It's not altruism if it's your source of income. Sorry but I don't buy this bs. He's doing it to generate income, that's all. Altruism is "unselfish regard for or devotion to the welfare of others" but we have quite the opposite here - a selfish way of milking poor people for emotions in order to generate income. Real altruism is hard and done only by a few. Literally EVERY man/woman/child on this planet will say yes to receiving millions of dollars annually with the sole condition that they have to let go some part of it. The money he spends are just fuel for a marketing engine.
While I see he seems like a nice guy overall, his actions do more good than harm. His impact is very low, his "philanthropy" is localised down to the individual level and his impact is absolutely none on the actual problems that people who he targets face. The more negative side of this is that he inspires the next generations to only go by extreme things on Youtube and other social media platforms and these extreme things are, more often than not, on the negative side (stupid and dangerous pranks, throwing stuff at people from 20th floor etc).
He chose this path because his viewers were probably reacting to it the most. I'm not a hater but I feel like the real altruistic people doing good stuff on a much grander scheme don't get any recognition at all while this money making business man selling snake oil to children is getting everything from the table.
Despite throwing millions and millions, his impact is absolutely ZERO. I find it quite predatory.
I listened to his interview on the Joe Rogan show and was really impressed.
Mr. Beast built his channel by taking all profits from each video and plying it into the next video. Using this approach he was able to produce progressively larger and more expensive videos. He has demonstrated his frugal lifestyle, has publicly given away an incredible amount of money to good causes, and has stated his future goals for his businesses will be for charity. Everything about his actions strikes me as genuinely good, it just seems like the publicity is the best way to get more money to accomplish the charitable goals.
You're right that what he's doing does not conform to the definition of altruism specifically, but that doesn't mean what he's doing is not good.
How can you watch the video where he pays for the blindness surgery for all those people and say that that was anything other than an amazing win for all those nice people?
"Mr. Beast built his channel by taking all profits from each video and plying it into the next video"
To me this seems like a semi-obvious minmaxing solution to making popular videos: make essentially zero profit, regardless of revenue. At some point you get so much revenue that you can't spend it all so the next logical step is to simply give it away as part of the video. And in this case it's a virtuous cycle - apparently giving away money generates more revenue so it just keeps going. But this doesn't strike me as being done out of any noble purpose - all he wants is YT view and charity is just a side-effect of that.
"How can you watch the video where he pays for the blindness surgery for all those people and say that that was anything other than an amazing win for all those nice people?"
My criticism would be that it's local change vs trying for structural change. Why don't those people already have access to surgery? The counter-argument to this would be that structural change is somewhere between very hard and impossible, so just spend the money locally. A more cynical take is that lobbying for restructuring the US health care system doesn't generate YT revenue, so he's incentivized to fund the most clickbaity charity projects.
> But this doesn't strike me as being done out of any noble purpose
Money given away doesn't have to have a "noble purpose", the act is good in itself. The people receiving it don't care about motive, I don't care about motive, and the only reason you care about motive is because you're threatened by another person doing good. There's no virtue inherent to giving anonymously. A piece of food or a warm house don't care about the intentions of the original owner of the money.
In fact the only reason I could see for someone pushing a narrative of "only some donations are good because of motive" would be to discourage donations, which I'm not sure why anyone would do unless they are utterly evil.
Pablo Escobar gave free money away. Would you take the money? He also built schools.
Motive matters. His intents were to build loyalty masked as charity. MrBeast is building (or has built) something else, masked as charity.
I hope MrBeast never stop giving away money and curing people, but there are some considerations to make here, and not just taking as granted the reasons the very same person doing charity is clearly trying to transmit.
What you are talking about is accepting stolen funds or goods. That means the source is illicit, but it doesn't say anything about motive. Motive and source of the funds are different things. I obviously don't support crime or people knowingly accepting stolen funds. You can have a bad motive with legal funds, a good motive with legal funds, a bad motive with illegal funds or a good motive with illegal funds. Your conflating of these concepts is bringing a different aspect I didn't comment on, but I can:
If Mr. Beast steals money to donate it I'd be against it regardless of motive.
