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

How to succeed in MrBeast production (Leaked PDF)

simonwillison.net

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

151–160 of 1001 posts

Re: How to succeed in MrBeast production (Leaked PDF)

#151

Post by noizejoy »

Loughla wrote: post #109
IAmNotACellist wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's the thing. You have to love that, and that's probably something only people who grew up watching YouTube can feel at a deep level. Generational divides happen like that often.

Bingo. I do not understand the attraction of nearly all YouTube creators and celebrities. I don't get the appeal. All the videos sound the same and have the same stupid looking tag lines to get you to watch them. Outrageous actions for attention are deeply troubling to me. And I'm also SUPER aware that it's because it's not for me. I'm not the target demographic at all, and never will be. At some point you have to re…

YT has RSS feeds for every channel.

So I’ve switched to using RSS to follow the specific niche creators that add value for me. As a result, my YT experience is entirely unlike what the YT algorithm suggests.

Re: How to succeed in MrBeast production (Leaked PDF)

#152

Post by smsm42 »

smcl wrote: post #25
smsm42 wrote: post #10

> “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…

Maybe more "old man yells at cloud" but I am kinda with you in thinking it's trash. The thing is that every generation has had its own equivalent swill for kids, this one is no different. His channel won't last, there's too much baggage around it, but it'll get replaced with something equally trashy.

I have a lot of memories in my childhood, but I can't remember anything on this level. Sure, I grew up in a very different environment than the US, but even in the US - say, was there a constant stream of content aimed at kids that is optimized to be maximally extreme and maximally attention-grabbing? All I can remember was cartoons - but were kids spending hours glued to the screen watching cartoons? I surely wasn't.

Re: How to succeed in MrBeast production (Leaked PDF)

#154

Post by fabianhjr »

ocean_moist wrote: post #77

Lot of people critiquing this, but you can't deny the success. I think a lot of the advice is applicable to startups. 1. KPIs, for Beast they are CTR, AVD, AVP, will look different if you are a startup. I am willing to bet he knows his metrics better than >95% of startup founders. Because he is literally hacking/being judged by an algorithm, his KPIs will matter more and can be closely dissected. Startups aren't that…

> 4. Rewarding employees who make value for the business and think like founders/equity owners, not employees.

That is simple to do but not something many companies want to do. Just give employees equity via mutualisation. (Real ownership not discourse ownership)

Re: How to succeed in MrBeast production (Leaked PDF)

#155

Post by ninetyninenine »

Loughla wrote: post #109
IAmNotACellist wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's the thing. You have to love that, and that's probably something only people who grew up watching YouTube can feel at a deep level. Generational divides happen like that often.

Bingo. I do not understand the attraction of nearly all YouTube creators and celebrities. I don't get the appeal. All the videos sound the same and have the same stupid looking tag lines to get you to watch them. Outrageous actions for attention are deeply troubling to me. And I'm also SUPER aware that it's because it's not for me. I'm not the target demographic at all, and never will be. At some point you have to re…

YouTube caters to every niche. Including the more snobbish demographic who “claims” they don’t understand the appeal of YouTube videos (aka don’t understand humans and entertainment in general)

Check out stuff by Johnny Harris , veritasium, etc… for more educational stuff.

Also I didn’t like the ageism comment. I’m about your age and I can definitely understand the appeal of Mr. Beast. I feel a lot of the disdain for him is more snobbery than anything. Some people think they’re better or too good for that type of entertainment. If you truly don’t understand the appeal I think that’s actually a sign of autism. It’s unlikely you’re autistic and it’s more likely to be snobbery disguised as lack of understanding.

Entertainment is usually mindless anyway. It’s not like Shakespeare is some higher form of entertainment. It’s all snobbery that segregates these things. Transformers has more technical complexity and represents a bigger human achievement then Shakespeare.

The technical know how of thousands of people utilizing technology decades in development combined together to achieve the transformers movie to tell a story with more clarity then the equally cliche story of Romeo and Juliet.

It’s all mindless entertainment and class based prejudice.

Re: How to succeed in MrBeast production (Leaked PDF)

#156

Post by jwells89 »

jrflowers wrote: post #57
smsm42 wrote: post #10

> “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…

Comparison to drugs is a bit extreme, but I think that some level of concern about MrBeast-style operations and the content they produce is warranted.

It’s not just broad appeal, but the mass reach of YouTube, the audience targeting and tight feedback loop it enables, and the resulting race to the bottom for who can make the most stupid and/or shocking videos, which in turn informs the tastes of the masses. Where does it end? Will it eventually get to the point that the only profitable YouTube channels are MrBeast-style because nothing else can bring in views?

Re: How to succeed in MrBeast production (Leaked PDF)

#157

Post by vasco »

oulipo wrote: post #93

[flagged]

What are they doing? They gave free cataract surgery to a huge number of people across the world, built wells, have distributed an ungodly amount of food and the list goes on. Just google the foundation and stop being grumpy. My bet is you will not be able to give away a tiny fraction of what they have in your whole life, even with all their flaws.

Re: How to succeed in MrBeast production (Leaked PDF)

#158

Post by CaptainFever »

mattnewton wrote: post #85
serjester wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you do better? If 100's of millions of people are watching something, then clearly it has entertainment value. His management philosophy might rub people the wrong way but it's hard to dispute it's effectiveness. Nor do you have to work there. His success is all the more impressive given he started with nothing and how competitive the space is. On some level he's the personification of the youtube algorithm - don…

Not saying Mr. beast content isn’t valuable to millions of people, but I think “It makes money so it must be valuable” is a terrible benchmark. It’s also the case that people can succeed in spite of their management philosophies. If you only look at the people who have made it you miss out on all the people who tried similar approaches and did not, which is needed to figure out the effectiveness of a strategy before…

> but I think “It makes money so it must be valuable” is a terrible benchmark.

The GP never said this. They didn't say it was good because it made money, they said it was good because people like it and watch it. I like it and watch it. I agree with the GP.

Re: How to succeed in MrBeast production (Leaked PDF)

#159

Post by throwaway984393 »

ocean_moist wrote: post #77

Lot of people critiquing this, but you can't deny the success. I think a lot of the advice is applicable to startups. 1. KPIs, for Beast they are CTR, AVD, AVP, will look different if you are a startup. I am willing to bet he knows his metrics better than >95% of startup founders. Because he is literally hacking/being judged by an algorithm, his KPIs will matter more and can be closely dissected. Startups aren't that…

[dead]

Re: How to succeed in MrBeast production (Leaked PDF)

#160

Post by Jun8 »

xrd wrote: post #81

I have kids and I'm really bothered by MrBeast. I had to buy goddamn chocolate bars at Walmart because of him. I acknowledge he is creative and driven but the content is such crap, with a few exceptions that my kids point out. But, what's the alternative? For example, I love 3brown1blue videos. But, it is too advanced even for my eleven year old. Mark Rober videos are great, and my kids love them, but he's even insid…

Try Vihart on YT, eg this one is one of the most awesome explanations I’ve seen: https://youtu.be/VIVIegSt81k?si=yRlWlEf2-rEICgtk. And kids love this stuff.
Post reply on HN