Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

MrBeast has become a viral sensation for his acts of altruism

nytimes.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

471–480 of 565 posts

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

#471

Post by dagw »

solumunus wrote: post #470
paulpauper wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

His channel made $54m from youtube in 2021, and probably a lot more from corporate sponsors. Make no mistake, this is big business - not charity. that is is? that is a rounding error for almost any decent-sized tech company. We're talking a household name, and one of the most popular channels ever, which is on the front page of youtube by default. I would have thought it would be more. yes, he made $54 million, but s…

YouTube ads are never the biggest income stream for a top YouTuber. It's much more than $54m.

I saw an interview with a (admittedly much smaller) full time YouTuber and he said that YouTube ads where between a quarter and a third of his total income.

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

#472

Post by em-bee »

vasco wrote: post #446
scoutt wrote: post #434

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I don't care about motive Pablo Escobar gave free money away. Would you take the money? He also built schools. Motive matters. His intents were to build loyalty masked as charity. MrBeast is building (or has built) something else, masked as charity. I hope MrBeast never stop giving away money and curing people, but there are some considerations to make here, and not just taking as granted the reasons the very same…

What you are talking about is accepting stolen funds or goods. That means the source is illicit, but it doesn't say anything about motive. Motive and source of the funds are different things. I obviously don't support crime or people knowingly accepting stolen funds. You can have a bad motive with legal funds, a good motive with legal funds, a bad motive with illegal funds or a good motive with illegal funds. Your co…

it very much depends who he would be stealing from. see robin hood.

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

#473

Post by wahnfrieden »

sparrish wrote: post #77
sircastor wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

productivity above all else for every human is pretty disastrous and unappealing. and when that hard work mostly goes toward the profit of some man?

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

#474

Post by philistine »

wnkrshm wrote: post #313
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…

MrBeast is exactly the media phenomenon a broken system would come up with in some 80s cyberpunk movie, as a bandaid to give people the illusion of hope: the 'happy hour' show in a boring dystopia. That is not MrBeasts fault, it's the environment's. Say you see MrBeast give thousands of people help, and you have the same problem as these people - sure, you're happy for the other people but why didn't you get any help…

I'd expect Mr. Beast to appear in a Robocop movie.

> ... with the Nicaraguan capital expected to recover from the fallout within 200 years. That's it for the news tonight, up next is Mr. Beast with a big charitable payout of 150 000$ tonight, followed by It's Not My Problem!

> With that large a payout from Mr. Beast, you know what they say: I'd buy that for a dollar!

> Ha ha ha.

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

#476

Post by Aunche »

namarie wrote: post #270
Aunche wrote: post #261

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why do you get to be the arbiter of what's demeaning? Are "poors" too stupid to determine their own limits? Playing silly games is hardly comparable to peeing your pants in public.

Again, no one is claiming that people who participate are stupid for doing so. Why are you insisting on the idea that others see people in financial difficulty as stupid? Nor did I say I'm the sole arbiter of what's demeaning. We both seem to agree at least that peeing oneself in public is demeaning, but some third person might not see it that way at all.

Sorry. I didn't realize you were a different person. My point is that the only opinion who matters is the contestants. If I were a poor Mr. Beast fan, I would be offended by the original comments denial of my agency.

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

#477

Post by mynameisvlad »

prepend wrote: post #433
mynameisvlad wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He has said on multiple occasions that he puts all revenue towards future videos. There is no margin. The money eventually ends up in the hands of people that wouldn’t have otherwise had it.

He’s definitely said that. But there’s no confirmation or audit or accountability. It’s like crypto companies saying on multiple occasions that they were solvent. The claim is also objectively disprovable since the man lives, has homes, etc. So he’s spending something on non-video things. And that’s ok. It’s just that “100% into future videos” is clearly not true. Maybe it’s 99.999%. Maybe it’s 0.001%. We don’t get t…

> He’s definitely said that. But there’s no confirmation or audit or accountability. It’s like crypto companies saying on multiple occasions that they were solvent.

There’s also no proof that he’s lying, either. His entire schtick is to be the cool philanthropist and he has staked pretty much his entire reputation on this brand. He has no reason to lie and is in fact heavily incentivized to tell the truth to keep doing what he’s doing. There has not even been a sliver of an indication this is not the case. I get being pessimist, but this is ridiculous.

> The claim is also objectively disprovable since the man lives, has homes, etc. So he’s spending something on non-video things.

He’s not Mother Theresa and nobody claimed he was.

> And that’s ok. It’s just that “100% into future videos” is clearly not true. Maybe it’s 99.999%. Maybe it’s 0.001%.

This is pedantry at its finest. Everyone here is painting him as a selfish person only in it for the money and fame and this is what you have a problem with?

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

#478

Post by no_wizard »

memefrog wrote: post #181
seydor wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is philanthropy porn. He is not the philanthropist because he doesnt haev the money in the first place, he is using other people's money to perform charity on camera. I 'm not very religious but it is a tale as old as humans. The christian gospels called out this hypocricy for a reason: > Therefore, when you do a charitable deed, do not sound a trumpet before you as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and in the…

He's certainly not using anyone else's money. It is money that he's received from making videos. The difference, I think, is the same difference that there is between donating money anonymously and donating money under the condition that something is named after you. The former is transparently good because it can only be done for a good purpose. The latter may be done for a good purpose. You might want everyone to k…

Why does helping people have to be selfless? Why can’t it be something people do loud and proud and for transparent reasons?

I don’t see why it has be done with the utmost anonymity for it to count

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

#479

Post by itairal »

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

I have literally never watched a Mr Beast video but if I go to youtube under a new username or stealth mode then the probability of Mr Beast being on the front page I would put at about 95% and it has been that way for a long time.

We have agency. Anything could be promoted instead but instead we get this nonsense. Over time of course all this gets lost and we just pretend this is all organic.

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

#480

Post by gota »

smallnix wrote: post #346
vasco wrote: post #307

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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

Maimonides and about everyone who has thought about the concept of charity for a while
Post reply on HN