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How to succeed in MrBeast production (Leaked PDF)

simonwillison.net

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Re: How to succeed in MrBeast production (Leaked PDF)

#601

Post by aa-jv »

threeseed wrote: post #188
ocean_moist wrote: post #77

Lot of people critiquing this, but you can't deny the success. I think a lot of the advice is applicable to startups. 1. KPIs, for Beast they are CTR, AVD, AVP, will look different if you are a startup. I am willing to bet he knows his metrics better than >95% of startup founders. Because he is literally hacking/being judged by an algorithm, his KPIs will matter more and can be closely dissected. Startups aren't that…

I always love the "just hire A-players" line. As though startups are trying to hire mediocre people instead of having no choice. And that 95% of startups don't know their metrics. Pretty sure almost all do but again don't have the skills or resources to meaningfully move them.

>trying to hire mediocre people

It should be "always retain A-players". You can hire as many ABC's as you like - some of those C's will become B's and A's, and some of the B's will become A's, and the rest .. you let go with severance.

Thats the free market, baby. Live with it, or perish.

Re: How to succeed in MrBeast production (Leaked PDF)

#602

Post by ljm »

wrsh07 wrote: post #374
latexr wrote: post #200

> Lot of people critiquing this, but you can't deny the success. You could say that about literally any shady business. Imagine seeing a PDF proving tobacco leaders knew for decades that it caused cancer and saying what you did. Being monetarily successful does not mean you’re good or shouldn’t be criticised.

Ignoring the ethics of Mr Beast, he is producing real videos at an incredibly high volume and they consistently do numbers. None of those videos is easy to make. Sure, it's maybe not great to be so impressed by logistics or supply chain of a tobacco company, but from a business and systems view some of it is interesting

I think the ethics are important when you're looking not just at Mr Beast's businesses themselves but also their internal culture, especially when squaring it up against the perception of himself he's created as some sort of squeaky clean philanthropic billionaire, particularly among his primarily young fans. Those big charity videos aren't done altruistically, they serve another purpose of deflecting criticism.

You have the façade presented to the public, then the operations of the businesses he runs, then the culture built within them. If you ignore the ethics then you won't see that a significant part of his success is in his PR muscle, and how (young) people then expect that follows through to working for him or going on his show.

I don't doubt that this isn't unlike the dream of going to work in the games industry as a kid, getting to make the very kind of game you loved to play, only to realise that what's on the inside is actually pretty ugly, and perhaps your fanaticism has been exploited.

Re: How to succeed in MrBeast production (Leaked PDF)

#605

Post by veunes »

cynicalpeace wrote: post #302

Great article. Its lesson is basically: go 110% in everything you do. Buck conventional laziness even when everyone else is doing it and be the ultimate "try-hard" Not to detract from it in any way.

I think successful anything it is "go 110% in everything you do".

Re: How to succeed in MrBeast production (Leaked PDF)

#606

Post by jerrygoyal »

tkgally wrote: post #335

It might be interesting to contrast MrBeast’s management approach with that of Marques Brownlee (MKBHD). He is also a successful YouTuber who leads a team that puts out videos on several channels. While his videos don’t have the huge production scale of MrBeast’s, they seem to be produced on short deadlines and must require close coordination among his team. If I were young and wanted to work in online media producti…

despite less views, MKBHD is more net positive for humanity than MrBeast. MrBeast's whole game is to draw people's attention to not-so-useful content.

Re: How to succeed in MrBeast production (Leaked PDF)

#607

Post by sobani »

barrell wrote: post #515
nine_k wrote: post #503

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Imagine that our bitter enemies invented a superior logistics tool, known as the wheel. Should we even consider adopting it, given its clearly ethically unacceptable origins? If you think that this is an entirely artificial example, consider the fact that the same man designed the V-2 rockets which were hitting London during WWII, and the Saturn-5 rockets which brought astronauts to Moon: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/w…

Imagine that our bitter ememies invented a superior logistics tool, known as the wheel. They also invented airplanes and the concept of blitzkrieg. Should we attribute their success to the wheel, and study how it was designed, since they clearly had a mighty army? I think the idea being debated here is that it’s impossible to know whether the business practices would work without the lack of ethics. It might not be a…

> Imagine that our bitter ememies invented a superior logistics tool, known as the wheel. They also invented airplanes and the concept of blitzkrieg. Should we attribute their success to the wheel, and study how it was designed, since they clearly had a mighty army?

If you replace "wheel" with "jerrycan", then that's exactly what happened.

Quoting from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jerrycan :

> Such was the appreciation of the cans in the war effort that President Franklin Roosevelt noted, "Without these cans it would have been impossible for our armies to cut their way across France at a lightning pace which exceeded the German Blitzkrieg of 1940."

Re: How to succeed in MrBeast production (Leaked PDF)

#608

Post by podgorniy »

smsm42 wrote: post #10

> “I Spent 50 Hours In Ketchup” > In general the more extreme the better. I may be sounding like "get off my lawn" guy right now but should there be some realization that these people are a cultural analogue of if not heroin than at least cigarettes? They are making a good living from making things objectively worse in a society by tickling the base instincts of the addicts. I am not calling for government interventi…

> They are making a good living from making things objectively worse in a society by tickling the base instincts of the addicts

Looking at this phrase in isolation is such a fun. There are whole industries which work exactly like this (food, news, games, politics). These particular people aren't the cause, they are one of many many symptoms of the causes.

Causes are in rules, norms and incentives of the social and economical systems. We can't solve the problem at the leve at which it was created. These videomakers aren't even close to that level.

> but is it too much for me to expect at least some cultural pushback here?

And they are getting it. Which is not enough for a change, as "benefits" they are getting are way greater. Main driving forces behind the phenomena is rooted somwhere else, not in space of scope this type of conversations (moral, value, human-centric or achievement-centric aspects).

Re: How to succeed in MrBeast production (Leaked PDF)

#609

Post by oneeyedpigeon »

torginus wrote: post #584
wrsh07 wrote: post #374

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ignoring the ethics of Mr Beast, he is producing real videos at an incredibly high volume and they consistently do numbers. None of those videos is easy to make. Sure, it's maybe not great to be so impressed by logistics or supply chain of a tobacco company, but from a business and systems view some of it is interesting

Honestly to this day, I don't know what he did wrong, it seems like a concerted effort to take him down and/or grifters want to profit from his downfall by 'exposing' him. The allegiations seems to have been: - His shows are scripted to varying degrees - I think this should be obvious to anyone old enough to not think santa's real. - Some of his friends/production staff did some bad stuff (I won't elaborate). These p…

I think, potentially more problematic than all of that, are the allegations about illegal lotteries, etc.

Re: How to succeed in MrBeast production (Leaked PDF)

#610

Post by Aeglaecia »

malthaus wrote: post #551
slt2021 wrote: post #456

Earlier quoted context omitted.

MrBeast has given up his life for his youtube channel (he writes exactly this in the doc) - and he is looking for other people willing to give up theirs for his channel

the audacity to ask other people to give up their life for helping you fulfil your dream and even sell it to them as them fulfilling their dream. is it the same "temporarily embarrassed millionaires" shtick the american dream brainwashed americans with? if you have that much drive and want to invest so heavily in work - do yourself a favour and do it as a leader where you call the shots and have the equity instead of…

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