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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)

#431

Post by throw10920 »

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…

> 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.

I've noticed a similar general trend for some kinds of posts. (the more technical ones tend to escape this) The fix is that when you see posts with that kind of social signaling, downvote and flag them.

The downvote is because these posts are always extremely uninteresting, low-effort, and detrimental to HN as a whole.

The flag is because these posts almost always break the HN guidelines in multiple ways, e.g. "Eschew flamebait. Avoid generic tangents. Omit internet tropes.", "Please don't use Hacker News for political or ideological battle.", "Please don't pick the most provocative thing in an article or post to complain about in the thread."

This is one of the few ways that we can continue to avoid HN from turning into Reddit - by self-moderating. Dang seems to take a light touch to moderation and does almost zero curation, so it's up to the users to help keep HN about intellectual curiosity and avoid degenerating into Reddit.

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

#432

Post by Der_Einzige »

__loam wrote: post #235
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 really are condescending to us over Mr.Beast's management style right now. Hackernews is beyond parody.

N-gate died FAR too soon.

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

#433

Post by screye »

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…

Could you elaborate on the takeaways that challenge existing priors ?

The points in the OP boil down to:

* Focus on your product

* Hire well

* Be extra diligent towards bottlenecks

* State your metrics clearly

* Communicate often and immediately

________

These are standard guidelines for running businesses. HN commenters are unimpressed because there are no novel generalizable takeaways from his document.

For a few years, Adam Sandler was producing low-brow schlock that made 100s of millions in the box office. It was effective. It's not clear if there was a takeaway

________

There is 1 takeaway from Mr. Beast that appears generalizable.

Sometimes, for a short duration, you hit gold. During that time, obsessively extract all value you can. Merch, videos, exploitation, what have you. For a solid minute, you're Midas. So touch as many things as you can. Be shameless beyond recognition.

Too often, businesses see their hockey-stick moment as a sign of long term sustainable growth. That's a lie (in expectation). A moment is all it is. Wring out your business for every dollar you can extract, liquidate as much as you can, and bail before you're past the crest of the wave.

I'm confident that Mr. Beast's Youtube stardom will die in a few years. But, he will leave behind a legacy of obsessive extraction that is unlikely to be matched for quite some time.

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

#434

Post by Andrex »

TheAceOfHearts wrote: post #391
gleventhal wrote: post #359

I don't have the energy for an intellectual debate, but personally, I have the sense that Youtube is net bad for the world and the monetization of Youtube has incentivized and amplified mediocrity, stupidity, and social decay. I don't follow or watch Mr Beast videos, but from what I've seen, they are largely driven by a money fetish and as far as "creativity", it feels on par with the more boring "What would you rath…

For as much slop as gets produced on YouTube, I think the high quality educational content more than makes up for it. You can literally look up any subject and find a full blown series on the topic. His huge budgets and willingness to reinvest all the profits into future videos have allowed MrBeast to produce a lot of unique videos which are effectively unmatched by anyone else. Right now they're really the undispute…

Agreed, YouTube is the PBS of the internet. It's free and fast.

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

#435

Post by atomicUpdate »

gzer0 wrote: post #364

This point caught my attention, as my experience has been quite different, though in completely different industries. How does one go about finding genuinely good consultants, in any industry? > "Use Consultants Consultants are literally cheat codes. Need to make the world's largest slice of cake? Start off by calling the person who made the previous world's largest slice of cake lol. He's already done countless test…

Both of the examples in the quote give you the answer: talk to someone that’s actually done it.

It’s always amazing to me how often the person 3 desks over has already solved the same problem, but is never asked how by the next person. Instead, too many people act like they’re the first person to ever attempt whatever they’re working on.

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

#436

Post by jdgoesmarching »

bwy wrote: post #284
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 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…

If you think this is some genius business advice, find the nearest 20 year old marketing major on stimulants and your mind will be blown.

Props to this guy for producing popular content and piecing together some management concepts, but this is so far from anything corporate leaders “need” to read.

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

#437

Post by dclowd9901 »

wrsh07 wrote: post #374
latexr wrote: post #200

> Lot of people critiquing this, but you can't deny the success. You could say that about literally any shady business. Imagine seeing a PDF proving tobacco leaders knew for decades that it caused cancer and saying what you did. Being monetarily successful does not mean you’re good or shouldn’t be criticised.

Ignoring the ethics of Mr Beast, he is producing real videos at an incredibly high volume and they consistently do numbers. None of those videos is easy to make. Sure, it's maybe not great to be so impressed by logistics or supply chain of a tobacco company, but from a business and systems view some of it is interesting

I would be genuinely curious to hear: in your mind, could any system be interesting to you, no matter its ethical basis? Or is there a line, and if so, what is the line to you?

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

#438

Post by TeaBrain »

GlacierFox wrote: post #273
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…

Is it just me or is the way you construct sentences jarring and hard to read? Not sure if it's my dyslexia but I had trouble deciphering the first couple of paragraphs/word jumbles.

It's not you. The entire comment is a disorganized mess of poorly thought out and non-cohesive grammar.

In the section quoted below for example, he starts off by writing about critiques, in which he appears to have immediately grasped for words that aren't suited for the purpose, such as how the nonsensical "personalized to" should have been "focused on". He add the completely unnecessary pseudointellectual "to one extent or another", to make it seem like he is intensely judging ideas. He then says the "social purpose" is "universal" which I'm not following the meaning of at all. I doubt many others are either, but it just seems like another pseudointellectual throwaway. He then follows that with "which is that I felt uncomfortable that reading this might mean I have to re-evaluate my worldview", which is perhaps the most atrociously nonsensical and poorly laid out sentence fragment I've read in a long time. In the part following that, he needed a period before "actually" for it to make sense as he likely intended.

Honestly, it seems like he's just trying to write words as they come to him as if in a heated and rash spoken conversation, in which he has a elevated personal impression of erudition, compared to the people he believes he communicating down to.

"The actual critiques are personalized to the content and, to one extent or another, valid, but the social purpose of the critiques is universal which is that I felt uncomfortable that reading this might mean I have to re-evaluate my worldview and I'm going to dive into the comment section and upvote all the people telling me actually, I don't have to do that."

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

#439

Post by TMWNN »

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…

>on a site you don't pay for (YouTube)

But MrBeast does pay. He pays for it with every video, because YouTube keeps 45% of the ad revenue for it. If he receives ~$300,000 for a video, YouTube has kept another ~$300,000.

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

#440

Post by bsder »

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…

> He's making low value content/the culture of the company is horrible/he's a fraud/it's more luck than skill.

Does this guy know his business? Oh, hell, yes. He clearly knows his business cold. Success always has a significant chunk of luck, but skill is a part of luck, and he clearly demonstrates that skill.

However, just because someone really knows their business and does well at it does not mean we simply give them a complete pass. For example, payday lenders know their business very well yet we still consider them to be exploitative and parasitic.

This guy is super-specializing in explicitly targeting pretty much mostly teenaged males with purely dopamine hit content with very little benefit (if any and possibly a negative effect) to the audience. He is pushing the video equivalent of junk food to an audience with weak, underdeveloped impulse control.

This is going to get pushback, and it absolutely deserves that pushback.

> excuses for why it's not necessary in this instance to re-examine your priors.

Which priors should I reexamine? The fact that he is effectively targeting adolescent males? The fact that YouTube is all consumed with feeding the ad machine and should be forced out of Google? The fact that social media has turned out to be a pox upon our society?

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