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

In the belly of the MrBeast

kevinmunger.substack.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

191–200 of 410 posts

Re: In the belly of the MrBeast

#191

Post by AndrewStephens »

hahamrfunnyguy wrote: post #113

I ran a YouTube channel seriously for a couple of years. Chasing the whims of the algorithm contributed to burnout and now I only release one or two videos a year. My reason for starting a channel was to have a discussion around some of the projects I was working on that I found interesting. This never materialized. I never had a ton of engagement, but if I did most questions asked by viewers that are answered in the…

Thank you for your story. I have been running a low traffic blog for decades now and there was a time when I craved engagement. I never put too much effort in but I did change the things I wrote about to try to get noticed, a strategy that was unmarred by success.

The creators that find success need to pump out content at a ridiculous rate. It is a faustian bargain that sucks in a lot of people.

Re: In the belly of the MrBeast

#192

Post by grahamj »

JohnMakin wrote: post #31

It is indeed a fascinating topic, and it’s completely changed content (for the worse, in my opinion) in the last ten years. I always wonder though, does the dead-eyed creepy smile factor into his metrics analysis? it must, or he wouldn’t do it. something has always felt a little “off” about that guy, but if your entire adult waking life is devoted to the whims of the massive YT content space, I guess you’d probably s…

If there’s no border between him and the Apparatus then his is literally the face of the Apparatus.

Re: In the belly of the MrBeast

#193

Post by andrewflnr »

> I am personally bemused to see “authenticity” invoked as a criterion for what is ultimately and obviously a performance

Imagine someone is actually an actor. They might play two different roles, one in a character and show they find boring, and one in relatable character in a show whose message they think is important. Don't you think their performance in the second one might be more authentic, despite being a "performance" in both cases?

This essay starts interesting, but I think it overreaches at the end.

Re: In the belly of the MrBeast

#194

Post by Applejinx »

cess11 wrote: post #55
Applejinx wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think human nature dictates that this opens up a literal market for the opposite. People aren't served by exhausting hysteria, it's just a cheap date, a way to grab low hanging fruit. The more that's focussed on, the more an opportunity arises to cover abandoned needs and wants. The question becomes, is YouTube's algorithm good enough to itself pick up on this new market and serve it? I see no reason it couldn't. I…

By "human nature", what exactly are you referring to? The statistically most common amount of extremities?

People tire of being poked with an algorithmic stick, even though it ensures a reaction.

Re: In the belly of the MrBeast

#195

Post by grahamj »

yifanl wrote: post #89
JohnMakin wrote: post #31

It is indeed a fascinating topic, and it’s completely changed content (for the worse, in my opinion) in the last ten years. I always wonder though, does the dead-eyed creepy smile factor into his metrics analysis? it must, or he wouldn’t do it. something has always felt a little “off” about that guy, but if your entire adult waking life is devoted to the whims of the massive YT content space, I guess you’d probably s…

It does at the moment. At some point in the future, it might not rank, at which point he and anyone else devoted to the rat race will get their teams to replace their thumbnails with whatever new thing gets more clicks.

Please god let it be something other than faux surprise and arrows

Re: In the belly of the MrBeast

#196

Post by lupusreal »

Salgat wrote: post #125
bilbo0s wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the above commentor is right, in my opinion, intensification shapes our world into being very reactionary, with only a superficial understanding of issues In fairness, this is how the world has always been. In the US for instance, back when there were only 3 networks and a channel for public tv, people were "reactionary, with only a superficial understanding of issues" .

To some degree yes. Funny enough, llamaimperative's book suggestion goes into detail on how television is where this really started ramp up and how the Age of Reason was likely the peak of rational argument, where the focal point of transfer of information was through the written word. "He repeatedly states that the eighteenth century, the "Age of Reason", was the pinnacle for rational argument. Only in the printed w…

Reagan apparently hated reading and would often skip written briefs given to him by, for instance, the CIA. Then somebody got the idea to put those briefs in the form of a television news style video made just for Reagan. Some of them are on youtube now. They have the tone of spoonfeeding a midwit.

