I really liked his distinction between A, B and C-team players. This could be a really good framework for recruiting in an ambitious startup.
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How to succeed in MrBeast production (Leaked PDF)
131–140 of 1001 posts
Re: How to succeed in MrBeast production (Leaked PDF)
#132Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don’t personally want to do that, but I’m still interested in what I can learn about organizational design and culture from their success in their chosen field.
Question is: can this be learned from and applied to other industries which are not focused on extreme growth, such as more traditional industries or B2B work? I’m not sure.
I plan to take the idea of critical components and keep that in mind for the future.
Re: How to succeed in MrBeast production (Leaked PDF)
#133So basically: Come up with contrived BS that caters to younger audiences, micromanage anyone who is holding you up, and attempt to game a blackbox algorithm on a site you don't pay for (YouTube) The whole modern social media / influencer sphere seems like a huge bubble that will pop eventually. Google has already started wiping inactive accounts[0] presumably because storage isn't truly infinite or cheap. I imagine Y…
People like Mr. Beast have managed to discover psychological attention hacks that are not too dissimilar from sex or fear-based content (porn or a lot of political ads), but more insidious because it’s much more tame and “fun” on the surface. And while I don’t think either can be made explicitly illegal without some pretty nasty second-order effects on freedom of expression, we can’t expect the likes of Google to pro…
Online Advertising, and childrens videos have been doing it for a lot longer.
Re: How to succeed in MrBeast production (Leaked PDF)
#134> “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…
I don't know what subculture you're living in, but in several of mine there absolutely is pushback against this, with people avoiding consuming this kind of content and trying to prevent their children from consuming it, too. Now, the question why the larger US (or English-speaking) culture isn't uniformly doing the same is much more interesting, but there's no known reason for this and most of the common explanation…
IMHO it's quite divisive; there's a significant percentage of the population that's addicted to this sort of content, and there's another which actually finds it boring.
I've watched a few MrBeast videos and similar content, out of curiosity. It just does not appeal to me, in the same way that "influencer" content and celebrities don't.
Re: How to succeed in MrBeast production (Leaked PDF)
#135So basically: Come up with contrived BS that caters to younger audiences, micromanage anyone who is holding you up, and attempt to game a blackbox algorithm on a site you don't pay for (YouTube) The whole modern social media / influencer sphere seems like a huge bubble that will pop eventually. Google has already started wiping inactive accounts[0] presumably because storage isn't truly infinite or cheap. I imagine Y…
The guy has earned a net worth of maybe $700 million starting with YouTube. Saying it's all a bunch of contrived bullshit hides the fact the he is obviously brilliantly talented and dedicated at making a business from YouTube. If you or others blow off a document he wrote or an interview he gives because most of his videos are "just" gaming an algorithm then you must not be a very curious person. I don't like coffee…
The problem is our society teaches us to separate a thing from the externalities of the thing. If it really was just about learning then there wouldn’t be a problem. You can learn from anyone.
However, it’s not just about learning. People are easily influenced by the author of what they’re learning from. They’ll read a Steve Jobs autobiography and learn some interesting business insights, but also hold him in higher regard and perhaps feel like it’s ok to be a raging asshole. People look up to successful people.
It’s entirely appropriate to remind people that it’s not all sunshine and rainbows and perhaps this person has toxic effects they need to be aware of.
Re: How to succeed in MrBeast production (Leaked PDF)
#136> “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…
I like the idea that entertainment made for broad appeal is an existential threat to society worthy of comparison to drugs that kill hundreds of thousands of people per year. People have been appealing to the lowest common denominator for forever and yet the world soldiers on. Your larger question of “why haven’t they made things I don’t personally find appealing illegal yet?” is worthy of exploration, though I don’t…
It's not just "broad appeal". Shakespeare plays were made for broad appeal (he was a professional playwright, after all). Mozart's music was made for the broad appeal. I see nothing wrong with the broad appeal. It's what this appeal is made to and how. Humans have a lot of ways to appeal to them, and this particular way of appealing targets very base very addictive psychological mechanisms that ultimately hurt the person - just like addictive substances do. They don't make the users better or smarter or calmer or anything like that - if anything, they make them dumber and more attention-deficient. That's my problem with it.
