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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)

#951

Post by hackernewds »

mightybyte wrote: post #817
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…

> 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. Interesting that you say this regarding YouTube. I've been saying this regarding Twitter for awhile even though I consume quite a bit of YouTube content. However, I've curated my YouTube feed to be almost entirely stuff that is interesting, educational, and t…

IF it were a net good, they'd let me disable Shorts. But they don't.

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

#952

Post by mihaic »

infecto wrote: post #713
mihaic wrote: post #249

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you considered that the sour grapes attitude actually comes from an understanding of the world, and how everything has been turned only into profit maximization? And that the nitpicking is merely a failure to express that understanding of the world, especially since it seems like pro-status quo commenters don't care to learn more? I think I'm one of the sour grapes commenters often, and I've very often tried to…

The phrase "other party is stupid" really stood out to me, and it perfectly illustrates the problem I see. Instead of recognizing that people might have fundamentally different principles, upbringing, culture, or simply not be fully informed on a topic, the first conclusion you jump to is that they are stupid.

Have you read the entire sentence that was from? It listed pretty much what you said as an option until more information is gathered. Sometimes even people's culture/principles keeps them from seeing the truth.

I honestly don't know what you mean here, I hope you can clarify.

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

#953

Post by paulryanrogers »

methods21 wrote: post #868

Reads like a "How to PM" and "Extreme Ownership" rolled into 1 doc. The one area that I'm wondering a bit on is the statement that you need to be working on multiple 'videos' aka projects at 1 time and if your not then your a FAILURE... so whose priority list is "prio" when, lets say, you are working on 5-10 projects? And they all have prios/emergencies etc.... Interesting expectation setting here. And concludes with…

Seems incompatible with a 40h work week.

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

#954

Post by wrsh07 »

ljm wrote: post #602
wrsh07 wrote: post #374

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 think the ethics are important when you're looking not just at Mr Beast's businesses themselves but also their internal culture, especially when squaring it up against the perception of himself he's created as some sort of squeaky clean philanthropic billionaire, particularly among his primarily young fans. Those big charity videos aren't done altruistically, they serve another purpose of deflecting criticism. You…

I actually think this document gives an incredible look at the kind of culture that Jimmy is intentionally cultivating!!

There are lots of startups in SV looking for "cracked engineers" and frankly this sounds a bit like that!

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

#955

Post by wrsh07 »

oulipo wrote: post #636
wrsh07 wrote: post #374

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

You're conflating "efficiency" with "success" Just say he's "efficient" at what he does (descriptive) but not "successful" (value judgment)

Sorry, I'm not sure where I used either term

If you want, I will though: in the document, Jimmy says he wants to create the biggest YouTube channel. By that metric (his own!) he has succeeded.

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

#956

Post by tgsovlerkhgsel »

meowface wrote: post #785
agluszak wrote: post #721

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And the "best YOUTUBE videos possible" are... toxic, useless brainrot? (with occasional for-views philanthropy) These videos are certainly the best in terms of what money they can make... but are they any good for their consumers?

>toxic, useless brainrot I assumed that's what all his videos were for years and hadn't ever watched any (given I am not a child, among other reasons), but I gave one a chance out of curiosity and found myself surprisingly enjoying some of the competition videos. The competitions are often well-designed and adeptly narratively structured.

Notably, many of them are similar formats that you'd find in regular TV, except the MrBeast version puts 10 minutes of content into a 12 minute video, while the TV show would put 5 minutes of content into a 45 minute episode.

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

#957

Post by nl »

talldayo wrote: post #911
gwbas1c wrote: post #846

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> Your goal here is to make the best YOUTUBE videos possible. > Replace "youtube videos" with whatever the company is trying to achieve. I see a lot of unnecessary negative sentiment towards that quote. The quote has no hidden meaning and should be taken on face value: I could easily see an up-and-coming producer work for Mr. Beast, and get sidetracked with making sure that pixels are "perfect." Or a set designer ma…

[flagged]

> "the best" video you can make is probably porn that's softcore enough to not trip the monetization or age restriction gates

Since Mr Beast has some of the highest repeatable viewerships on YouTube I think there's some evidence that is wrong.

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

#958

Post by Wolfenstein98k »

talldayo wrote: post #911
gwbas1c wrote: post #846

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> Your goal here is to make the best YOUTUBE videos possible. > Replace "youtube videos" with whatever the company is trying to achieve. I see a lot of unnecessary negative sentiment towards that quote. The quote has no hidden meaning and should be taken on face value: I could easily see an up-and-coming producer work for Mr. Beast, and get sidetracked with making sure that pixels are "perfect." Or a set designer ma…

[flagged]

The "best YouTube" video is not whatever you think it is, but rather what it is.

You can go see what are the most watched videos. How many are softcore porn?

(Let's exclude music videos because they have always included that at times, and popularity tends to run with the audio first)

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

#959

Post by BrenBarn »

bawolff wrote: post #578
BrenBarn wrote: post #559

Some people have alluded to this, but I find it sad that so much energy in our modern society goes towards trying to exploit arbitrary particularities of arbitrary platforms. Even if we set aside the stuff like "you're taking a risk building on YouTube because they could ban you", there's the more practical stuff about how the plan is all about the title and thumbnail. Like if YouTube somehow switched to letting you…

I don't feel this is that different from software eng jobs. We A/B test things to death just to get tiny metrics improvements. Sometimes i feel like we shit on youtube creators because it seems like what they do is silly or frivolous. But is that last software feature you worked on that nobody is ever going to use but is needed to check a box so marketing can say we meet some standard so that we can sell the product…

> I don't feel this is that different from software eng jobs. We A/B test things to death just to get tiny metrics improvements.

Yes, that is also sad.

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

#960

Post by BrenBarn »

nobrains wrote: post #576
BrenBarn wrote: post #559

Some people have alluded to this, but I find it sad that so much energy in our modern society goes towards trying to exploit arbitrary particularities of arbitrary platforms. Even if we set aside the stuff like "you're taking a risk building on YouTube because they could ban you", there's the more practical stuff about how the plan is all about the title and thumbnail. Like if YouTube somehow switched to letting you…

What is the alternative? Don't do the above, and hence not get the views, and hence not be able to sustain what you wanted to build.

But my point is it's not clear they "want to build" anything. There is no intrinsic goal.
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