Re: In the belly of the MrBeast

#197

Post by 98codes »

x187463 wrote: post #27
infecto wrote: post #9

Not entirely related to MrBeast but related to YouTube. I genuinely miss the older algorithm where after watching a video you would go progressively further down a hole of videos somehow related to the one you just watched. It was quite entertaining and really uncovered fascinating videos.

I obviously don't know your personal experience, but your description is still how YouTube works for me. For example, over the holidays I would occasionally put on a video from a channel that plays holiday music with various videos of this guy's model train setup in the background. I immediately started receiving model train videos, which, of course, I had to click on and now I know a little bit about trains and buil…

Same, and now I've spent the last two weeks trying to convince YouTube that I don't need several different videos of Christmas music playing over a fireplace.

Feels a whole lot like the dumb emails I get from places like Home Depot, where because I bought a table saw they feel I should know about all these other table saws they have.

Re: In the belly of the MrBeast

#198

Post by lalalandland »

Salgat wrote: post #83
iambateman wrote: post #4

First of all – the essay is phenomenal and his book is available online for free – https://www.cambridge.org/core/elements/youtube-apparatus/36... > “Communication within the YouTube Apparatus has no meaning.” The rapid feedback loop between creators and audiences (as constructed by platform metrics) means that the system more and more responds to itself. Rather than trying to go somewhere (as is the case with politi…

For people confused like me on what intensification means, it means maximizing the amount of attention and interaction that occurs. On Youtube this would be the metrics that drive engagement, including views, likes, comments, shares, and watch time. The issue is that the content focuses on driving engagement at the expense of communicating ideas with coherence and depth, for example by sensationalizing or oversimplif…

The creators publication frequency is also an important factor. If you don't put out content at least once per week you fall off the recommended and lose a lot of views. Once your content is shallow, simple and without reflection, you are trapped in a hamster wheel of click bait vapidness.

Re: In the belly of the MrBeast

#199

Post by geodel »

llamaimperative wrote: post #160
RajT88 wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wasn't suggesting an equivalence, just that the phenomena of the rage machine exists on both sides. As an exercise, try coming up with some metric to measure it. Could be inflammatory posts, or the comment count on inflammatory posts. Compare BB BBS with some rough equivalent right-leaning place. You'll find it's worse in the right-leaning forum, no doubt. But the phenomena exists on both sides of the political spe…

I don’t find it that interesting because it’s obviously a consequence of our information environment. We have constructed algorithmic outrage machines and deferred thought and curation to them. It’s far more interesting to me how one side of the political spectrum was so totally swallowed by this system, to the extent that literally every single news story is received with outlandish conspiracy theorizing from rather…

> but it is very obviously the case they are not.

It not obvious and also doesn't seem true at all. Still one may continue to investigate with this assumption but then result will neither be truth or much useful.

Re: In the belly of the MrBeast

#200

Post by hnthrow90348765 »

xg15 wrote: post #122
alecco wrote: post #33

Watching YouTube anonymously with different browsers and cycling VPNs frequently, I see it quickly ends up suggesting the same videos during the same week. Not similar videos but the same ones. Many of those videos are below 1M and not particularly notable. This is after only watching a couple of videos and those videos are different every session. Either it has some magic fingerprinting I am not aware of (and I go t…

> I've never, ever clicked on short videos with girls in skimpy clothing doing something "based" and yet it keeps trying to hook me up on those. There was another post on HN recently about "multi-armed bandit" problems and an algorithm which occasionally retries previously nonperforming choices on purpose to "test" if their performance has changed. I wonder if YouTube's algorithm works similarly, i.e. occasionally su…

This seems logical to me, there have been times when I wanted to hop off a deep dive after watching enough and wanted to move to something else. But I was probably immune to suggestion before getting to that point.

That satisfaction threshold is probably understood for someone like me who doesn't browse anonymously

Post reply on HN