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MrBeast has become a viral sensation for his acts of altruism

nytimes.com

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Re: MrBeast has become a viral sensation for his acts of altruism

#291

Post by balaji1 »

guyzero wrote: post #210
Dig1t wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Man this is such a cynical take. I listened to his interview on the Joe Rogan show and was really impressed. Mr. Beast built his channel by taking all profits from each video and plying it into the next video. Using this approach he was able to produce progressively larger and more expensive videos. He has demonstrated his frugal lifestyle, has publicly given away an incredible amount of money to good causes, and has…

"Mr. Beast built his channel by taking all profits from each video and plying it into the next video" To me this seems like a semi-obvious minmaxing solution to making popular videos: make essentially zero profit, regardless of revenue. At some point you get so much revenue that you can't spend it all so the next logical step is to simply give it away as part of the video. And in this case it's a virtuous cycle - app…

If not structural changes, does Mr. Beast continue to donate every month to some fixed cause(s)?

AFAIK they do food donation drives regularly (or something similar) and probably supports other causes consistently. Those come from a place of passion, vision and commitment. Otherwise the YT videos are good execution to serve the audience and sponsors.

Tbh I haven't been tempted to watch his videos. Like many other commenters, I find something is off

Re: MrBeast has become a viral sensation for his acts of altruism

#292

Post by dmarchand90 »

fragsworth wrote: post #247
dmarchand90 wrote: post #242

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I thought he was cool until he launched a chocolate line. Really? Is that what we need? Most of his audience is young gen z, and I'm sure the last thing the most obese generation ever needs is someone pushing more sugar on their diets

Are you joking? I can't really tell. Chocolate? Do you think girl scouts are scumbags too?

Girl scouts are children selling sugars to adults. Mr beast is an adult who sells sugar to children.

Anyway, I don't think he's a scumbag. I think he's a nice guy and I'm sure I would be his friend if we took the same pottery course or whatever. I just don't think trying to "cram one more treat into America's already bloated snack hole"[1] is very 'cool'.

[1] Simpsons, season 8, episode 164, The Twisted World of Marge Simpson

Re: MrBeast has become a viral sensation for his acts of altruism

#293

Post by jazzyjackson »

chimen wrote: post #80

It's not altruism if it's your source of income. Sorry but I don't buy this bs. He's doing it to generate income, that's all. Altruism is "unselfish regard for or devotion to the welfare of others" but we have quite the opposite here - a selfish way of milking poor people for emotions in order to generate income. Real altruism is hard and done only by a few. Literally EVERY man/woman/child on this planet will say yes…

> a selfish way of milking poor people for emotions in order to generate income.

Monsters, Inc. comes to mind! In that movie they are scaring children, bottling their screams as energy and selling it as a commodity. The happy ending is our protagonists stumbling upon the fact that laughter is a much better source of energy than screams, and so the staff of monsters become slapstick comedians for children everywhere.

YouTube managed to become the boring-dystopia middle-ground where they make money off both.

Re: MrBeast has become a viral sensation for his acts of altruism

#294

Post by chaostheory »

pavlov wrote: post #133
chasd00 wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Now imagine a government that helps people with no strings attached, without making them feel like shit about needing help, and no cameras pointed at their face either. Who says it can’t be done? All of history so far.

There are a lot of things in our modern societies that would seem impossible or magical to someone from just a few hundred years ago. Why assume this is the best we can do, when so much progress was accomplished already?

Because you’re centralizing power. The more you centralize power, the more you increase the spread and power of corruption. This is why it always fails including with the system we have now. The difference is that in socialism, power is centralized from the start which is why it fails faster and why it takes longer for capitalist systems to fail compared to their socialist counterparts.

Re: MrBeast has become a viral sensation for his acts of altruism

#295

Post by bemmu »

xrd wrote: post #4

My kids love Mr Beast. I'm uncomfortable with it and can't put my finger on it. It feels like he makes life look like you stand a good chance of having someone walk in and give you $100,000. Maybe there is no harm in thinking that? But it feels like the same thing as buying a lottery ticket. I guess YouTube is free? But is the time spent on that channel worth it over doing other things? I admire the approach he takes…

His videos are fun and well-edited. It’s usually superior entertainment to a random Netflix show. That’s enough for me. I also really enjoy how his feedback loop has resulted in the videos gradually having reached absurd scales.

Re: MrBeast has become a viral sensation for his acts of altruism

#296

Post by noahtallen »

0x0203 wrote: post #233
dharmab wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They do it because it measurably improves viewership. Linus Tech Tips made a video about why they started doing it. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=DzRGBAUz5mA&pp=ygUMbHR0IHRodW5...

