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In the belly of the MrBeast

kevinmunger.substack.com

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Re: In the belly of the MrBeast

#281

Post by adeeshaek »

gilleain wrote: post #265
cool_dude85 wrote: post #222

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is this accurate in all cases? Isn't Jenny Nicholson one of the bigger YouTubers, with videos coming out maybe once or twice a year?

There are a few 'long form' creators like Jenny Nicholson (I recommend the one about the failure of the Star Wars Hotel!). Contrapoints (eg the Twilight one), Big Joel's (recently made a 6hr one!), FoldingIdeas and so on. It's a very different model, and a number of these creators also make videos for Nebula.

They also use patreon as a significant source of recurring revenue, so they can create a small number of high quality videos instead of putting out content constantly.

It's a very different business model, and it doesn't have the potential to become as profitable as Mr Beast.

Re: In the belly of the MrBeast

#282

Post by standardUser »

RajT88 wrote: post #152
llamaimperative wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

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…

You seem to have dodged the larger point that right wing rage is a mainstream phenomenon and a dominant force across television, radio, podcasts and social media, whereas comparably hateful and violent language on the left is mostly only in the margins.

Re: In the belly of the MrBeast

#283

Post by CM30 »

flir wrote: post #233
llamaimperative wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

BoingBoing is still very much made in Doctorow's image. Michael Moore is an earlier example. Not suggesting equivalence, in fact I would be really interested to hear theories as to why right-wing polemicists are so much more popular (and numerous) than left-wing polemicists. On the face of it, there are a lot of left-wing things to be justifiably outraged about (especially right now). So why isn't left-wing outrage r…

I suspect part of it may be due to resources. The far right commentator has a pretty solid career path ahead of them, and support from large backers who find that far right beliefs don't threaten their profits. As a result, someone on the right who gets into this sort of content can get funding from both a certain percentage of billionaires/large companies, plus the right wing media machine and potentially foreign adversaries like Russia.

On the other hand a lot of far left beliefs are very unfriendly to capitalism/large companies/billionaires/foreign adversaries, to the 'abolish capitalism' or 'eat the rich' degree. So the far right folks can more easily afford to make it their full time job, since they have other sources of funding rather than just their fans.

I suspect that left wing audiences are also more skeptical of these types of figures, and more prone to infighting. So it's harder to bring together a large audience of fanatics for left wing content, since they're divided over 50 ways to 'solve' a problem.

Re: In the belly of the MrBeast

#284

Post by timewizard »

dom96 wrote: post #261
dmonitor wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well put. As long as channels like Technology Connections can remain financially viable on the platform and not beaten down by the algorithm, I really don't care how many Mr Beasts are making "slop content".

I do. Slop content is melting the brains of the people watching that content to the detriment of society as a whole.

If you remove this they'll simply substitute it with something else. Some people don't mind "melting" their brains as they didn't have a primary use for it anyways.

Re: In the belly of the MrBeast

#285

Post by standardUser »

ahmeneeroe-v2 wrote: post #232
llamaimperative wrote: post #227

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Theocracy is bad and neo-Nazism is bad. Trump had dinner with Nick Fuentes, who 1) is an open anti-semite, 2) praises Adolf Hitler, and 3) calls for white ethnonationalism. I don't need to write a treatise to explain why this is bad.

You don't need to write the treatise because the era of that kind of "logic" winning elections is over. (ie the left being able to label whole political movements as bad because certain bad people associate themselves with it)

Who are the good white supremacists?

Re: In the belly of the MrBeast

#286

Post by throaway89 »

llamaimperative wrote: post #227
ahmeneeroe-v2 wrote: post #224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>There are actual [people that I label with bad labels] just one or two hops away from the President! My latest understanding of the US political landscape is that 2008-2024 the left got very adept at defining things as bad and then attacking those things. In 2016 the right started to learn to counter that, and in 2024 that finally died. In other words, you'll need to try harder than just calling people nazis. You're…

Theocracy is bad and neo-Nazism is bad. Trump had dinner with Nick Fuentes, who 1) is an open anti-semite, 2) praises Adolf Hitler, and 3) calls for white ethnonationalism. I don't need to write a treatise to explain why this is bad.

And is also an incel...hard for me to imagine someone that Trump would despise more than a guy who can't get laid.

Re: In the belly of the MrBeast

#287

Post by timewizard »

hn8726 wrote: post #30
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 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…

You have to block entire channels. I've blocked all the major news networks, all the major content farms, and all the major "garbage" snack size content channels. There's hundreds of blocked channels on my account.

It's _almost_ like the old youtube.

Re: In the belly of the MrBeast

#288

Post by standardUser »

cruffle_duffle wrote: post #136
RajT88 wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Left leaning folks are swept up in rage machines too. Leaf through the BoingBoing BBS sometime to get a sense for it.

One only needs to observe societies response to Covid to see how “left leaning folks get swept up into rage machines”. People were cheering on cars getting towed from popular hiking spots, skate parks getting filled with sand, crazy people “protesting” beachgoers, etc. if you dared to suggest schools should open you were a grandma killing MAGA hat wearing pariah. Don’t forget the level of censorship, vaccine passes,…

I mean, some people reacted how you describe, but the vast majority did not regardless of political leanings. Are you going to pretend that was the dominant reaction among left-leaning people just so you can be mad about it?

Re: In the belly of the MrBeast

#289

Post by throaway89 »

cruffle_duffle wrote: post #136
RajT88 wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Left leaning folks are swept up in rage machines too. Leaf through the BoingBoing BBS sometime to get a sense for it.

One only needs to observe societies response to Covid to see how “left leaning folks get swept up into rage machines”. People were cheering on cars getting towed from popular hiking spots, skate parks getting filled with sand, crazy people “protesting” beachgoers, etc. if you dared to suggest schools should open you were a grandma killing MAGA hat wearing pariah. Don’t forget the level of censorship, vaccine passes,…

And the internet hijacks our brains so effectively; since it became ubiquitous, it is almost impossible for regular users to see how they are being conditioned.

Re: In the belly of the MrBeast

#290

Post by mrkramer »

Applejinx wrote: post #37
mrkramer wrote: post #23

So formula for success on YouTube is to be constantly making crazy and then even more crazier videos and hope they become viral so more people discover you? I knew that even 15 years ago when I was watching crazy pranks pulled by French YouTuber Rémi Gaillard[0]....he was so popular back in the day on YouTube. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R%C3%A9mi_Gaillard

The formula for success is more basic than that. Make people watch more YouTube. Crazy videos might become passe or burn people out, at which point the 'formula' will change, but the underlying reality is the same. It's a paperclip maximizer. To succeed at YouTube make people watch more YouTube.

>To succeed at YouTube make people watch more YouTube.

Yea but how do you do that? By making more compelling content than competitors. That's the basic formula.

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