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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

#481

Post by gota »

superhuzza wrote: post #366
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…

"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.…

> The reality is that Mr.Beast will not be changing the entire U.S. healthcare system.

The reality is that Mr Beast has a better shot at it than 99.99% of americans; the argument is he won't take that shot because he prefers to be Mr Beast

Not to mention this is not all or nothing. He could flip or decide hundreds of thousands, maybe millions of votes, in favour of candidates that do want to reform the healthcare system. All it takes is about half the politicians plus one, no?

I'm not an US voter and don't suffer its healthcare system, so maybe it is an immutable part of life and I can't grasp it - but I doubt it

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

#482

Post by browningstreet »

Mr Beast does a lot of things, but the most philanthropic of his efforts shouldn’t even need to exist in a society with a functioning medical care system.

Instead of dragging him for his “I fixed people’s hearing” videos we (Americans) should be embarrassed that a YouTuber is a medical benefactor for fairly basic problems.

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

#483

Post by ilyt »

blitzar wrote: post #435
ilyt wrote: post #376

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> (guy does not seem to have any other source of revenues) I mean I googled "mr beast merch shop" and now I'm pretty sure it does, so dunno why you throw that claim without checking literally anything

Merch revenue is revenue - Video sponsorship revenue is revenue - Product placement revenue ... revenue - Adsense revenue is well not much revenue.

But wasn't the claim he spends 100% of the revenue from video into the next ? As in just directly from video ?

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

#484

Post by dahwolf »

This thread is getting a lot of engagement and your clue should be that this is exactly what successful influencers manage to accomplish. It doesn't matter what opinion you have of MrBeast. It matters that we have an opinion, any opinion, lots of it.

To give another recent example. A young progressive woman on TikTok went viral because she claimed that traditional masculinity (chivalry, providing for her) was absent in liberal men and only found in Republican men. Yet she does not culturally align with Republicans. She wanted both aspects of men and couldn't find any.

As expected, half the world engaged to point out hypocrisy, unrealistic expectations, and so on. Each participant in this conversation thinking they're correcting her, setting her straight, putting her back in her corner.

That's not what happened. She won. All of this is engineered. Engagement traps and engagement farming. And we fall for it every single time because it is a hard-wired feature of our brain: to obsess over deviations of the normal.

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

#485

Post by erikerikson »

bnlxbnlx wrote: post #84
zik wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm also uncomfortable with it. There's nothing inherently wrong with philanthropy but what I'm seeing is a very successful business with an enormous and very expensive campus. MrBeast himself is very rich. So what I'm seeing is a corporation claiming to do everything for the benefit of others while actually taking a lot of the money very visibly for themselves. His channel made $54m from youtube in 2021, and probabl…

> There's nothing inherently wrong with philanthropy Why not? To be able to "give" you first need to accumulate way beyond what you need to attend to your material needs. Accumulating such wealth means taking more resources than you need in the first place. It's still fully within the scarcity and separation mindset of capitalism.

> you first need to accumulate way beyond what you need

Or... Produce way beyond...

The kleptocapitalism narrative as well as the neocapitalist narrative depend on using a myopic perspective. There is a fair debate about the negotiation over what to do with the excess between all parties involved and that can be a useful conversation. If you didn't mean to agitate in that way I apologize for being too sensitive.

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

#486

Post by chongli »

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,…

My main complaint is with the altruist label. It’s a secularized version of “saint”, as far as I’m concerned. I have no problem with someone doing good deeds for other people and deriving personal satisfaction (and the validation of others) from it. I do this myself. My problem is when we start calling some people “altruists” when they have the same motivations as I do.

As for the puppy, try this: replace it with a black widow spider drowning in a toilet. How many people will save it now?

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

#487

Post by HDThoreaun »

operator-name wrote: post #351
HDThoreaun wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He’s making these peoples lives better though. How would him not doing this stuff help anyone? Just because he’s not overthrowing the system the happiness he’s provided is worthless?

https://nitter.lacontrevoie.fr/pookleblinky/status/130932576... In doing good, Mr Beast bring to light the uncomfortable lack of support we provide as a society.

Mr beast is not able to upend society and convince enough voters to provide a better support system. You’re advocating for doing nothing, that’s what would happen if he focused on politics instead of fun videos.

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

#488

Post by acheron »

bobsmooth wrote: post #369
acheron wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Well, yes. It’s encouraging bad practices. Same reason I don’t read clickbait “journalism” articles, or click on ads, or respond to spam emails.

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

#489

Post by HDThoreaun »

goodpoint wrote: post #411
HDThoreaun wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

His videos make hundreds of millions of people happy and probably more likely to donate or be charitable. That seems like more than zero impact to me.

By this logic a casino is altruistic and charitable.

If the casino donated half its earnings many people would call it charitable. In fact charity poker is pretty common.

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

#490

Post by bitshiftfaced »

browningstreet wrote: post #482

Mr Beast does a lot of things, but the most philanthropic of his efforts shouldn’t even need to exist in a society with a functioning medical care system. Instead of dragging him for his “I fixed people’s hearing” videos we (Americans) should be embarrassed that a YouTuber is a medical benefactor for fairly basic problems.

I'm sorry if I'm missing something, but I don't actually watch the channel. Is this what you're referring to?

> In it, Donaldson and his team give away over “$3 million worth of cutting-edge hearing technology” to 1,000 people across the U.S., Mexico, Guatemala, Brazil, South Africa, Malwai and Indonesia.

https://nationalpost.com/news/world/mrbeast-inspiration-porn...

It looks like, in the USA, children with an IEP qualify under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) https://www.understood.org/en/articles/at-a-glance-free-and-...

Also, it appears at least in some states, those with Medicaid would also qualify.

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