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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)

#651

Post by barrkel »

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.

Read the second paragraph as if it's paraphrasing the people he's pointing at in the first paragraph.

I found it quite clear. But then I agreed with it.

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

#652

Post by lionkor »

seydor wrote: post #618
phito wrote: post #593

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's just fast food content.

except it doesnt even feed you

Arguably neither does fast food - it gives you energy, but it's also quite bad for your health and your wallet. So, it feeds you, sure, but the negatives likely far outweigh the positives.

If you've ever cooked meals for multiple days with just some ground beef, cabbage and some lettuce and friends for ~10 bucks per day, you'll see how crazy expensive a $20 fast food ""meal"" is.

So this is fast food content, because it does entertain, but you could do many things to get good entertainment and also not consume absolute slop.

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

#653

Post by robertlagrant »

oulipo wrote: post #638
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…

A lot of people here (and in tech in general) are conflating "being efficient" with "having success"... that's clearly because people in tech generally value efficiency but we have to take a step back collectively and understand that "being efficient at producing addictive video for teens to sell ads for shit they don't need" is BAD, not a "success"

> that's clearly because people in tech generally value efficiency

I think this is you reading this into the comment. They don't mention efficiency.

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

#654

Post by reichstein »

oulipo wrote: post #635
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.

Exactly!! we need to stop conflating "efficiency" with "success" Being efficient at destroying the planet is NOT success If anything we need to go slower and gentler (environmentally, socially, economically), not "faster"

"Success" is to achieve the intended goal, without causing new problems that outweigh the benefit of reaching that goal.

Reaching the goal is not a moral measurement, it is all about efficiency. If you don't reach the goal, your efficiency is zero. The moral question is what new problems are acceptable. That's where reasonable people can disagree.

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

#655

Post by barrkel »

TeaBrain wrote: post #438
GlacierFox wrote: post #273

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 e…

Personalized to doesn't mean focused on; it means subjective and relative to the critic.

The "social purpose of the critiques is universal" is saying that, in opposition to the disparate and varied, personalized, nature of the specific critiques, their social purpose is all the same.

This universal purpose is saying "I felt uncomfortable ... might have to re-evaluate world view ... I'll upvote all the detractors".

> elevated personal impression of erudition

This is ironic, I have to say.

Anyhow, I found it easy to read the comment. It does flow a bit like stream of consciousness, but it's comprehensible, probably in part because I agree with a good amount of it. You shouldn't expect polished prose in comment forums on the interwebs.

If you felt that it talked down to you (personalized), then perhaps evaluate the social purpose of your own comment (did you feel uncomfortable? I got the impression you did).

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

#656

Post by arder »

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…

Mr Beast videos do single digit millions in revenue per video, and he operates on razor thin margins re-investing everything. Youtube does $8.5Bn a quarter in revenue. For startups the target is the Youtube exit, not the Mr Beast exit. In fact, whilst Mr Beast is obviously doing a great job and making tonnes of money it's not clear if he even ever could exit. What Mr Beast is doing is incredibly successful, but it's not the silicon valley start up model.

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

#657

Post by CaptainFever »

bnralt wrote: post #622
tpmoney wrote: post #250

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What I find interesting in reading this is that it's not particularly surprising in content. And I don't mean that I expected some hugely toxic culture from a youtube company and found it. I mean that the whole document is largely pretty standard "how to make it in a competitive industry" advice. The tone might be a little unprofessional for folks who are used to big corporate talk, but if you'd leaked internal Micro…

That's the same impression I got. It's odd seeing the discussion veer off into morality, because most of it seems to be standard and non-problematic advice (IE, understanding what your product is and don't get distracted by focusing on what it's not). And though the advice isn't particularly novel, it was worth reading since a surprisingly large amount of people don't do these simple things.

My uncharitable guess is that a lot of people here talking about the morality of his videos (not the company culture) are mostly parents bitter about their child watching Mr Beast and wanting Feastables.

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

#658

Post by cnity »

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…

This is why those who can appropriately select good information will flourish in this age. I still suck at it (get pulled into mindnumbing shorts for 30 minutes), but then I learned a new musical instrument for _free_ using YouTube.

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

#659

Post by chii »

oulipo wrote: post #638
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…

A lot of people here (and in tech in general) are conflating "being efficient" with "having success"... that's clearly because people in tech generally value efficiency but we have to take a step back collectively and understand that "being efficient at producing addictive video for teens to sell ads for shit they don't need" is BAD, not a "success"

> is BAD, not a "success"

that is your moral view or value. It is not a universal value.

Economic success is indeed a thing, and it can be discussed separately from moralityl.

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

#660

Post by [deleted] »

RobotToaster wrote: post #620
nine_k wrote: post #503

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Imagine that our bitter enemies invented a superior logistics tool, known as the wheel. Should we even consider adopting it, given its clearly ethically unacceptable origins? If you think that this is an entirely artificial example, consider the fact that the same man designed the V-2 rockets which were hitting London during WWII, and the Saturn-5 rockets which brought astronauts to Moon: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/w…

"Once the rockets are up, who cares where they come down? That's not my department, " says Wernher von Braun.

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