On Mr. Beast and being alone in a circle for 100 days • Hacker News Board

Re: On Mr. Beast and being alone in a circle for 100 days

#161

Post by randac » Thu, Sep 29, 2022, 1:07 PM UTC

mattbrewsbytes wrote: post #61

Many people are ignoring some interesting aspects of Mr. Beasts business and instead are focusing on the content which is mostly attention grabbing, silly, ridiculous game show premises. The content isn't for me or likely many HNers but I see similarities with startups and his business model. From watching a couple of interviews, things I've picked up - when his youtube videos were grossing $20-30k a month he started…

This is similar to the Rogan interview, but I figured I'd mention it here too.

MrBeast was just on Flagrant with Andrew Schulz for 4 hours, a day or so ago: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WGrk7Mzm4uo

This was also an interesting and fun interview which I expected to skip over fairly quickly but ended up listening to in the entirety. Some discussion over how you would lose something like 3% of viewers if somebody sneezed, went to the toilet, and so on.. Other things to avoid, like any signalling that the video is winding down will lose you a huge chunk of viewers instantly.

Re: On Mr. Beast and being alone in a circle for 100 days

#162

Post by wruza » Thu, Sep 29, 2022, 1:08 PM UTC

M4v3R wrote: post #115

sweetheart wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The author wants to live in a world where everyone gets everything at no cost: that isn't even admiribale, it's childish. Why is it childish to want a life in which you don’t need to labor to have everything you need to be happy? It’s childish to think that human beings are born worthy of a happy peaceful safe life? Why do we need to earn those things? Are they not inherent within us?

Because at the end of the day you need to obtain food, clothing, shelter and other necessities to even survive to the next day, not even mentioning doing anything for pleasure. Either through labor of your own, or by doing labor to earn money to buy these for you possibly your family. Thinking that "human beings are born worthy of a happy peaceful safe life" is childish - the world doesn't owe us anything, and if we…

There is no shortage of ways to devalue labor though. We all know people who work and would be not rich but prosperous enough, if not the economy system they live in held them hostage. Arguing that income disparity is their fault is neither humane nor logical. Childish is an expectation that people must spend their childhood, teen age or adult mental health on learning hard how to dig themselves out of a pit that they never had a choice not to be born into, when your favorite system at some point makes it adequate for them to present you a knife and to ask for your wallet to just survive, or to participate in a humiliating activity if they have no courage to do the former. It’s up to us to decide how it all should work, not to some trivial natural limitations.

Re: On Mr. Beast and being alone in a circle for 100 days

#163

Post by sumedh » Thu, Sep 29, 2022, 1:09 PM UTC

CaptArmchair wrote: post #146

sumedh wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Mr Beast offers little if any critical reflection about the systems that create wealth inequality Why should he?

For the exact same reason why we teach little kids to throw their litter in the garbage bin instead of the ground, and hope that it will stick into adulthood: a range of values and ideas that display a due sense of caring and compassion.

> and hope that it will stick into adulthood

Littering is often a criminal offense in many places and/or you have to pay a fine so you are comparing apples and oranges here.

Re: On Mr. Beast and being alone in a circle for 100 days

#164

Post by sumedh » Thu, Sep 29, 2022, 1:09 PM UTC

mcv wrote: post #147

sumedh wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Mr Beast offers little if any critical reflection about the systems that create wealth inequality Why should he?

Everyone should, but he seems to be particularly in a position to do so.

> Everyone should,

Why though?

Re: On Mr. Beast and being alone in a circle for 100 days

#165

Post by astura » Thu, Sep 29, 2022, 1:11 PM UTC

antasvara wrote: post #92

mdrzn wrote: post #33

"It’s terrifying that a man spent one hundred days in a small circle in an empty field. It’s even more terrifying that this is solely at the whims of a single former Minecraft YouTube creator who happened to find the perfect niche to build a platform and happens to have a perfect sense for what his millions of anonymous viewers want from a video." Cannot agree less on this take. There's dozen of interviews with Jimmy…

Some people fundamentally have an issue with the idea of making money off of what essentially amounts to embarrassment or (depending on the challenge) light mental torture. Mr. Beast's motives are irrelevant if that's the belief you're operating under.

In that case singling out Mr. Beast makes no sense, there's reality TV shows which are much more extreme in embarrassment and torture than any Mr. Beast video.

Re: On Mr. Beast and being alone in a circle for 100 days

#166

Post by astura » Thu, Sep 29, 2022, 1:17 PM UTC

6stringmerc wrote: post #54

It’s right there in the name - Mr. Beast. I wouldn’t seek out a personal trainer who chooses the name Mr. Hyde personally. Play stupid games, win stupid prizes - the $500k isn’t stupid, but the psychological effects are forever. Hope some of that money got earmarked for therapy and counseling! Not kidding, I am an advocate for CBT and I’m pretty sure this situation is pretty similar to stories where lottery winners e…

LMAO, this stunt is a lot less psychologically damaging than my first job I worked as a teenager for $6.15/hr. At that job people lobbed personal insults at my daily, I was treated like human garbage, I was touched inappropriately many times, and I was always getting a raise "next week."