He's not viral because of charity, he's charitable because he was already a highly viral video creator. It's not a comment on his videos, it's a comment on the NY Times framing.
"My criticism would be that it's local change vs trying for structural change. Why don't those people already have access to surgery?"
The reality is that Mr.Beast will not be changing the entire U.S. healthcare system. And that hundreds got life changing surgeries they wouldn't otherwise have gotten.
Do you think if you asked those people, they would say Mr. Beast is predatory? Would they have preferred that he Mr. Beast not run a donation-focused youtube channel?
He's created quite an ingenious way to siphon money from advertisers to random people. It's not the most 100% effective way of creating change, but viewing it so negatively is throwing out the baby with the bathwater.
> The reality is that Mr.Beast will not be changing the entire U.S. healthcare system.
The reality is that Mr Beast has a better shot at it than 99.99% of americans; the argument is he won't take that shot because he prefers to be Mr Beast
Not to mention this is not all or nothing. He could flip or decide hundreds of thousands, maybe millions of votes, in favour of candidates that do want to reform the healthcare system. All it takes is about half the politicians plus one, no?
I'm not an US voter and don't suffer its healthcare system, so maybe it is an immutable part of life and I can't grasp it - but I doubt it
The reality is that Mr Beast has a better shot at it than 99.99% of americans
better by what margin? given that the likelyhood of anyone else making that change is almost zero, even if his chances were 10 times as high, that is still not enough to make any dent.
part of the problem here is thinking that changing the system can only be done by some single person with superhero powers, when in reality it takes a mind change in all of society. the US healthcare system will not change until everyone starts demanding that change.
the best MrBeast can do is to influence his audience, but he'll need to convince more than a few million people before a change can happen.
If not structural changes, does Mr. Beast continue to donate every month to some fixed cause(s)?
AFAIK they do food donation drives regularly (or something similar) and probably supports other causes consistently. Those come from a place of passion, vision and commitment. Otherwise the YT videos are good execution to serve the audience and sponsors.
Tbh I haven't been tempted to watch his videos. Like many other commenters, I find something is off
It’s never enough. This guy is throwing millions towards others and helping their lives, but because he’s not suffering enough to do it, or doing it out of your defined pure intentions, it’s hardly good at all? It’s clear you care more about the sacrificial theater of giving than you do about actual impact.
What good have you done for anyone but yourself in the last month? Do you even fulfill your own standards? Is any charity less than implementing your preferred political policies useless? It’s hard to even describe how childish and selfish your take is.
He is a content producer who has built a brand on large cash prices not a charity manager. It’s a for profit company. The fact that apparently half of the readership can’t make the difference is a bit worrying to me.
Of course it’s for profit. No one dispute that. But his business involves giving away money. It doesn’t matter if he keeps 50% of the profits for himself and 50% is given away. He’s doing a million times more to help people than anyone on this forum.
I seriously doubt he's producing more QALYs than some effective altruists on this site. Someone on a typical software engineering income (going w/120k) can donate enough to save ~2-3 lives a year[0] at 10% giving, let alone someone trying to maximize their impact (of which I'm sure there's several).
[0]: https://www.givewell.org/impact-estimates
I finance significantly more through taxes than American giving 10% of its income to charity which allow every citizen of my country to enjoy the benefits of socialised medicine and unemployment insurance. The idea of cheering from someone making money by paying from basic medical treatment for poorer people makes me frankly queasy.
Sorry I meant cataract surgery. I just happen to be discussing eye laser surgery with a friend considering it.
Seems misleading for that site to say it’s free. There’s small fees which you end up paying that Medicare doesn’t cover. And afaik you require a referral for public hospital which is not covered.
The reason those people don't have access to surgery has nothing to do with mrbeast.
Do you think he could actually get a law changed and help more people than he already did? Why wouldn't a "Mr Beast goes to Washington" style video get as many views as his direct support videos got?
"Do you think he could actually get a law changed and help more people than he already did?"
The most popular YT video creator could probably start a fairly large lobbying effort although yes, the multi-trillion dollar US for-profit health insurance industry could probably do better.
"Why wouldn't a "Mr Beast goes to Washington" style video get as many views as his direct support videos got?"
