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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)

#61

Post by talldayo »

mrkramer wrote: post #12

I respect his dedication and grind....I prefer more YouTube pop culture and YouTubers than TikTok and TikTokers. YouTube is so much better.

Trying to discern whether YouTube or TikTok influencers are better than the other is like picking which tooth you want pulled. Both are so gratingly painful even compared to normal cable television.

I have really no respect for the people that abuse a broken status quo to only improve their own personal standing. The fact that a lot of HNers seem to look up to Mr. Beast is almost as tellingly acerbic as the reliance on Steve Jobs for intelligent business quotes.

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

#62

Post by serjester »

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…

Can you do better?

If 100's of millions of people are watching something, then clearly it has entertainment value.

His management philosophy might rub people the wrong way but it's hard to dispute it's effectiveness. Nor do you have to work there.

His success is all the more impressive given he started with nothing and how competitive the space is.

On some level he's the personification of the youtube algorithm - don't blame him, he's just giving people what they want. On some level this feels like the same outcry parents had to video games in the 90's.

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

#64

Post by doe_eyes »

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…

> The whole modern social media / influencer sphere seems like a huge bubble that will pop eventually.

Before teenagers were looking up to YouTubers, they were looking up to TV celebs, musicians, sports players, and so on. You had entire publishing empires built around following such celebs around and reporting on their private lives.

I don't think this is hugely different. The tech has evolved and the formulas have been perfected, but it's still catering to the same obsessions and urges that we had for a good while.

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

#66

Post by llamaimperative »

jrflowers wrote: post #57
smsm42 wrote: post #10

> “I Spent 50 Hours In Ketchup” > In general the more extreme the better. I may be sounding like "get off my lawn" guy right now but should there be some realization that these people are a cultural analogue of if not heroin than at least cigarettes? They are making a good living from making things objectively worse in a society by tickling the base instincts of the addicts. I am not calling for government interventi…

I like the idea that entertainment made for broad appeal is an existential threat to society worthy of comparison to drugs that kill hundreds of thousands of people per year. People have been appealing to the lowest common denominator for forever and yet the world soldiers on. Your larger question of “why haven’t they made things I don’t personally find appealing illegal yet?” is worthy of exploration, though I don’t…

Meh, we don't know what the counterfactual of a different media environment would be. For example, it seems not-even-crazy to believe that media's addictiveness has played a major role in sedentary lifestyles which in turn is a major contributor to several of the top causes-of-death in the developed world (far greater than drugs).

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

#67

Post by mardifoufs »

juunpp wrote: post #53
smsm42 wrote: post #10

> “I Spent 50 Hours In Ketchup” > In general the more extreme the better. I may be sounding like "get off my lawn" guy right now but should there be some realization that these people are a cultural analogue of if not heroin than at least cigarettes? They are making a good living from making things objectively worse in a society by tickling the base instincts of the addicts. I am not calling for government interventi…

> I am not calling for government intervention or any of such BS Why is this BS? It wouldn't be unheard of to pass stricter age restriction laws so that at least the kids are not so easily exposed to brain damage. Same thing with the drugs you mentioned.

Yes, but there's a difference between drugs and this. The lack of evidence that they are the same or even similar for example.

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

#68

Post by simonw »

pockybum522 wrote: post #63

This reminds me of how every corporation I've ever seen operates. Why is this strange or interesting?

Other corporations seriously have employee handbooks with sentences like this in?

“… instead of starting with his house in the circle that he would live in, we bring it in on a crane 30 seconds into the video. Why? Because who the fuck else on Youtube can do that lol.”

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

#69

Post by ttepasse »

The unwavering fixation on metrics like Click Thru Rate, Average View Duration and Average View Percentage explains why so many of my previous channels get formulaic over time. It sounds like a small thing, but for some reason the thumbnails/titles with the Youtube face enrage me the most.

Thankfully there are still enough channels which are not that optimized.

But I wonder: How would the scene of Youtubers cope, if Youtube suddenly changes its algorithm to something completely different? I remember the tears in SEO-land, when Google did it.

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

#70

Post by bgun »

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 provide a social fix here. Government will need to take note, label, and activate against this at some level. The TikTok ban means we’ve noticed this can be dangerous at least when rival nation-states are involved, but the call is coming from inside the house.

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