Get over yourself.

Re: On Mr. Beast and being alone in a circle for 100 days

#167

Post by mattbrewsbytes » Thu, Sep 29, 2022, 1:20 PM UTC

GameOfFrowns wrote: post #131

mattbrewsbytes wrote: post #61

Many people are ignoring some interesting aspects of Mr. Beasts business and instead are focusing on the content which is mostly attention grabbing, silly, ridiculous game show premises. The content isn't for me or likely many HNers but I see similarities with startups and his business model. From watching a couple of interviews, things I've picked up - when his youtube videos were grossing $20-30k a month he started…

Quoted post unavailable.

I'm not defending him but am curious what cultural values you're observing?

I see a guy that basically operates like a game show host but also does things like TeamSeas, cleaning 30 million pounds of trash out of seas/oceans.

Re: On Mr. Beast and being alone in a circle for 100 days

#168

Post by gjulianm » Thu, Sep 29, 2022, 1:23 PM UTC

prepend wrote: post #73

gjulianm wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While I'm no fan of him, I think you might be too harsh. > is to imagine he’d given them the money up front and told them that to leave his enter-torture-ment they have to pay up a ransom matching the initial gift. People enter those challenges fully knowing how they're going to go. It's random, rules don't matter, you might get money you don't expect or not get money you expected. The point at which they get the mon…

> People enter those challenges fully knowing how they're going to go. People who have financial need aren’t able to clearly decline and have agency over their decision. Asking someone who supports a family if they will degrade themselves for $500k if not really a fair question and people will say yes. It’s like saying that people who blow their boss do it knowing fully well what they’re getting into. There is a powe…

> People who have financial need aren’t able to clearly decline and have agency over their decision. Asking someone who supports a family if they will degrade themselves for $500k if not really a fair question and people will say yes.

Except that this isn't targeting people who have financial need. At the prices we're talking about, quite a lot of people will find it a good deal. And "degrading" might be a strong word, maybe the being alone in a circle for 100 days is pushing it, but from what I've seen (which is not too much) it's mostly games and small challenges.

> It’s like saying that people who blow their boss do it knowing fully well what they’re getting into. There is a power imbalance so even perceived consent isn’t really consent because of the leverage and greater power of one party.

Well, applying that strict line of thought, you can argue that people can't really consent to having a job, or playing the lottery, or betting on a game because there is a power imbalance and greater power of one party.

For a more practical approach, the useful thing is to look at how many people can realistically reject the offer if they don't want to do it. In the case of "blowing your boss", rejecting the offer means losing a job you might need to survive. In the videos case, rejecting means just not getting the money, it'd be similar as offering lottery tickets specially given how the participants seem to be random subscribers.

Re: On Mr. Beast and being alone in a circle for 100 days

#169

Post by Karsteski » Thu, Sep 29, 2022, 1:23 PM UTC

mihaic wrote: post #152

I think one thing most posts saying "he optimizes for the algorithm" ignore is that content also slowly influences our desired and our culture. It's all a gigantic and relatively slow-moving feedback loop, where content influences culture and desires, which again influences content. MrBeast's videos I find particularly damaging to culture, since it's incredibly dehumanizing and stripped of any nuance of the labor/val…

> It's sad that I've become less and less confident that people can be trusted with what they consume -- food, content, anything.

Can you elaborate more on what you mean by this?

Re: On Mr. Beast and being alone in a circle for 100 days

#170

Post by jerojero » Thu, Sep 29, 2022, 1:25 PM UTC

flerchin wrote: post #141

sweetheart wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The author wants to live in a world where everyone gets everything at no cost: that isn't even admiribale, it's childish. Why is it childish to want a life in which you don’t need to labor to have everything you need to be happy? It’s childish to think that human beings are born worthy of a happy peaceful safe life? Why do we need to earn those things? Are they not inherent within us?

The folks working on farms, few though they are in the modern world, deserve compensation. What will the people not working on the farm do to deserve the fruits of their labor? Whatever it will be, will be work. Same for the folks building houses, and all the rest of modern infrastructure that we depend upon to live.

I don't think anyone is saying we shouldn't compensate people doing labour that is required. I think the problem is that we don't really have a societal model that is doing its hardest to cover these needs first before other ones.

If we used the money we spend on, say, entertainment or high-end mobile phone industry on R&D regarding farms and food yield and distribution we might see lots more advancements in this area. But that's not really something that is desirable in our modern economies; for people in the USA and most of the developed world we don't really need to invest any more in solving hunger because we are really not hungry anymore. And the ones that are hungry we don't really acknowledge as a big problem, although they exist.

Housing on the other hand, it's really interesting to think of this problem because acquiring a house has gotten much more difficult even though our capabilities to build houses have increased so much. This seems to be a problem in how we are deciding the prices of houses rather than a pure "we need to pay for materials and construction costs".

So although these people deserve to be compensated, we are in no way paying the "right" prices. I reckon for food we are actually paying less money than we should be paying for some products (counting externalities that are derived from our current methods of production) and for housing we are paying more than the actual material and labour cost of the construction. All in all, it seems prices and cost of living is kind of whacky in modern societies.