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In the belly of the MrBeast

kevinmunger.substack.com

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Re: In the belly of the MrBeast

#301

Post by citizenpaul »

>like is there a correlation between better lighting at the start of the video and less viewer drop off (there is, have good lighting at the start of the video haha)

This gives me the smell and sight of red flags in their methodology. It reeks of unsuspected hidden variables. Such as what is really going on is that focusing on lighting in the beginning of the video simply makes people put more thought into the into thereby having a hook that keeps people interested, rather than lighting having anything to do with it.

That means this is just a pseudoscience blog of throwing darts to me. Sure call me a curmudgeon or whatever.

Re: In the belly of the MrBeast

#302

Post by cogman10 »

mperham wrote: post #266
dom96 wrote: post #261

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Soap operas, reality TV and evangelists have existed forever in various guises. "Bread and circuses" is thousands of years old. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bread_and_circuses

I don't care so much about the dumb brain melting. However, what MrBeast and other youtubers do is exploitative to their audiences (which in the case of MrBeast skews young).

It's not great to see young kids addicted to content designed primarily to rob them of their money with false claims of success. "Oh, if you send me money, buy my shit, or subscribe to my channel, you could win millions of dollars!"

That sort of exploitative media should be illegal (and in the case of MrBeast appears to be illegal in some cases).

Re: In the belly of the MrBeast

#303

Post by plaidfuji »

> As I wrote in the book, “If creators are speaking their authentic truths, how can they also be accountable to audience feedback? I am personally bemused to see “authenticity” invoked as a criterion for what is ultimately and obviously a performance;

Who are you to deny their authenticity, though? If authenticity is being true to one’s own character, and one’s entire character is driven by YouTube video metric optimization (and perhaps ultimately by the profit thereby obtained), then isn’t their behavior on screen authentic?

Put another way, if MrBeast says “your goal is to make me excited to be on screen”, he’s explicitly saying he doesn’t want to have to act or otherwise be inauthentic on screen. Whether his excitement about a certain topic is tied to the views he expects it to garner is immaterial, if that’s his authentic motivation.

Or put yet another way, what drives anybody’s “authentic” behavior? What audience are they playing to? It may not be the entire internet, but it’s certainly influenced by “performance” in front of friends and family. We’re all Creations of our environment. MrBeast has just kind of found himself in an environment where feedback from YouTube videos motivates him and creates a ton of positive feedback loops.

Re: In the belly of the MrBeast

#304

Post by Velofellow »

liontwist wrote: post #131
n4r9 wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't that the point? By purely focussing on business-centric strategies, the videos no longer have meaning.

Yeah, what major piece of film of the last 20 years isn’t a carefully crafted business plan? I think YouTube was so exciting initially because it was so authentic, and now it’s back to big studios.

Megalopolis. I didn't love everything about the movie, but it did come across to me as completely divorced from art created to benefit commerce. I loved that about it...

You could argue the movie being made outside of the traditional studio system is case and point of this phenomenon.

Re: In the belly of the MrBeast

#305

Post by apricot13 »

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 tend to agree with you there, admittedly there was a skill in not being accidentally radicalised but you watch one 'lo-fi' video and accidentally fall asleep to four more and that's all YouTube shows me now!

Re: In the belly of the MrBeast

#306

Post by sdwr »

prpl wrote: post #130
Salgat wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

You see this a lot in strange ways these days. Rage bait, feigned ignorance, and things like that. It’s anti-quality and it’s just as effective (if not more) than quality content.

This is enabled by the Internet and, weirdly enough, by the robustness of our social norms and legal system.

It's possible to make 80% of people mad, 20% of people happy, and benefit from the 20% while the 80% can't do anything to you.

Re: In the belly of the MrBeast

#307

Post by worldsayshi »

pixl97 wrote: post #231
worldsayshi wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Slowing down is not a solution since we're heading for a wall in some dimensions and a cliff edge on others. We need to find ways to drastically change course. We need to build maps and steering wheels.

And we need to convince everyone to do it, or we just end up in the Red Queen scenario.

Yeah, I do think that collective action problems summarize almost all of humanities problems though. So if we just found a way to efficiently make decisions as a collective we'd be in a much better situation.

I might even suspect that solving collective action is the great filter that we have in front of us.

Re: In the belly of the MrBeast

#308

Post by gobeavs »

OJFord wrote: post #116
NAHWheatCracker wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think what you describe is what infecto was saying. You can't use YouTube to find interesting content anymore. You can only use it to find more of what you've already seen. In the past, it was better at unearthing new things. Personally, I added uBlock filters so the home page is empty and recommended videos aren't shown. I only ever go to subscriptions now.

> I added uBlock filters so the home page is empty and recommended videos aren't shown. I only ever go to subscriptions now. There's a setting to turn it off, no need for uBlock filters for that

What setting is this? I'd love to disable the home page but I haven't seen any setting for it

Re: In the belly of the MrBeast

#309

Post by thecatspaw »

x187463 wrote: post #145
okdood64 wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed. This is still how YouTube still works for me. It's great. > That being said, occasionally I do have to go into my Google data and clear/clean the watch history to reorient my recommendations. Can you elaborate on this? What effect does this produce for your specifically?

If I find I am receiving recommendations in which I am uninterested and are clearly based on a handful of videos I watched previously, I can clear those from the history and the algorithm doesn't use them for future recommendations. The simplest example would be watching videos for a one-time use case such as repairing a specific home issue. I definitely don't need more recommendations to fix that/related issues, but…

personally I just open up these videos in private mode

Re: In the belly of the MrBeast

#310

Post by llamaimperative »

Satisfy4400 wrote: post #299
llamaimperative wrote: post #209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

It seems to me there's plenty of conspiratorial thinking on the left. The rhetoric around Project 2025 comes to mind as a recent example. Same with rhetoric around for-profit prisons (e.g., I see lots of people saying our criminal justice system is primarily profit driven). If I had to guess, I'd say such thinking is more widespread on the right, but I find it very difficult to see these sort of things clearly since…

Which rhetoric around Project 2025 specifically? Everything I saw claimed to be in it is actually in it, and Trump’s distance from it was complete bullshit.

I haven’t heard anyone say our justice system is primarily profit-driven, and certainly haven’t heard any notable mainstreamers taking that position. One could argue lefties overplay the significance/effects of commercial incentives, but I also think it’s defensible to say there should be (to the extent possible) no commercial incentives in incarceration whatsoever.

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