None of us are in his position to make as much change though. Are we not allowed to criticize someone that has far more power than us for not using it to its full potential?
You can criticize anyone for anything you want. Many people will ignore you or think you're a crank when you criticize someone for restoring the sight of 1000 poor people because it wasn't "to its full potential".
Not only did he improve 1000 lives. He bought awareness to 100s of 1000s of people who didn’t know it’s relatively affordable or can be cured for some.
I thought he was cool until he launched a chocolate line. Really? Is that what we need? Most of his audience is young gen z, and I'm sure the last thing the most obese generation ever needs is someone pushing more sugar on their diets
Girl scouts are children selling sugars to adults. Mr beast is an adult who sells sugar to children.
Anyway, I don't think he's a scumbag. I think he's a nice guy and I'm sure I would be his friend if we took the same pottery course or whatever. I just don't think trying to "cram one more treat into America's already bloated snack hole"[1] is very 'cool'.
[1] Simpsons, season 8, episode 164, The Twisted World of Marge Simpson
A line of anything already pegs you as a run-of-the-mill influencer, exploiting the parasocial relationship your victims have with you to peddle them substandard ware at high markup.
I am always shocked when I see the prices for "merch". Why does a hooded sweatshirt, that might cost 10-20 USD at Uniqlo, cost 55 USD as "merch" with a 2-5 USD silkscreen print. I agree: It is absolutely "exploiting the parasocial relationship your victims have with you".
Those are pretty high prices. Are they manufacturing those sweatshirts in the US or other Western country, or are they just positioning themselves as premium brand and selling with 400%+ markup?
Or has the clothing market in the US hollowed out in the middle completely? That's what I'm worried about where I live (Poland, EU) - I feel like the middle tier, of normally priced, regular quality clothes for regular people, is all but gone now, leaving us with the choice between a) second-hand stores and bazaars selling counterfeits imported from the East, and b) lifestyle brands selling rags at ridiculous prices.
Older people love to talk about how they bought a house working a minimum wage job or how the janitor became CEO of the company when neither are a reality due to their greed.
Most young people are angry about the fact that their living and educational expenses are far higher than the older people responsible, and profiting from that increase. Refer also to the increase in retirement age and poorer pensions for younger generations.
Can't blame them entirely. Competition drives down costs, and the cost is very close to free (or some of your data), or else it's some whale indirectly paying for others. Richer get richer, and some are shocked when they are priced out of big ticket items.
> He has demonstrated his frugal lifestyle, has publicly given away an incredible amount of money to good causes, and has stated his future goals for his businesses will be for charity.
Pretty much all of this is typical “rich philanthropist” stuff, just dialled down to appeal to a demographic cohort of 20-35 year olds.
It’s incredibly easy to be altruistic when literally every financial and social incentive says you should. I think people are uncomfortable with this because he hasn’t sacrificed anything. His financial incentives just line up with “doing good things”. When they no longer align it still remains to be seen whether he will act the same.
>Mr. Beast built his channel by taking all profits from each video and plying it into the next video. Using this approach he was able to produce progressively larger and more expensive videos.
That's what every sensible businessman does in the early years of a new venture. It's only a stark contrast to the avera social media personality who takes out as much as they can early on to fund car leases, rent for fancy homes and designer brand clothes.
Lemme know if he does it without filming and I'll be the first to call out my BS. Some people just don't see the forest from the trees but it's all good with me, MrBeast needs you for income. True altruism is hard, this is business.
I have heard anthropologists tell anecdotes about Red Cross refusing to help a village just a couple of hours drive away from their outposts because there is no press coverage and they would rather spend their supplies on places where it'd get reported on, because the report brings in more donations. Emotionally I sympathize with the people that the speaker spent time with and resent Red Cross's decision, but pragmatically I can see that it make sense.
I've talked to nurses who volunteered at MSF say they passed by many villages that needed help on their way to their destination, a more well-known location that will bring more attention for their services. Lord knows they lamented over it, but the decision was made by the organization to ensure they get the maximum donation needed to help more people.
