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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)

#991

Post by dredmorbius »

Der_Einzige wrote: post #427
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…

No one is going to be happy about what I'm about to point out, but reap what you sow HN. This is directly and fully as a result of 1. the current (terrible) set of rules and 2. Dang being a moderator (and this communities unending fawning over his moderation) Fix both of these, and HN would have far fewer issues related to what you are describing. All other explanations of this phenomenon which don't talk about the a…

Which HN discussion guidelines would you change (add, remove, modify), and what about dang's moderation gives you concern?

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

#992

Post by dredmorbius »

Andrex wrote: post #434
TheAceOfHearts wrote: post #391

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

PBS is not, at least nominally, advertising-supported.

YouTube very much is.

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

#993

Post by jviotti »

I Googled a bit (I'm not a consumer of these types of YouTube videos) and apparently this guy is pretty rich by now. He identified a path to wealth that clearly works and exploited it well, so he is definitely smart. Well deserved from that point of view.

However, it makes me sad that we as a society even let what he does (a zero-net as many pointed out) be a path to wealth on the first place. The fact that we reward so much something that is so void of value is our fault and IMHO what needs to be corrected somehow. It's sad to think we throw so much money at people covered by ketchup, but many PhD's barely make any money and we cannot figure out how to make open-source sustainable.

If our reward schemes were more aligned with actually providing value to society, this guy might have applied his intelligence and amassed his wealth doing something more worthwhile for everybody.

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

#994

Post by sumedh »

wahnfrieden wrote: post #176
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…

There’s a difference between writing down that you hire A-players in a document, and hiring the unqualified personal friends that he does in practice for all kinds of production roles

> and hiring the unqualified personal friends that he does in practice for all kinds of production roles

How do you know they are unqualified?

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

#995

Post by ViktorRay »

jviotti wrote: post #993

I Googled a bit (I'm not a consumer of these types of YouTube videos) and apparently this guy is pretty rich by now. He identified a path to wealth that clearly works and exploited it well, so he is definitely smart. Well deserved from that point of view. However, it makes me sad that we as a society even let what he does (a zero-net as many pointed out) be a path to wealth on the first place. The fact that we reward…

I disagree with you.

Mr Beasts YouTube videos make significant amounts of ad revenue. Some of that money goes to YouTube. But there is nothing wrong with having most of that money go to the creator of the videos.

You can apply this logic to other forms of entertainment too. You can say LeBron James or Michael Jordan just play basketball. But their basketball games generated enormous ad revenue. Shouldn’t a sizable chunk of that go to them and other NBA players that play the game?

Same logic for late night show comedians, all other big entertainment YouTube channels, tv stars, movie stars, movie directors, podcasters like Joe Rogan and so on.

All of these have a thing in common. They release content in some media like traditional tv or newer media like YouTube and they are primarily supported by advertising in their content and through merchandise sales.

I think it’s actually more moral for these people to be making lots of money than otherwise. Because otherwise the money generated by their content just goes to YouTube executives or tv executives or Spotify executives or some other corporate big wigs.

If ANY entertainment makes a ton of money shouldn’t the money go to the ones who create it?

In tv and movies, the Writer’s Guild and the Directors Guild routinely go on strikes for this issue.

Also I think it’s great George Lucas made billions of dollars on Star Wars. Many adults in the 1970’s thought Star Wars was junk for the mind…

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

#996

Post by StackRanker3000 »

gwbas1c wrote: post #918
spencerchubb wrote: post #718

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I read the entire document and I don't understand where you saw bad culture or micromanaging. Some people may not like the fact that they pull all nighters, but that's a matter of opinion. Clearly some people do like the terms of employment, otherwise they wouldn't work there.

> where you saw bad culture or micromanaging Mr. Beast is ultimately the star of the video, so he has to micromanage at some point or another. That's his brand. He can't let his employees plan a video that he won't like. I did find the comments about all-nighters off-putting... And I personally don't like working on multiple things at the same time. But that's personal preference; I don't particularly like Mr. Beast'…

https://youtube.com/shorts/6WgklDqOnH4

I think his personal involvement in any given project is already quite limited. He’s created a huge, soulless machine that churns out videos for the sole purpose of achieving some YouTube high score, and he just pokes his nose in here and there to be the face of the operation and ensure it remains well-oiled.

Edit: that ”just” is obviously doing a ton of lifting because it’s likely still a huge amount of work on his part, but my point is that it’s not like he lovingly crafts all these clips by himself.

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

#997

Post by heraldgeezer »

doix wrote: post #689

There are lot of comments here disliking MrBeast and what not, but some of the advice can definitely apply to all organizations. > 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 YOUTUB…

>IT blocking this or that instead of trying solve problems, etc.

Then you come crying to us when things aren't updated or servers get breached. Also, for DNS/Website blocks it is often management that decides but a baseline of malware/p0rn blocking is good. Besides, account in general are not admin any more in the enterprise. Just how it is :)

Cyberinsurance is a bigger and bigger deal now.

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

#998

Post by ilrwbwrkhv »

dang wrote: post #987
ilrwbwrkhv wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

You can't post flamebait like this to HN, regardless of which country you have a problem with. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html Edit: it looks like we've been having to ask you to stop breaking the site guidelines for years: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39281820 (Feb 2024) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35656288 (April 2023) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34844518 (Feb 2023) https:…

Sorry this was uncalled for.

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

#999

Post by wahnfrieden »

sumedh wrote: post #994
wahnfrieden wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There’s a difference between writing down that you hire A-players in a document, and hiring the unqualified personal friends that he does in practice for all kinds of production roles

> and hiring the unqualified personal friends that he does in practice for all kinds of production roles How do you know they are unqualified?

Reports from insiders of nepotism hires and lack of qualification

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

#1000

Post by Meganet »

moomoo11 wrote: post #522
throw10920 wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know what subculture you're living in, but in several of mine there absolutely is pushback against this, with people avoiding consuming this kind of content and trying to prevent their children from consuming it, too. Now, the question why the larger US (or English-speaking) culture isn't uniformly doing the same is much more interesting, but there's no known reason for this and most of the common explanation…

Most people are dumb because they are lazy and gave up long time ago. Their parents the same way, so the kids never had a chance. Like I had a house mate in my 20s. His parents just gave him everything. He busted his car, parents got him a new one. He lost his job and he just played call of duty all day and drank or smoke weed. One day he asked me about programming and this dude just couldn’t sit still without needin…

Why are you so arrogant?

Do you think you are happier in life when you at the top? I tell you a secret, no.

Its for sure better to not stress about stuff like money but your definition of success is not universal.

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