MrBeast has become a viral sensation for his acts of altruism

I listened to an interview with him and Lex Friedman a while ago. Interesting discussion. He's very systematic and data driven and that's part of what drives the success of his channel. A lot of what he does is indeed ruthlessly optimized to tap into whatever it is people appreciate across the different social media channel he targets. The guy undeniably has some serious skills and he's built a highly effective revenue engine around the most pointless thing on this planet which is people spending hours looking at whatever big for profit social media companies feed them via their algorithms. It's a big market opportunity to tap into and he's done so effectively.

Instead of getting hung up on what is or isn't altruism, the other point of view here is that he leaves a trail of people that are objectively better off having encountered him. That's advertising money that is spent on worthy causes. Yes, it's self serving. But that money also serves the people he helps. It's an interesting dynamic. Ceasing to do what he does would actually be bad for the people that are on the receiving end of this. So, why should he?

He's found a way to funnel of some of the stupid money slushing around on the social media platforms. There are billions of it. And he's managing to do something more interesting with it than just squirreling it away. Compare that with the average influencer, viral marketing expert, troll farm or other sources of clickbait that are thriving on these platforms. At least this goes somewhere vaguely useful. Good for him and whoever is on the receiving end. And if he pockets some of that, how much worse is that than all the other nonsense on those platforms where most of the publishers just pocket 100% the revenue? I'm not judging that either.

If you are going to watch stuff on Tik Tok, Youtube, or whatever, you might as well watch his. Best case some random people benefit from this, worst case you watch some silly nonsense and are mildly entertained by that. Either way you feel good and nobody is getting hurt. I don't watch this stuff myself but that's just because I have other things to watch that I find more interesting.

MrBeast is exactly the media phenomenon a broken system would come up with in some 80s cyberpunk movie, as a bandaid to give people the illusion of hope: the 'happy hour' show in a boring dystopia.

That is not MrBeasts fault, it's the environment's. Say you see MrBeast give thousands of people help, and you have the same problem as these people - sure, you're happy for the other people but why didn't you get any help? The show is over, you're left alone, your problem is currently not interesting.

Edit: There is also the power gradient in all of this performance that this video[0] highlights well. Nobody can complain about how they're being treated or portrayed, because they are in need. That is taking away something from the people who receive something, this kind of charity treats them as less - they're extras on stage.

[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1LfJ-VxuqIQ

> What have YOU done today?

None of us are in his position to make as much change though. Are we not allowed to criticize someone that has far more power than us for not using it to its full potential?

It's the other way around for Mr. Beast, though. Keanu happens to have a huge load of money from doing other things like acting. And as a side note, he is widely talked about on various internet communities like Reddit and gets a huge amount of respect for being an awesome person. (I see much more about him on the internet than Mr. Beast to be honest -- Mr. Beast is mostly confined to the Youtube world.)

Mr. Beast, on the other hand, uses this charitable content creation model to make money to give away. If you remove the advertising, monetizing, etc., Mr. Beast has nothing to give away. That's the genius of the model.

Whether Mr. Beast is altruistic is the topic of 90% of this HN thread, and yet we'll never be able to answer it without knowing his true internal intentions. IMO, whether he's altruistic is irrelevant. He does so much more good for people than the vast majority of individuals or business that it seems odd to critique it.

To me, it's pretty awesome that someone found a way to hack the (often morally dubious) content creation business model into giving away a vast amount of the ad/sponsor income. Any other creator, that money funds the creator and production of content. And we don't typically complain about that, as long as we get entertaining/educational/artistic content we enjoy. (Some of our capitalist senses might even say it's totally fine to get rich off this model.)

Mr. Beast works within the exact same business model while also giving a huge amount of money away, in a way that a lot of people (though obviously not the HN crowd) enjoy. And yet we're complaining about that use of the content creator business model. But when no money is given away, it's fine?

What are we even critiquing!? I'm not even sure Mr. Beast himself would say that this model is truly altruistic. He has always been very transparent and honest about how it works.

If the things they're doing with that freedom aren't too bad, I don't see why not.