[pyaamb]

is there a name for the phenomenon where you get so tired of seeing someones face pop up over and over and over that you start to hate the person and despite their good deeds feel no remorse for them when they end up in trouble?

[dotnet00]

I think in MrBeast's case it goes beyond just overexposure to seeming like a sketchy guy because of how hard he tries to project the image of being a good person while simultaneously flaunting his wealth.

It's very reminiscent of many crypto-scammers, who flaunted their wealth and talked about wanting to help others become wealthy too, only to eventually rug pull.

[wongarsu]

I don't think he's flaunting wealth per se. He doesn't claim to be wealthy. If anything he claims the opposite, always talking about how he immediately reinvests everything and keeps barely anything for himself or as a reserve.

But he is definetly flaunting something. I'd maybe label it as flaunting generosity, or the ability to change people's lifes

[AlotOfReading]

He's been involved with enough actual crypto scammers that it's probably more than a superficial similarity.

[wongarsu]

He is heavily involved with both Logan Paul and KSI. And while those two haven't built their career around crypto scams the label "crypto scammer" has been used for both of them

[AlotOfReading]

Also Gary Vee, and directly contributing to a number of pump and dump scams.

[highwaylights]

What good deeds?

Isn’t this the guy that gives out cars to one random person on YouTube while their friends get nothing then films the reactions for megabucks?

[jjice]

I don't know much about him, but he does lots of stuff about bringing water to places in Africa and curing blindness or deafness as well from what I've seen. Not sure of the ratio of what to what.

[password54321]

This is not how you judge character. Character is what you do when you have nothing to gain or even something to lose. These are merely performances for YouTube videos that help his brand and generate millions of views. Adults at least should be aware of this, because this is how you get scammed.

[electroly]

OP never used the word "character." They asked about good deeds, which appears to be about the action, whereas character is about the intention of the person. If MrBeast cured your blindness and he did it solely to make money and doesn't care about you at all, you still got your blindness cured. If I volunteer at the soup kitchen just to meet women, I have failing character but I still did the good deed. This is the MrBeast dilemma: what are we to conclude when the two are in opposition? What does it mean when someone does a good deed in order to benefit from it themselves? Is that a win-win situation, or is it bad? Does it completely negate the good deed? These are generally unsettled questions in our culture.

[password54321]

Based on the context they were obviously judging their character based off their "good deeds". You are just circling around the obvious. As for this "dilemma", he has already shown he will exploit children.

This tells you who he is and what his incentives are. If you would like to believe otherwise go for it. My advice simply is to watch out in real life for people you think are good if this is how you judge people.

[wongarsu]

His philantrophy videos underperform compared to his other videos, typically getting 10-30% fewer views than the worst performing video right before or after.

Maybe you could argue that they aren't financially lucrative but at least help his brand. But he seems to get a lot of hate for making those videos. I suspect his brand would be much better if he stuck to making highly produced challenge and contest style videos

Now there are three worlds we could live in: In the first I am misjudging his videos and they are actually good for his brand or finances. That's the one you suspect. In the second they are bad for his brand but he perceives them as helping him. Quite possible, even if he seems to have reasonably good self reflection. In the third they are bad for his brand and finances but he wouldn't be able to finance projects of this scopes without the videos and sponsorships. That's what MrBeast claims to be true

I don't know which of those is true, all three of them seem likely to me

[password54321]

>His philantrophy videos underperform compared to his other videos, typically getting 10-30% fewer views than the worst performing video right before or after.

Doesn't matter. We are literally having this discussion because of the very fact that he has chosen to make these videos. This tells you how effective it is for his brand. More than likely it is a net-positive even if he does get criticism.

[mlinhares]

We wouldn't be in our current political situation if adults were aware of this. The average person is well below what we usually assume the average is.

[bongodongobob]

Ok so David Attenborough is no good then?

[speed_spread]

Whatever he does is for show first and foremost and only. Whatever benefits other people gain in the process is always less than what he will gain from the views. It's very much not a charity although he sells it like one.

[bryan_w]

Is there no such thing as a win-win situation?

[speed_spread]

There is a way to give money and stuff away for good causes and it's not to put up a show, then pack up and never return to see check that what you did actually helped. What he's doing is a lottery, making poor people win to capture their immediate sentiments. It's totally artificial and done for the wrong reasons which can have a number of negative outcomes that you'll never hear about because it's a closed process. Would you consider lotto a charity?

