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How to succeed in MrBeast production (Leaked PDF)

simonwillison.net

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

#311

Post by the_gorilla »

shalmanese wrote: post #217

One distressing trend I've noticed becoming ubiquitous on HN is that any writing that is confronting to a consensus worldview becomes flooded with highly upvoted comments that are, in essence, excuses for why it's not necessary in this instance to re-examine your priors. He's making low value content/the culture of the company is horrible/he's a fraud/it's more luck than skill. The actual critiques are personalized t…

I can tell everyone here has something in mind that they're all talking about, but don't want to say specifically what it is. I definitely agree that if you make any sort of substantial post, you're going to get a million low effort replies nitpicking small details. If you try to respond to all of them, you'll either run out of posts or lose your mind. Most of the time people just pick one small detail, post something completely incorrect or unrelated, and move onto the next headline post to respond to.

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

#312

Post by [deleted] »

shalmanese wrote: post #217

One distressing trend I've noticed becoming ubiquitous on HN is that any writing that is confronting to a consensus worldview becomes flooded with highly upvoted comments that are, in essence, excuses for why it's not necessary in this instance to re-examine your priors. He's making low value content/the culture of the company is horrible/he's a fraud/it's more luck than skill. The actual critiques are personalized t…

[deleted]

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

#313

Post by caseyy »

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…

> can't deny the success

I don’t disagree that there is some value in this knowledge. But success has different definitions.

I do not consider Jimmy successful. In relation to classical virtues, he hasn’t truly lived up to many. That would be success to me.

He is popular and his business is rich. Some people consider that success, but not all. Not even in business and start-up circles.

Edit: some people below (quite remarkably) miss the point despite me having spelled it out — “success has different definitions”. Somehow they have convinced themselves I said that Jimmy has my definition of success, or that he is not successful by his own definition. I think everyone who wants to understand what I am saying does. If not, I repeat one more time — there is more than one way to measure success. Which is correct or not correct — I do not prescribe. That is all :)

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

#314

Post by guywithahat »

calmbonsai wrote: post #269
shalmanese wrote: post #217

One distressing trend I've noticed becoming ubiquitous on HN is that any writing that is confronting to a consensus worldview becomes flooded with highly upvoted comments that are, in essence, excuses for why it's not necessary in this instance to re-examine your priors. He's making low value content/the culture of the company is horrible/he's a fraud/it's more luck than skill. The actual critiques are personalized t…

Um well, Mr. Beast IS a fraud (do a casual search), the content is crass, exploitative, and it's perfectly reasonable to critique a person when they have a personalized brand. This is no different than what's done in ANY entertainment media contract negotiation that takes place with "on-air talent".

I realize this is semantics but he’s not a fraud, because he delivers on the things he says. If he didn’t spend 48 hours (or however long) underground that would make him a fraud, but he did. The content might be of dubious quality, but it’s not fraudulent

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

#315

Post by nitwit005 »

bgun wrote: post #70
hypeatei wrote: post #6

So 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…

The flavor of the cotent is a bit different, but all media is like that. Look at a horror film, or romance novel. It's very clear what human urges/interests are being targetted.

Part of his strategy is copying TV. He famously made a Squid Game episode.

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

#316

Post by dayvid »

paulryanrogers wrote: post #221
dayvid wrote: post #78

This is actually a really good document for someone who is a junior or assistant. I've worked a variety of jobs and didn't get much documents on training like this, mostly compliance stuff. You could take a lot of it out and get good points on managing people and taking ownership for tasks. It seems redundant or basic, but a lot of these things aren't explicitly mentioned, usually informally only.

It is nice to see the red flags in writing ahead of time. After all "boys will be boys"

That’s there, but the parts about taking responsibility for your work, keeping people you delegate work to accountable and negotiating with vendors and being persistent is stuff you usually get informally.

I also find those signs that it’s a more honest document. Most things publicly available are so neutered there’s not much useful grey info

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

#317

Post by snowwrestler »

shalmanese wrote: post #217

One distressing trend I've noticed becoming ubiquitous on HN is that any writing that is confronting to a consensus worldview becomes flooded with highly upvoted comments that are, in essence, excuses for why it's not necessary in this instance to re-examine your priors. He's making low value content/the culture of the company is horrible/he's a fraud/it's more luck than skill. The actual critiques are personalized t…

You’re not engaging with the linked content either, you just picked this thread to pose a general complaint about conversations on HN.

Be the change you want to see! Post your thoughts on the Mr Beast doc as a reply to your first comment and see how it goes.

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

#318

Post by kumarvvr »

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…

Success, but at what cost is more important, for those who are evaluating success.

A coal power plant may be enormously successful. But its costs to climate are equally important.

We often fail to talk about the other side of the coin.

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

#319

Post by matheusmoreira »

analog31 wrote: post #293
shalmanese wrote: post #217

One distressing trend I've noticed becoming ubiquitous on HN is that any writing that is confronting to a consensus worldview becomes flooded with highly upvoted comments that are, in essence, excuses for why it's not necessary in this instance to re-examine your priors. He's making low value content/the culture of the company is horrible/he's a fraud/it's more luck than skill. The actual critiques are personalized t…

I have a hypothesis, that once a thread has more than N comments, a sub-comment under the top comment is more likely to stay close to the top of the page, than the same thought expressed in its own top comment. And certainly more likely to be seen than any new thread. Or, people are just more likely to see something closer to the top, that inspires them to comment. Therefore, the top comment in a top page thread is i…

> I don't know of an antidote to this

Display comments in random order. Then it becomes possible to add a top level comment and have it not disappear forever into the bottom of the page, forever unseen.

Alternatively, comment as quickly as possible. Ideally, be the first person to comment. Just comment your general thoughts and then fill in everything you wanted to say over a series of edits while simultaneously improving the comment's logic, grammar and spelling. This one goes all the way back to stackoverflow. It's a habit I have never been able to shake to this day because of how active I used to be on that site. Probably contributed to my account getting rate limited here.

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

#320

Post by bigger_cheese »

smsm42 wrote: post #152
smcl wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I would say it depends a lot on environment the children are raised in, I grew up in the 90's my family had one television set in the house (in our families living room) and it was only turned on if someone was watching a program. There was a tv guide which you would consult, if there was nothing you were interested in then tv would never get turned on. My Dad in particular would get annoyed at what he saw as "needlessly flicking between channels".

I can remember visiting friends houses where there would be multiple television sets (including tv sets in bedrooms) and television would always be turned on, even if no one was watching it. It was like a constant low level background noise. I found it strange but it was normal to them, they were used to eating dinner or playing with legos etc with tv constantly on in the background.

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