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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

#361

Post by sokoloff »

plewd wrote: post #315
junon wrote: post #279

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Team Trees and Team Seas weren't enough? Good lord, y'all are just never satisfied with charity work. "Mr Beast literally cured blindness for a thousand people and gave them a bunch of money, no strings attached." "Yeah but he did it for views!" So what?! He markedly improved 1000 peoples' lives in the process. What have YOU done today? Get over yourselves.

> What have YOU done today? None of us are in his position to make as much change though. Are we not allowed to criticize someone that has far more power than us for not using it to its full potential?

You can criticize anyone for anything you want. Many people will ignore you or think you're a crank when you criticize someone for restoring the sight of 1000 poor people because it wasn't "to its full potential".

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

#362

Post by guyzero »

lozenge wrote: post #356
guyzero wrote: post #332

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I used neither the words "good" nor "bad" so I think you're responding to something that I didn't write.

Why is the "noble"ness of his actions relevant?

He's not viral because of charity, he's charitable because he was already a highly viral video creator. It's not a comment on his videos, it's a comment on the NY Times framing.

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

#363

Post by bobsmooth »

plewd wrote: post #315
junon wrote: post #279

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Team Trees and Team Seas weren't enough? Good lord, y'all are just never satisfied with charity work. "Mr Beast literally cured blindness for a thousand people and gave them a bunch of money, no strings attached." "Yeah but he did it for views!" So what?! He markedly improved 1000 peoples' lives in the process. What have YOU done today? Get over yourselves.

> What have YOU done today? None of us are in his position to make as much change though. Are we not allowed to criticize someone that has far more power than us for not using it to its full potential?

The stereotypical HN user is a highly paid SW engineer. Have you donated to charity lately?

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

#364

Post by tdubhro1 »

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 a bit hard not to be cynical when he himself describes how he developed his channel by optimising and a/b testing everything “like a psychopath” including the amount of views per dollar given away - he says himself that 100k seems to be the inflection point, you don’t get so many more views by going from 100k to 500k or 1m. Not once did he ever appear to have thought about the impact on the lives of the people receiving this random lump sum, which plenty of research on lottery winners shows is often very disruptive and negative on their overall long term wellbeing. As for his “donating” for blindness surgery etc, there are plenty of actual charities staffed by volunteers working hard day after day, he could easily donate quietly to any of those and he chooses not to.

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

#365

Post by patrick0d »

chimen wrote: post #276
imgabe wrote: post #257

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a lot easier to complain about how someone else isn't helping people the way you think they should than to help people yourself.

I don;t complain of anything, let's just call a spade a spade. This is not philanthropy or altruism. It's marketing, a business and entertainment.

Those people who were suffering from curable blindness that had been forgotten by society sure are marketed, businessed and entertained by their restored sight. He's doing good things to improve peoples lives and entertaining millions along the way.

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

#366

Post by superhuzza »

guyzero wrote: post #210
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…

"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…

"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 reality is that Mr.Beast will not be changing the entire U.S. healthcare system. And that hundreds got life changing surgeries they wouldn't otherwise have gotten.

Do you think if you asked those people, they would say Mr. Beast is predatory? Would they have preferred that he Mr. Beast not run a donation-focused youtube channel?

He's created quite an ingenious way to siphon money from advertisers to random people. It's not the most 100% effective way of creating change, but viewing it so negatively is throwing out the baby with the bathwater.

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

#367

Post by throwaway2037 »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #278
j45 wrote: post #260

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Would an alcohol, gambling, drug or other line be more acceptable since suns are being compared?

A line of anything already pegs you as a run-of-the-mill influencer, exploiting the parasocial relationship your victims have with you to peddle them substandard ware at high markup.

I am always shocked when I see the prices for "merch". Why does a hooded sweatshirt, that might cost 10-20 USD at Uniqlo, cost 55 USD as "merch" with a 2-5 USD silkscreen print. I agree: It is absolutely "exploiting the parasocial relationship your victims have with you".

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

#368

Post by phonescreen_man »

I know it’s dark but reading some of the comments calling out how much money he has created for charities etc brought to mind Jimmy Saville, the good friend of King Charles made millions for charity throughout his life. If people get an ‘icky’ feeling about this man’s so called altruism, it’s understandable in this world.

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

#369

Post by bobsmooth »

acheron wrote: post #101
amanzi wrote: post #55

I 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.

Is that where it came from? I will never click on a video that does that.

Even if the video itself is really interesting? You'll judge a book by its cover?

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

#370

Post by mbrameld »

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…

> But is the time spent on that channel worth it over doing other things?

Is that the standard by which you judge all leisure activities?

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