[speed_spread]

I'm sorry for the previous rambling. The word I was looking for is Exploitation. That's what it is. Making a show about poor people while it gets you rich as F. It's just wrong.

[pests]

This was his older content. Ever since his squid game video his videos are larger-than-life with elaborate sets, flying to crazy destinations, etc. The simple giving cars away, or giving a house to a pizza delivery guy, or reading the bee moving script is long over.

One point about giving away cars - it’s not always to someone else’s detriment. He once gave someone ~30 used cars and they had to give them all away (to friends, family, randoms) within 24hours to earn a Tesla for himself.

In a weird way he is turning into the squid game villain himself. He stole their look for his henchmen and also takes on the persona. Almost every video he has made since would fit right in that world.

That and a mix of Willy Wonka.

[Workaccount2]

The reeks of someone who has watched clout-chasing rage bait videos on Mr. Beast, but never actually watched Mr. Beast.

[squigz]

I'm confused. Is your problem the giving away of cars, or that the receiver's friends don't also get cars?

[password54321]

That's just your intuition telling you the person you are seeing doing "good deeds" is actually shady and a fraud.

People tend to have a good intuition for these kind of things. Every time my alarm bells have gone off it turned out they were in fact wearing a mask.

[seydor]

This is not an era for long-term effort. This is about moving very fast breaking things and growing as fast as possible , so that when it all goes bust you can still leave with a cushy fortune. This culture is everywhere now, from arts to business

[nurettin]

Is it similar to being tired of people suggesting that influencers who abuse the poverty porn trope have somehow done a good thing?

[gosub100]

On a related note, I'm terrified of typing his name into search or watching any of his videos because once yt thinks I'm interested in the "topic" I'll never be able to get rid of his face from my recommended videos or news suggestions. I have his channel blocked but I suspect that if you watch a blocked channel voluntarily they will treat it as an unblock.

[mlinhares]

I've been overly aggressive blocking channels on youtube whenever i click on shit like that by accident and my recommendations are mostly safe.

[gosub100]

The problem is the copycat and adjacent channels. You watch and block $BOZO, you now get suggestions for $BOZO reacts, $BOZO extras, $BOZO clips, and all of $BOZO's competitor channels.

[mlinhares]

Yeah, youtube recommendations get into the shit rabbit role much faster than any other platform.

[pests]

Just go into watch history and delete the video. Or pause watch history before playing

[hofo]

Social media algorithm overload

[pyaamb]

thank you

[wang_li]

Overexposure. Desensitization. Regardless, someone doing something good doesn't excuse them when they do something bad. You can be a civil rights icon who improved the lives of millions of people, but when you stand around, watch, and give advice as your buddy rapes a woman, you are a piece of shit.

[Anon1096]

<Blank> Degrangement Syndrome, I think MrBeast has definitely reached that status by the rabid amount of hate he gets whenever brought up here or on reddit.

[pyaamb]

I'm not saying he doesn't deserve the feedback he's receiving right now. Just saying whatever you want to call this phenomena, its what i'm experiencing. He would have been a lot more likeable if he wasn't so aggressive in self promotion but I've heard him boast about it on podcasts and I think he knows what he was doing

[smcl]

When it comes to people that wealthy, the money they're using for their "good deeds" are the bare minimum they think they need to get you off their case. So when you say "I don't think someone should be a billionaire, that means something has gone seriously wrong" they can point to how he filmed himself giving a homeless guy a house.

[jsheard]

In the case of MrBeast it's not even really reputation laundering, he's just an algorithm goblin who iterated through different shticks until landing on giveaways and contests as the things which consistently brought in the most clicks. I don't think he was even that rich when he started doing them, as far as I can tell his first ever prize was just two $50 iTunes gift cards while still recording in his bedroom, and after that it wasn't long until nearly all of his content revolved around giveaways.

The whole operation is optimized to the gills for maximum engagement above all else, down to A/B testing a hundred different thumbnail variants for every video: https://x.com/Creator_Toolbox/status/1783995589543227402

[asib]

> down to A/B testing a hundred different thumbnail variants for every video

To be fair, this is apparently table stakes for being a YouTuber at the moment. Maybe not hundreds but definitely several. Veritasium did a video [0] about how he has to do this to maintain enough viewership to keep YouTubing viable as a full-time job.

[0]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S2xHZPH5Sng

[magicalhippo]

It makes sense though. Or to put it another way, it seems odd to expect that there's always a global thumbnail optimum for a given YouTube video.