> why haven’t they made things I don’t personally find appealing illegal yet
You are not good at reading, are you? I specifically said "I am not calling for government intervention or any of such BS" because I knew you are around and you are going to maliciously misunderstand me. But I guess the joke is on me since you didn't even bother to read that part.
Re: How to succeed in MrBeast production (Leaked PDF)
#137Earlier quoted context omitted.
The guy has earned a net worth of maybe $700 million starting with YouTube. Saying it's all a bunch of contrived bullshit hides the fact the he is obviously brilliantly talented and dedicated at making a business from YouTube. If you or others blow off a document he wrote or an interview he gives because most of his videos are "just" gaming an algorithm then you must not be a very curious person. I don't like coffee…
that's exactly the problem... why the fascination with "money" and "big"? The world has real problems... called environmental collapse and climate change. Why not working on those It's actually EASY to make money selling shit. It's HARD to solve a real problem to make everyone's lives better
I am as far from a fan as you can get. But calling it shit just demonstrates how little people understand, not how refined their tastes are. It reflects poorly on you guys.
Re: How to succeed in MrBeast production (Leaked PDF)
#138Earlier quoted context omitted.
Trying to discern whether YouTube or TikTok influencers are better than the other is like picking which tooth you want pulled. Both are so gratingly painful even compared to normal cable television. I have really no respect for the people that abuse a broken status quo to only improve their own personal standing. The fact that a lot of HNers seem to look up to Mr. Beast is almost as tellingly acerbic as the reliance…
>Both are so gratingly painful even compared to normal cable television. This is the new type of cable television and it's free. Yea sure I pay it with my data but at least I don't need to spit out money every month to watch it. >I have really no respect for the people that abuse a broken status quo to only improve their own personal standing. Again, entertainment on YouTube is free....even YouTube stopped bothering…
Well hey, I'm on the same page. I don't pay for cable these days, nor put up with adblockless YouTube in the first place. But content on YouTube - particularly popular content - is a race to the bottom worse than Keeping up with The Kardashians ever was. I've watched Mr. Beast videos (at the behest of my ex) and haven't found anything except hyperactive filmmaking married to absurd and ill-considered ideas. It's deconstructed short-form entertainment in ways that TikTok is probably envious of. Truly, they've cracked the marketing code for an ADHD-addled era of content consumption.
And therein lies "the problem" - this shit is garbage. I like some YouTube content too, but holy fucking cow is it worse than everything that came before it. TVFilthyFrank was just doing the same thing Jackass did with fewer safety considerations and lower production value. Historians making documentaries are basically recouping the task of The History Channel on a smaller budget with fewer regulations on construing truth. At the end of the day, as much as I hate cable television, I cannot honestly say anything on YouTube comes close to the production in an episode of Top Gear or Game of Thrones. It's garbage all the way down, supported by marginal advertising, kept out of Google's Graveyard by horrific levels of rentseeking and AdSense monopoly abuse, and ultimately propelled by sensationalist and meaningless content tailored to offend as few people as possible. Content on YouTube is terrible in new and terrifying ways.
Re: How to succeed in MrBeast production (Leaked PDF)
#139On one side, an army of HN commenters: “Repeat after me. Don’t build on someone else’s platform.” On the other side, Mr Beast: > Your goal here is to make the best YOUTUBE videos possible. That’s the number one goal of this production company. It’s not to make the best produced videos. Not to make the funniest videos. Not to make the best looking videos. Not the highest quality videos.. It’s to make the best YOUTUBE…
There's a difference, video is probably transferrable to an extent (with their capital they could probably buy/launch beast-tube quickly and kids would follow). Building your software to depend on Google API's and then be banned from Google would put you in deep trouble, building on Google systems but not relying on their API would still allow for an migration.
YouTube is fine as a distribution channel for now. Though there is some risk of being extorted or losing access, the bigger threat will come some years down the road when video is a legacy distribution format.
Diffusion at the edge is going to change a lot of things. Especially since it won't have to encode to linear formats.