Earlier quoted context omitted.
The latest Marvel movie makes hundreds of millions of people happy too.
They probably have a positive impact too
Exactly, but no one would call their creation Altruism.
MrBeast has become a viral sensation for his acts of altruism
201–210 of 565 posts
Re: MrBeast has become a viral sensation for his acts of altruism
#202I don't mind MrBeast, but what I really hate is how every other YouTuber has decided to copy his "screaming face" thumbnail strategy. My YouTube home page is full of screaming faces and bright text with some clickbait title. Even middle-age woodworkers (the polar-opposite audience to MrBeast) fall prey to this strategy, and I've started to unsubscribe from channels that insist on doing this.
I use Clickbait Remover for YouTube to disable this. It also fixes the FULL CAPS LOCK video titles that have become so popular.
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/clickbait-rem...
Re: MrBeast has become a viral sensation for his acts of altruism
#203It'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 find this take on him so strange. I also don't understand the take that altruism/philanthropy has to be zero sum. i.e. true altruism means that I lose something and you gain something. Maybe it is a hold over from religion and the idea of sacrifice being the ultimate good. The times I have had the most impact (helping people in need, teaching, starting my own NPO) it has been very much positive sum. If he has zero…
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Re: MrBeast has become a viral sensation for his acts of altruism
#204Earlier quoted context omitted.
Making philanthropy profitable is kinda genius.
The Susan G Komen foundation figured that out years ago.
Charities like Komen, and the American Cancer Society, and all those charitable Foundations and Societies that fund research on incurable diseases: they are exactly the reason why breast cancer and all the other diseases will never, ever be cured. They must never be cured. Billions of dollars in revenue depend on their incurability. Scientists and researchers have an amazing cash cow, a goose that lays golden eggs, and to identify a cure for breast cancer would strangle that goose where it sits. EDIT: I think I like the cow metaphor much better in this case.
Therefore, mark my words: donate to the "X For A Cure" charities at your own peril, because the perverse incentives mean that they will move Heaven and Earth to avoid finding a cure for anything at all.
Re: MrBeast has become a viral sensation for his acts of altruism
#205My 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
I agree with you, I have only seen one of his videos in which he paid for people to have cataract surgery I found it strangely absurd.
The issue is if he was to instead start using money to tackle systemic issues then it moves beyond philanthropy and it becomes political. "I paid for 1000 people to have cataract surgery" as a video hits a lot differently to "I lobbied congress to make cataract surgery free"
Systemic change is hard and a lot of people won't want to engage with it. It is easy to look at an altruistic act and say "this is a good thing" a lot harder to question the underlying causes that necessitated the act.
There is a famous quote "When I give food to the poor they call me a saint. When I ask why they are poor they call me a communist."
Re: MrBeast has become a viral sensation for his acts of altruism
#206It's appalling some people are more upset that his motives were not altruistic than being happy for the people who got their eye sight back. Are we going to start criticizing doctors next because they're saving lives to get paid?
I would feel uncomfortable if a doctor did pro bono work just for attention or for YouTube views instead of out of the goodness of his heart, but acted like he was a wonderful and charitable person for doing so.
Re: MrBeast has become a viral sensation for his acts of altruism
#207Earlier quoted context omitted.
Mr beasts viewers give him money because they enjoy the spectacle. Without the spectacle all the good he’s able to do would not be done. Sure his viewers could just give the money to the government instead, but without the spectacle they don’t want to. Isn’t convincing people to be more charitable good? How is that not what Mr beast is doing
His viewers largely do not give him money. They give him attention, and in doing so give attention to the ads on his videos. Advertisers are the ones giving him money. It is a very far cry to suggest that people watching his videos are "being more charitable" by doing so.
Attention is money. Their time is paying for the charity in the videos.
Re: MrBeast has become a viral sensation for his acts of altruism
#208It'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…
After releasing Schindler's List, Steven Spielberg donated several million dollars to the Shoah Foundation. In an interview, he said that he rarely gives his name when he donates to a cause and made the exception because he wanted to use his name to bring light to what the Shoah Foundation was doing — creating an archive of witness accounts of Holocaust survivors. The reason he said he donates anonymously is that, according to his religion, God does not recognize giving to charity unless it is anonymous. The moment a person does a good deed, and their name is given or known, the act is not recognized by God because it was done in pride and not humility.
Re: MrBeast has become a viral sensation for his acts of altruism
#209He 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 h…
The way I see it, if those lonely elderly people's days are brightened by being given a flower, who cares what the intentions of the flower-giver were?
Also, what if the viewers of the video also had their day brightened by seeing someone being nice? No wonder negativity bias is such a thing in media, not only do negative doom-and-gloom articles get more views, but positivity is actively scorned.
Re: MrBeast has become a viral sensation for his acts of altruism
#210It'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…
Man this is such a cynical take. I listened to his interview on the Joe Rogan show and was really impressed. Mr. Beast built his channel by taking all profits from each video and plying it into the next video. Using this approach he was able to produce progressively larger and more expensive videos. He has demonstrated his frugal lifestyle, has publicly given away an incredible amount of money to good causes, and has…
"Mr. Beast built his channel by taking all profits from each video and plying it into the next video"
To me this seems like a semi-obvious minmaxing solution to making popular videos: make essentially zero profit, regardless of revenue. At some point you get so much revenue that you can't spend it all so the next logical step is to simply give it away as part of the video. And in this case it's a virtuous cycle - apparently giving away money generates more revenue so it just keeps going. But this doesn't strike me as being done out of any noble purpose - all he wants is YT view and charity is just a side-effect of that.
"How can you watch the video where he pays for the blindness surgery for all those people and say that that was anything other than an amazing win for all those nice people?"
My criticism would be that it's local change vs trying for structural change. Why don't those people already have access to surgery? The counter-argument to this would be that structural change is somewhere between very hard and impossible, so just spend the money locally. A more cynical take is that lobbying for restructuring the US health care system doesn't generate YT revenue, so he's incentivized to fund the most clickbaity charity projects.