So to bring in the most views, put out different thumbnails to attract different viewers. Ideally YouTube would have support for this where you can just upload a dozen thumbnails or so, and YouTube figure out who needs to see which.

[pests]

Eh, Veritasium is now majority owned by PE now (Electrify). This is why they’ve been introducing new hosts and Derek is doing more intros / voiceovers - the end goal removing reliance on the original channel owner.

So does he need to do it to remain profitable or does PE need to do it to pay for all their overhead / etc?

[asib]

Ah interesting, didn't know that. The video is at least 4 years old, so suppose it depends on when Derek sold. Anecdotally, I think all the new hosts came after that thumbnail video, but I couldn't say how closely the changes you mention followed.

In general, it seems this is a thing that YouTubers feel they need to do to avoid being swallowed, but the extent to which MrBeast does it could well be extreme, and thereby worthy of suspicion.

[deadbabe]

It’s not that difficult to become a billionaire. If you can collect $1 dollar from a billion people, you’ll be a billionaire. If you increase that to $10, you only need 100 million people, roughly a third of the United States.

What you need is some kind of platform on which you could collect those dollars. In recent history the internet has become a powerful platform and that is why we have so many more billionaires.

But what has not changed is our sensitivity to good deeds. If you’re a billionaire, giving all your wealth away is not really going to be appreciated much more than doing some highly visible good deeds that give smaller amounts of wealth away. So why do it? There is diminishing returns for good deeds. You’re better off staying a billionaire until you die, after which your wealth will be distributed anyway.

[dominicrose]

Getting $1 from a single person is already a challenge. Automating that is incredibly hard and clearly not something you can do alone, and if you don't do it alone then everybody gets a cut, including your bank, IRS, etc.

[dizlexic]

Tbh i don't see a problem with this take other than people don't like it.

[deadbabe]

People just vastly overestimate the power of money at scale. There is more power and inspiration in doing highly visible good deeds that people will see and feel good about than just cutting checks to large groups of people. It takes a billionaire to truly understand this.

[dotnet00]

If you're a billionaire, you don't feel the need to win the unaffected public's affections. You just do good because you have the resources to do it and can derive satisfaction from the people who are benefiting. You don't get to being ruthless enough to become a billionaire if you're dependent on what uninvolved strangers think of you. If you were, you'd be giving it all away well before piling up enough to become a billionaire.

[latexr]

> If you’re a billionaire, giving all your wealth away is not really going to be appreciated much more than doing some highly visible good deeds that give smaller amounts of wealth away. So why do it?

You could do it for the intrinsic satisfaction of being a decent human and creating a better world. Could probably end or avoid a few wars, too. You’d certainly go into the annals of history is you eradicated poverty in whole areas of the world (which you could easily do, as a billionaire).

> It’s not that difficult to become a billionaire.

Please show us. Then give all your money away and see how that worked out. Don’t knock it until you try it. If you later regret it, that’s OK, shouldn’t be that difficult to become a billionaire again.

[dizlexic]

The idea that giving all your money away makes you a decent human and or it would create a better world is just flawed logic.

[latexr]

The goodness isn’t in giving all the money away, but in the positive change you can induce while making even a fraction of it available to a worthy cause. Obviously you wouldn’t create a better world by giving your money away to another billionaire or Polluting Genociders Inc, but if you engage in good faith and steel man the argument you can surely find some examples you’d agree with, such as preventing wars for resources and saving people from painful slow deaths due to starvation. Can we agree those are positive things? That working towards improving the lives of others without expecting a return makes one a better person?

Consider this: A billionaire (not even a multibillionaire, just one on the “lower end”) who gave away $1 a second would be giving away $86400 a day. Sounds like a lot, until you realise it would still take them 32 years to give it all away, and that’s assuming they wouldn’t be making any money in the meantime.

Now consider the number of people living in extreme poverty.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extreme_poverty

[dizlexic]

and this is downvoted why? giving all your money away in no way makes you a decent human or guarantees a better world. It's flawed logic. A platitude.

[some_guy_nobel]

Please stray from the meta "why am I downvoted!". It's low-effort, reddit-esque commentary that only serves yourself. You can edit your other comment.

You're being downvoted because you're not responding to the comment in earnest. The comment says,

"You could do it for the intrinsic satisfaction of being a decent human and creating a better world."

Obviously, that implies good intention. Your contrarian take sidesteps this for no real reason: you present no argument other than being contrarian for contrarian-sake. Maybe try explaning why you think the logic is flawed.