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In the belly of the MrBeast

kevinmunger.substack.com

201–210 of 410 posts

Re: In the belly of the MrBeast

#201
I was thrown off by the use of the word, "wordcel," which the author defines as almost the opposite of what I would expect it to mean. Just like "incel" is a portmanteau, I expect "wordcel" to mean "word celibate." It didn't fit the context. The word is linked to a longer article that has the author's definition buried in it, which just distracted more from this article.

Re: In the belly of the MrBeast

#202
post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How could a voting system anywhere be expected to represent truth rather than consensus?

It probably depends if the audience is intelligent and open-minded, but I agree, it will always be biased towards their preconceptions.

Even then that's consensus on what the participants believe to be true (whether it's what they believed beforehand or not) - not a method of determining what is actually true.

Re: In the belly of the MrBeast

#204

I'm interested in how many people here on HN watch Mr Beast - I've never watched any of his videos ever, and I spend far too much time on YT.

I have never watched one, but I consume a lot of YouTube content. My teenager calls MrBeast-type channels "brain rot". He says teenagers watch YouTube when they want to make time disappear. (I guess they are uncomfortable being bored.) I find it sad because YouTube is actually a great source of educational content.

Re: In the belly of the MrBeast

#205
post #138

I think MrBeast and other high end influencers like the Paul brothers are harmful to children. Kids see them flaunting their huge wealth and abandon all their other ambitions in favour of wanting to become a YouTuber. Which, now, is a very competitive platform few succeed on. Kids should be nudged towards working fruitful careers beneficial to society. Although MrBeast has done some good things with it, I find the wa…

> Kids should be nudged towards working fruitful careers beneficial to society. It’s all about incentives. I think we should nudge society towards rewarding kids who choose fruitful careers.

Yes, that too, but it might not help kids whose main perception/exposure of "society" is MrBeast et al. Kids can be quite oblivious to how "society" works in practice and what will be rewarded.

Re: In the belly of the MrBeast

#206
post #81
post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They changed the definition of 'literally' to fit the modern meaning. You can no longer call it abuse now as the misuse fits the new definition. See definition 2 here: https://www.collinsdictionary.com/dictionary/english/literal...

That definition genuinely gives me cancer. I seriously , 100% am going to die now because dictionary editors don't seem to grasp that this is simply a "tone" of ironically over-emphasized speaking similar to sarcasm, and not a new definition of one word. I'm 250% honestly in chemotherapy now because they don't get that. Veritably, indubitably, unarguably cooked now. Thanks, dictionary editors.

The stronger player was handicapped when they gave their opponent a handicap, and yet they still won; they now held in their hands their prize that was the match's prize.

Re: In the belly of the MrBeast

#208
post #30
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 have no clue how to use YouTube. It seems like as soon as it latches on 3-4 interests of mine, the entire home page is exclusively filled with videos relating to that. I can mark videos as "not interesting" but it doesn't do much. I will see exactly the same videos on the home screen, ones that I'm not interested in and don't plan on watching, for weeks or months sometimes. I'm sure there's plenty of interesting co…

> It seems like as soon as it latches on 3-4 interests of mine,

Its worse than that. I thought that Youtube worked as you described, trying to find videos suited to your interests but it actually works the other way around.

Youtube has a series of rabbit holes that it knows maximise engagement, so its trying to filter you the human down one of those rabbit holes. Do you fit the mr beast ssniperwolf hole, or the jordan peterson joe rogan rabbit hole? Howabout 3 hour video essay rabbit hole, is that one your shape?

Its designing paths for engagment and filtering humans down not filtering videos for humans, its perverse and awful and it explains why the algorithm simply does not work for humans, because you are not the target audience, you are the data being sorted.

Re: In the belly of the MrBeast

#209
post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Yeah, it really is obvious. Here's one excellent example: the dominant right wing media apparatus knowingly engaging in a conspiratorial lie that fetched them a $787 million punishment.

https://apnews.com/article/fox-news-dominion-lawsuit-trial-t...

Re: In the belly of the MrBeast

#210
post #54
post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I find the ideas of Baudrillard really accurate in describing some parts of modern life, but to be honest I feel like he just saying random stuff when I tried to read one of his book. It's so metaphorical and abstract it's very difficult to understand what exactly he is saying.

He's not "just saying random stuff", he was a very serious thinker. Unlike Derrida he wasn't much of a joker. Perhaps language is fundamentally metaphorical, and perhaps reality is actually abstract.

That's just what I feel I didn't claim that it actually is just random stuff. But I value clarity and Baudrillard doesn't seem to try to be. However, as I said I do find his general points very valuable just his style is not my cup of tea.
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