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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)

#341

Post by HKH2 »

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…

> What are the good channels that create creative and stimulating videos that are a benefit to humanity.

Kurzgesagt doesn't have daily videos, but it fits that bill.

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

#342

Post by csallen »

renewiltord wrote: post #7

On one side, an army of HN commenters: “Repeat after me. Don’t build on someone else’s platform.” On the other side, Mr Beast: > Your goal here is to make the best YOUTUBE videos possible. That’s the number one goal of this production company. It’s not to make the best produced videos. Not to make the funniest videos. Not to make the best looking videos. Not the highest quality videos.. It’s to make the best YOUTUBE…

Many people are so uncomfortable with risk that they publicly advocate (and personally live by) a policy of taking zero risk. Of course they also throw away the very real benefits that come packaged with many risks.

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

#343

Post by paulcole »

121789 wrote: post #238
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…

What changed your worldview? It was a fine read but it mostly boiled down to project management basics, some format optimizations, and some storytelling basics. I thought it was an interesting behind the scenes look at how seriously they take their “art” but nothing world changing. Which part of the article did that for you?

> What changed your worldview

They’re not saying it changed their worldview. Their point is that if a person is just immediately nitpicking it and dismissing it, then there’s probably something in it that can change their worldview. That person’s project management and storytelling skills probably suck (because most people’s project management and storytelling skills suck).

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

#344

Post by johnfn »

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 think this style of meta commentary is more damaging to any discourse than the behavior that you're saying you've identified. Looking over the top comments, other than yours, I see a good majority of people honestly trying to engage with the content. I'm not exactly sure where you're seeing a "ubiquitous "sour grapes" attitude", but it seems to me that your own post typifies such a description more than the rest of the discussion here.

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

#345

Post by [deleted] »

Timber-6539 wrote: post #322
bwy wrote: post #284

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wonder how many of those "sour grapes" commenters have actually read the thing–my guess, not many. Then on the first page of the "silly little book," where I already have the question: "why should I read this? Why would an employee spend time reading this?" Immediately he addresses that: "if you read this book and pass a quiz I’ll give you $1,000." And if you've seen MrBeast videos, it's not inconceivable that ever…

Basically treats his own employees like his subscribers. "Stay tuned for the $1000 giveaway!". Have you never watched any of Mr Beast's videos? The fact that you made it to his company is enough incentive for you to go through the onboarding document.

[deleted]

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

#346

Post by paulcole »

caseyy wrote: post #313
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…

> But success has different definitions.

Yes, except doesn’t Mr. Beast define the kind of success he’s aiming for in the PDF?

> I do not consider Jimmy successful.

By the definition he set for success or the one you made up?

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

#347

Post by devjab »

Karrot_Kream wrote: post #234
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…

The "sour grapes" attitude has IMO really started crowding out other content. Pretty much any popular content here just has a flood of social signaling content all about how morally wrong, bad, evil, etc the content is. And if you don't want to pile on the commentary, which is all pretty much the same thing regurgitated in different ways, then your content just kinda languishes at the bottom of the page. I don't real…

I think it mostly happened when HN became flooded by Reddit users. One of the reason I think this is because of how HN and Reddits way of dealing with new lines is different. In a lot of the comments on HN that I would consider to be fitting on GPs point you’ll see a format a long the lines of this:

This is the first line of my paragraph.

This is the second line of my paragraph.

They are separated because HN and Reddit formatting is different.

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

#348

Post by whall6 »

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’m fairly certain most of the “sour grapes” comments are AI generated

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

#349

Post by mrmetanoia »

Karrot_Kream wrote: post #234
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…

The "sour grapes" attitude has IMO really started crowding out other content. Pretty much any popular content here just has a flood of social signaling content all about how morally wrong, bad, evil, etc the content is. And if you don't want to pile on the commentary, which is all pretty much the same thing regurgitated in different ways, then your content just kinda languishes at the bottom of the page. I don't real…

This site has a lot of interesting people that did and do interesting "hacker" type things that keep me coming back, but a lot of commenting is people looking to build things of questionable value, legality, or social good and sell them off and gtfo before the cracks show.

Less "Hacker" More "Greed via Computer" So the idea that they aren't bothered by Mr Beast's lack of integrity is because they too find deceit acceptable so long as they profit. Because, someone else before him did, so why shouldn't he? It's toxic greed all the way down in this view.

the bizarre social Darwinism nonsense that permeates the internet has done a nice job of taking this antisocial mindset - passersby at a glance recognize it quite rightly as the ideology of the asshole - and rebranded it as 'smart' and a mere recognition of the 'real world' (much to the confusion of people succeeding and enjoying the company of others doing so without robbing one another)

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

#350

Post by simonw »

caseyy wrote: post #313
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…

In this profile from 2022 Jimmy said his goal was to become the number one YouTube channel: https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-features/mrbeas...

According to this Wikipedia page https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_most-subscribed_YouTub... he finally achieved that goal on June 2, 2024.

So definitely successful by his own chosen metric.

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