philanthropy,

At least it doesn’t seem to be a net negative on the world. He could be using $100,000 to market crypto scams, or “prank” videos.

Giving it to poor people, even if not from pure generosity, is far from the worst thing he could be doing.

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

#133

Post by pavlov »

chasd00 wrote: post #107
pavlov wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Now imagine a government that helps people with no strings attached, without making them feel like shit about needing help, and no cameras pointed at their face either. Who says it can’t be done?

> Now imagine a government that helps people with no strings attached, without making them feel like shit about needing help, and no cameras pointed at their face either. Who says it can’t be done? All of history so far.

There are a lot of things in our modern societies that would seem impossible or magical to someone from just a few hundred years ago. Why assume this is the best we can do, when so much progress was accomplished already?

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

#134

Post by nfw2 »

chimen wrote: post #80

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…

He figured out a sustainable way to keep giving money away. I call that smart philanthropy, not selfish philanthropy. Yes, he makes a lot of money but it mostly goes back into growing his channel and charities.

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

#136

Post by iamleppert »

He isn’t genuine. In his origin story you’ll notice he talks about trying lots of different strategies to maximize his views and engagement. That’s his only real goal. He stumbled upon his current formula by accident after significant iteration.

It strikes me that he could have just as easily be producing any kind of harmful content if the rules of what’s acceptable to society and YouTube were different. It just so happens that in his case the content is self-reinforcing and easily defensible.

He is the same as the people who film themselves giving flowers to lonely elderly people. Such people do not feel good about doing good acts because of the actual act, they crave the attention and praise that doing good often brings, and they need it in great quantity.

The act itself is just a vehicle for vulnerable narcissism and wouldn’t exist or have been done in the first place without these outlier personality traits enormous investment.

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

#137

Post by ardkf »

I'm surprised at the negative view here. He had a very interesting interview with Joe Rogan a while back where he explains his business model. He does crazy expensive stuff on the main channel that might break even but often loses money. But this funnels viewers into the other Mr. Beast channels, like gaming or reacts, that are much cheaper to produce and do make money. The flywheel turns and he makes more money which goes to his philanthropy efforts or bigger videos on the main channel.

At the end of the day he's given away more money than I'll ever be able to by finding a glitch in the system that seems to be working out, at least for now. If kids like it and it inspires them to be charitible themselves in the future then I can't see how that's a bad thing.

I will say that I find some of the videos uncomfortable to watch when it's him just giving out money. But it's not any worse than what's been shown on regular TV for decades. The videos where he bought out entire grocery stores to fuel the food banks his company runs or the car lot where the cars were a dollar each are much better than straight up handing out cash.

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

#138

Post by adamwk »

nfw2 wrote: post #134
chimen wrote: post #80

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…

He figured out a sustainable way to keep giving money away. I call that smart philanthropy, not selfish philanthropy. Yes, he makes a lot of money but it mostly goes back into growing his channel and charities.

It’s philanthropy the same way Who Wants to Be a Millionaire is philanthropy

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

#139

Post by azurelake »

freddie_mercury wrote: post #49
a-user-you-like wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It can be and is both a business and philanthropic.

Isn't every philanthropic foundation also a "business"? The Gates Foundation had $150 million of income from their investments in 2022. The CEO of the Gates Foundation was paid $1.176 million last year. Their net assets went up by $13 billion in 2022 and up $20 billion since the beginning of 2021.

The difference is that Gates is an industrialist who does acts of philanthropy. MrBeast does acts of philanthropy to be an industrialist.

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

#140

Post by slim »

elif wrote: post #126
chimen wrote: post #80

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…

I mean I haven't seen his tax returns but from what he says, he spends 100%+ of revenue on the next video. I'm not sure if you are unaware of that claim or just don't believe it. Sure he is extremely generous to his employees, but that would also fall under altruism...

where "spends" includes his undisclosed wages ? (guy does not seem to have any other source of revenues)
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