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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

#341

Post by calderwoodra »

Dig1t wrote: post #190
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…

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…

> I listened to his interview on the Joe Rogan show and was really impressed.

I wonder many of the critics in this thread have seen him like this. I've also seen a few videos where he's talking about his channel and he certainly has me convinced he's not in it for his own benefit.

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

#342

Post by hnbad »

Dig1t wrote: post #190
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…

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…

It's not cynical, it's fairly neutral. It doesn't mean he's a bad person. There are worse things he could do with his money and at the end of the day, he's doing a lot of good.

But it's not altruism, it's philanthropy. It's more about the performance than the act itself. Some of his videos literally reycle game show ideas ("do X contrived thing successfully and you get $Y money"). His antics help people and that's a good thing. But he's also making them jump through hoops (not literally AFAIK, though I wouldn't be surprised) and perform gratitude for his audience. Things can be good and bad at the same time.

Consider the American trope of "feel good" news reports about, say, an elementary school kid doing a successful fundraiser to pay off his classmate's school lunch debt. Yes, it's amazing that an elementary school student did that but it's also horrifying that this means school lunch debt is just a thing society has come to accept as normal and that society is so dysfunctional a literal child had to take the initiative instead of just getting to be a child.

I think Mr Beast is one of the better people when it comes to using their ridiculous wealth and social capital for good, but it's horrifying that people have to perform misery for an online audience to get relatively cheap medical treatments and frankly it's horrifying that a single person can have access to and control over such an amount of wealth that they can perform this kind of stunts on the regular while at the same time so many people are so desperately poor that their lives can be changed by being gifted mere crumbs in comparison. Mr Beast may be a relatively good person but that he (i.e. his channel/brand) can exist at all should be deeply concerning.

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

#343

Post by jjcon »

chimen wrote: post #282
Dig1t wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Lemme know if he does it without filming and I'll be the first to call out my BS. Some people just don't see the forest from the trees but it's all good with me, MrBeast needs you for income. True altruism is hard, this is business.

Why does it being a business make what he does any less? Don’t the acts stand on their own without the need to pontificate on his motives? He could have started or ran his business in many ways, he chose a charitable one… I think that’s all that matters

Being a cynic isn’t cool, and it is not being objective - the good he does is staring you in the face and you can’t even see it

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

#344

Post by aerio »

Timon3 wrote: post #304
chongli wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

True. Which is why a lot of people recognize this and perform acts of charity anonymously. Curb Your Enthusiasm did a whole episode on anonymous donations. Absolutely roasted the entire premise! The ego of anonymous donors is just as big, if not bigger! The anonymity is worth even more ego points!

Isn't this incredibly circular reasoning? You're critiquing someone for their action (donations come from selfish need), yet any attempt to make the situation "better" makes it even worse. You're defining their good actions as bad for no apparent reason. The only solution would be not to donate. Let's apply this reasoning to a different topic - if there is a puppy drowning in a river and somebody jumps in to save it,…

>Isn't this incredibly circular reasoning? You're critiquing someone for their action

I think it's perfect, as arguably, you could say that about the initial point as well (it's not altruistic because ego). When reduced this way, it doesn't really matter if ego is involved if the result actually makes an impact and betters someone else's life.

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

#345

Post by jjcon »

TheAceOfHearts wrote: post #162

The MrBeast video where he pays for people's eye surgery felt icky to me and it took me a while to really figure out why. On one hand, I think it's great that people in need were able to receive assistance. On the other hand, why is it that it took some rich YouTuber to pay for their surgeries in the first place? As I understand it a lot of these eye surgeries have been fairly standard for decades, so why isn't there…

It’s not his fault we live in an imperfect world though… yeah it sucks but he’s objectively making it better, can’t fault him for that.

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

#346

Post by smallnix »

vasco wrote: post #307
guyzero wrote: post #210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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 - app…

> But this doesn't strike me as being done out of any noble purpose Money given away doesn't have to have a "noble purpose", the act is good in itself. The people receiving it don't care about motive, I don't care about motive, and the only reason you care about motive is because you're threatened by another person doing good. There's no virtue inherent to giving anonymously. A piece of food or a warm house don't car…

> There's no virtue inherent to giving anonymously.

Maimonides has a different viewpoint: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tzedakah

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

#347

Post by jjcon »

idank wrote: post #246
mkaic wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

On a micro scale it's a nice gesture, macro wise it could be seen as inauthentic and meaningless. There's a comparison to be made to choosing to stay in the matrix or unplug yourself from the illusion.

By that logic no one should ever do something nice because it doesn’t register at the macro scale. That’s ridiculous and a very dark and distorted way to view the world

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

#348

Post by [deleted] »

dymk wrote: post #337
reureu wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is what makes me uncomfortable -- if you have to be seen giving something away then you're not really doing it for altruistic purposes. 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-Ligh…

Are major religions really the only place you can derive your morals from?

[deleted]

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

#349

Post by dimgl »

This YouTube video from MeatCanyon IMO nails why Mr. Beast is so damn uncomfortable to so many people, including myself: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n-tQXZCEi54

It's also pretty hilarious to boot.

Edit: he made a follow-up LOL https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3VRKJthNmWw

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

#350

Post by Timon3 »

aerio wrote: post #344
Timon3 wrote: post #304

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't this incredibly circular reasoning? You're critiquing someone for their action (donations come from selfish need), yet any attempt to make the situation "better" makes it even worse. You're defining their good actions as bad for no apparent reason. The only solution would be not to donate. Let's apply this reasoning to a different topic - if there is a puppy drowning in a river and somebody jumps in to save it,…

>Isn't this incredibly circular reasoning? You're critiquing someone for their action I think it's perfect, as arguably, you could say that about the initial point as well (it's not altruistic because ego). When reduced this way, it doesn't really matter if ego is involved if the result actually makes an impact and betters someone else's life.

Well, you can take a fully consequentialist view, but there is a reason we go further in ethics.
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