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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)

#961

Post by BrenBarn »

laserbeam wrote: post #566
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…

> suddenly everyone playing this game would have to scramble to figure out how to maximize in that environment These people are the best positioned to figure this out. They've been experimenting with youtube changes for years and they already know how to experiment out the particularities.

Of course they're best positioned to figure it out. The question is whether it's a good use of anyone's time to figure out such things, or whether we have a good society if it's one where people think that is a good use of their time. I am best positioned to pick my own nose but I don't think that means there needs to be a manual on how to do so.

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

#962

Post by BrenBarn »

ants_everywhere wrote: post #690
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…

> But, what's the alternative? Personally, I find YouTube to be unusable if you think of it as channel-based. What I do is keep a list of topics and perform a search based on the topics. That pulls in some set of videos, of which maybe about 20-50% are exactly what I want. If the search yields no great results, it's usually because I've gotten the search wrong or the topic isn't well covered on YouTube yet. With the…

Yeah, I sometimes think that the shift to "push content" is the underlying problem here.

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

#963

Post by oulipo »

chii wrote: post #659
oulipo wrote: post #638

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

No it can't, economic success is completely linked with morality when your success is linked to producing tons of CO2, which is going to put our planet, and in particular poorer people, in the shitters

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

#964

Post by oulipo »

meowface wrote: post #792
oulipo wrote: post #638

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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"

If 100% of his watchers were YouTube Premium subscribers and none of them ever saw an ad, would you feel differently?

If people were actively paying for the content, and thus "accepting to be endoctrinated" why not, although I think that all kind of entreprise with such a handbook of "how to make people basically addicted to the shit we build" is bad

People are losing communities, people are losing attention span, and this is because we make people addict to shit like this

And then idiot like Trump manage to take power

We need a society with longer pauses, reflexion, empathy

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

#965

Post by Wolfenstein98k »

marxisttemp wrote: post #793
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…

> Rewarding employees who make value for the business and think like founders/equity owners, not employees. The best way to get employees to think like equity owners is to give them equity. But I guess the name of the game in our times is to somehow expect people with no equity to work even harder for the company than the equity holders do, right? Let me know how that works out.

Pretty well so far

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

#966

Post by Wolfenstein98k »

evilfred wrote: post #736
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…

literally everyone says they only hire A-players. Beast hired someone now accused of sexting with teens. is that an A-player hire?

Unfortunately, the person he'd hired to predict the future was not a A-player.

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

#967

Post by Wolfenstein98k »

FactKnower69 wrote: post #940
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…

>2. Hiring only A-players. Bloated teams kill startups. I love coming on here and seeing the world's wealthiest and savviest tech magnates breathlessly murmuring in awe amongst themselves about such unprecedented tidbits of genius business acumen as "only hire good workers; don't hire bad workers"

He gives clear and actionable definitions, which is what makes it remarkable and different to everyone else saying or implying what you wrote.

You can't strip out the valuable content from a sentence and then claim it was always identical to valueless sentences.

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

#968

Post by Wolfenstein98k »

pests wrote: post #500
geerlingguy wrote: post #298

It's interesting to see the discussion from two different angles—there's a lot of support for the type of A/B/C delineation in parts of this thread, and some people who decry it in other parts. I was on the set for one of the productions, and I'll just say at the time I thought the experience was a one-off for one of the bigger productions they've put on. Since reading other people's stories, it seems more a case whe…

One thing I find interesting over the last few weeks since this was released (and other MrBeast drama) is how there is now a separation between MrBeast the person and MrBeast the company. Before today, it was never differentiated. Since the drama started, I've seen more news and people (like yourself) clarify that you mean the company vs the person, and I'm not sure its warranted. While everything was going good, MrB…

The bigger the company gets, the more separate it becomes from its founder/face/whatever.

Inevitable.

(Although this document clearly sets out that this distinction should be fought at every step, so that counts against what I'm saying. It is trying desperately to ensure the company reflects the man as much as possible)

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

#969

Post by Wolfenstein98k »

jrochkind1 wrote: post #833
slt2021 wrote: post #456

Earlier quoted context omitted.

MrBeast has given up his life for his youtube channel (he writes exactly this in the doc) - and he is looking for other people willing to give up theirs for his channel

Giving up your life for many millions of dollar is a choice. His employees are probably payed well, but obviously don't make as much as he. So I guess asking them to give up their lives for less compensation is to say their lives are or less value...

No, it's to offer them a chance to make a lot of money in exchange for a lot of work.

No one is forced to work there and they are not taken advantage of.

Any of them are free to start their own channel and outcompete him! It's literally how he did it!

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

#970

Post by doix »

JohnMakin wrote: post #854
kspacewalk2 wrote: post #694

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Lawyers finding problems and trying to stop things from happening instead of finding solutions. Sounds like they're doing their jobs, which is to protect your future selves from your current selves. Sure, finding solutions is great, but faulting them from finding problems and slowing things down until solutions are found is odd. Yes, security or IT does sometime have to act as a reality check in an organization that…

See this all the time - for example, zealous dev "if I had production DB read/write I could get things done so much faster." Sure, but the production DB has an incredible amount of PII and we are audited out the wazoo, but even if that weren't the case and it was totally fine, all it takes is you being careless with your credentials one time and the company's hosed or we have a massive breach, or some rogue employee…

In your example, I am not saying you need to give the dev access to prod. But you should be working with the dev to figure out why he needs access to prod and figuring out what needs to happen to make the end goal happen. Getting read/write access to prod isn't the end goal, the dev is trying to accomplish something and they see direct access to prod as the solution.

My point wasn't that lawyers/security/IT/whatever shouldn't do their job. It's that their perspective should be focused on helping the company achieve whatever it's trying to do.

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