I suspect that so many do it because it's so often repeated and taught that it works; but they figured out it works when looking at the whole of youtube videos, which percentage wise, is mostly targeted to a younger, less mature audience, and the content is made to match. When a channel's target audience is a similar demographic to the "average youtube viewer," it works very well. But I'd wager it doesn't work very w…

> I'd love to know if the people that measured and promote these bright, astonished-face, click-bait thumbnails ever bothered to test their effectiveness with different target demographics

They have bothered to test the effectiveness, and found that clickbait does work. (You'll sometimes see a video title change over time as creators try to find a title that drives more engagement.) The reality is that whatever gets more views or engagement is more valuable to creators -- target audience really doesn't matter.

In this world, most of the money you get is from sponsorships and YouTube ad share, which requires raw views. (Something the "intended audience" doesn't care about!) For a creator trying to make money, the "intended audience" is whoever watches your videos. Does it matter to the creator if the "intended audience" is kept away when the creator ultimately makes more money by boosting views through clickbait?

Re: MrBeast has become a viral sensation for his acts of altruism

#297

Post by jazzyjackson »

chimen wrote: post #277
Invictus0 wrote: post #244

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Terrible fucking take that could only come from HN. How many cataract surgeries have you funded? How many pounds of trash have you cleaned up from the ocean? Let's hear what a big impact you're having if Mr. Beast's impact is 0.

If you give me millions of dollars for it? I could clean tons of trash yes, or fund a lot of cataract surgeries. I can found hundreds of thousands if by the end of the year I'm left with more money than I started. Awesome idea.

Ya, point is Mr Beast bootstrapped the revenue to be able to perform acts of charity.

Re: MrBeast has become a viral sensation for his acts of altruism

#298

Post by DirkH »

ta8903 wrote: post #125
Timber-6539 wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Despite what you've been taught, every act of charity comes from a selfish need (ego). Whether that is predatory or not from the standpoint of the donor, I'll leave that up to you to decide. And to be clear, his acts of charity have made an impact in the people who have benefited from it. Whether the public response is positive or negative is besides the point.

>Despite what you've been taught, every act of charity comes from a selfish need (ego). True. Which is why a lot of people recognize this and perform acts of charity anonymously. I don't mean to say there is anything wrong with non-anonymous donations by the way.

I'd much rather perform my acts of charity publicly for the same reason I like open source coding: to get feedback so I can do it better.

Anonymous charity is more often than not even more a road towards satisfying a selfish need. It elevates the sense that what you're doing is more just because it is anonymous so "surely I can't be doing it to make a show of it" except this perverse thinking often leads to elevating one's own desire to feel righteous above, y'know... Actual proof that the charity works and does any good. Doing it anonymously also means you avoid any criticism so you get to safeguard the selfish narrative in your head that you're a good person because nobody can point out any flaws in your charity acts.

I'd trust someone who is public about their altruism and opens it to criticism any day of the week more than someone who hides it. I trust people who are public about their charity and respond and change based on valid criticism the most.

Re: MrBeast has become a viral sensation for his acts of altruism

#299

Post by oreally »

radar1310 wrote: post #275
guyzero wrote: post #210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Mr. Beast built his channel by taking all profits from each video and plying it into the next video" To me this seems like a semi-obvious minmaxing solution to making popular videos: make essentially zero profit, regardless of revenue. At some point you get so much revenue that you can't spend it all so the next logical step is to simply give it away as part of the video. And in this case it's a virtuous cycle - app…

[flagged]

Can't blame them entirely. Competition drives down costs, and the cost is very close to free (or some of your data), or else it's some whale indirectly paying for others. Richer get richer, and some are shocked when they are priced out of big ticket items.

Re: MrBeast has become a viral sensation for his acts of altruism

#300

Post by throwaway2990 »

dmarchand90 wrote: post #292
fragsworth wrote: post #247

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you joking? I can't really tell. Chocolate? Do you think girl scouts are scumbags too?

Girl scouts are children selling sugars to adults. Mr beast is an adult who sells sugar to children. Anyway, I don't think he's a scumbag. I think he's a nice guy and I'm sure I would be his friend if we took the same pottery course or whatever. I just don't think trying to "cram one more treat into America's already bloated snack hole"[1] is very 'cool'. [1] Simpsons, season 8, episode 164, The Twisted World of Marg…

Kids buy chocolate regardless of mr beast. His chocolate is considered one of the more healthier options. And parents buy it. Not kids.
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