I never bothered to ask and now i’m afraid of being outed as an old for asking.
@KingThrillgore @asklemmy YouTuber who make money off of throwing money at people to do ridiculous things.
I do not like his content cause it feels like a billionaire playing with the little people for his amusement.
I enjoyed a few when I first came across the channel because it reminded me of those shows from decades ago. The ones where someone comes up to you in a toy / electronics store and you have a minute to grab whatever you can for free. That was a fun concept.
billionaire playing with the little people for his amusement
However a lot more of the videos feel like this, especially with how well known he is now. I don’t think I’m the target age group regardless.
I think you could happily live your life not knowing who he is. I will say that he’s a master at knowing what will make someone click on his videos.
a master at knowing what will make someone click on his videos
Coincidentally also a master at knowing what will make me never click on them (yes it’s the horrifying face he makes)
On that note, there is this browser extension
DeArrow is an open source browser extension for crowdsourcing better titles and thumbnails on YouTube. The goal is to make titles accurate and reduce sensationalism. No more arrows, ridiculous faces, and no more clickbait.
It’s nice because it will affect all the videos equally. I didn’t want to use it initially because it was messing with my ability to remember which videos I had already seen. I might give it a try again since people keep changing video thumbnails now
You also have the opposite here to add MrBeast to every YouTube thumbnail https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/youtube-mrbeastify/dbmaeobgdodeimjdjnkipbfhgeldnmeb?hl=en
He’s a master at knowing what will make someone click on his videos
Spoiler alert: it’s this face 😲
I will say that he’s a master at knowing what will make someone click on his videos.
Well, his methods haven’t caught OP and me.
A bourgeois philanthropist that uses philanthropy as his business model.
To combine a bunch of explanations I’ve seen in the comments here:
A bourgeois philanthropist game show producer who dabbles in poverty porn.
That said, I do occasionally burn time watching some of his videos, however some of the content (especially the more recent game show ones which feel a bit like toying with people) rub me the wrong way.
I have no idea if his philanthropy efforts are genuine or not - he’s barely visible in those videos (he has another individual hosting those videos) although I do appreciate the efforts they appear to go to when assisting communities desperately in need, and careful implementation of solutions that are sustainable, and can actually be maintained and fixed with local knowledge.
I’ve seen way too many “gimmicky” charity contributions by other organizations that become worthless as soon as they break because nobody fixes them, as well as other solutions that seemingly make sense from a western cultural lens but aren’t really understood by the local people… worst one being a “merry-go-round” water pump mechanism where senior locals are forced to “play” just to pump water for survival. It was originally intended as a kids toy, but they of course don’t have any attachment to such a foreign device, thus don’t use it.
Ehhh apologies for the mini rant there 😅
I feel the same way. The only videos I watch are the ones on the philanthropy channel and the ones where the core is giving away money or stuff (e.g. cars) to random people (or people in need).
Though, I also question the sustainability of (some of) the philanthropy actions. Don’t get me wrong, giving water and light to people in the middle of nowhere is nice, but when they become dependent and they can’t fix it when it breaks, they could be screwed big time.
The like five minutes I “researched” the “main” guy of the philanthropy channel (Derrick? Taran?) I came to the conclusion that he seems genuinely dedicated to trying helping people.
Edit: I didn’t see the hit piece / exposé that was made about him until now
From what I know about him, he is a genuine person, and his projects are done to help people if possible.
I know that many influencers profit off of suffering/kindness in a scummy way, but I believe that MrBeast is one of the few that actually try to do it ethically.
A branch of the American healthcare system.
You’re not alone. For how immensely popular he is, I’ve yet to ever watch any of his videos, or even have YouTube recommend them to me.
Only reason I know about him are a few videos from other channels, like the epic rap battles of history episode, and one that was criticizing his ghost kitchen. But I think the first time I heard about him was when every YouTuber was trying to jump on his hype when he was planting a ton of trees or something like that?
I tried watching a video of his once because I was genuinely interested in the subject. There were so many jump cuts it was unwatchable. Now I know all YouTube videos for kids are like that
YouTube creators in general have loves their jump cuts for ages. At first I think it was because they were amateurs who were be to video editing and didn’t understand established editing techniques. But now they do it intentionally because kids can’t sit still for too long.
From what I hear he’s really not so objectionable and people enjoy his videos. I am yet to ever watch one though and that’s purely out of spite. Somehow YouTube seemed to try so hard to push this dude in particular that I decided to specifically not watch anything he was in, this meant avoiding his stuff and also anything from anyone else I actually like if I could tell from the thumbnail or description he was going to be in it. I just about managed it because I’ve never seen anything with him directly, but I have ended up seeing parodies of his videos so I now in spite of myself know what must usually be in them, and I’ve seen the famous video critiquing all the spin off food businesses he’s started up off the back of his famous name.
He’s probably really not that bad, even if his obscene wealth is objectionable, but my contrarian nature just can’t abide all the hype and cheerleading. Hopefully when he finally stops being popular, I’ll have managed to miss everything he’s in and maintain my pointless personal record of dodging the beastly bullets.
I don’t know the details but there’s a bunch of allegations coming out against him now. He’s been objectionable for a while IMO, but it seems to only just now be coming out.
I also haven’t seen anything from him, but I’ve seen things that talk about him. My understanding is he’s a guy who makes outlandish videos, and some of that is “charity” (is it charity if you profit more off the video about it?) that got really popular. Other than that, I don’t really know what he does.