I have literally never watched a single Mr Beast videos, but going by what I'm seeing in articles like these, I fail to how what he's doing is any worse than most charities.
"Look at me doing good for these people! This was MR BEAST that did this, me, I'm MR BEAST AND I HELP PEOPLE! REMEMBER THE NAME FOLKS, IT'S ME, MR. BEAST. Make sure to like and subscribe!"
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"This guy is a champion of generosity, a paragon of goodness. I admire him so much." --people like you, and other children
That last sentence is just not true, I think it's okay to deeply respect someone with a BUSINESS MODEL (because it is what it is) that's based on helping others for views. Let's say he stopped doing it and just worked a shitty job and gave all his money, being then a true altruist, the impact he'd have on the lifes of people would be far lower than the one he's having now.
Yes the media overhypes his actions as some sort of altruism god, as they do with everything, but that doesn't take away that he came up with a model that feeds on helping people, and that alone deserves my respect.
No, he came up with a model that glorifies himself to the max (by helping people.) There is a gigantic difference. I cannot imagine respecting that.
There are so many people out there who deeply deserve your respect and yet this guy is the one with your attention - because vainglorious self-promotion is his mantra and his mission. Go read about any of the countless people out there making serious, meaningful contributions without pasting a photo of their face and bio links over everything they do. Oh, I guess it'll be a bit harder to find them. Easier to just keep watching Mr. Beast and pondering how much respect his brilliant business model deserves.
Nobody said he is a champion of generosity or a paragon of virtue, that's your take on strawmanning an easy to win point because you don't want to have an actual conversation here.
The alternative is advertisers spending their money on rap videos glorifying selling drugs to kids and committing felonies. Personally, because I don't see the world in black and white, I see Mr Beast as a massive upgrade from the previous status quo.
Why does it being a business make what he does any less? Don’t the acts stand on their own without the need to pontificate on his motives? He could have started or ran his business in many ways, he chose a charitable one… I think that’s all that matters
Being a cynic isn’t cool, and it is not being objective - the good he does is staring you in the face and you can’t even see it
Emotional responses to content are subjective. It’s never been, never will be, that all humans are of a normalized opinion on anything, I’m not sure what the point of your take on OPs take is?
Must we role-play feeling like Shiny Happy People about everything? Why must everything be framed in toxic positivity?
I'm sorry, but I don't buy into this concept of "charity" myself[1].
It is wonderful that people can see, but how much money you have should have no bearing on whether you stay blind or not.
These people are victims of a system and charity is just painting over the cracks.
Perhaps he could devote his energy to start the change.
Charity (and alms) is what people did back in the day. Some societies moved on.
[1] Better said: I'm not against charitable acts. I'm against charity as a replacement for an humane and fair society. Sometimes it feels like having a water station next to workers being being whipped to build the pyramids. Perhaps stop the whipping?
> I listened to his interview on the Joe Rogan show and was really impressed.
I wonder many of the critics in this thread have seen him like this. I've also seen a few videos where he's talking about his channel and he certainly has me convinced he's not in it for his own benefit.
It's not cynical, it's fairly neutral. It doesn't mean he's a bad person. There are worse things he could do with his money and at the end of the day, he's doing a lot of good.
But it's not altruism, it's philanthropy. It's more about the performance than the act itself. Some of his videos literally reycle game show ideas ("do X contrived thing successfully and you get $Y money"). His antics help people and that's a good thing. But he's also making them jump through hoops (not literally AFAIK, though I wouldn't be surprised) and perform gratitude for his audience. Things can be good and bad at the same time.
Consider the American trope of "feel good" news reports about, say, an elementary school kid doing a successful fundraiser to pay off his classmate's school lunch debt. Yes, it's amazing that an elementary school student did that but it's also horrifying that this means school lunch debt is just a thing society has come to accept as normal and that society is so dysfunctional a literal child had to take the initiative instead of just getting to be a child.
I think Mr Beast is one of the better people when it comes to using their ridiculous wealth and social capital for good, but it's horrifying that people have to perform misery for an online audience to get relatively cheap medical treatments and frankly it's horrifying that a single person can have access to and control over such an amount of wealth that they can perform this kind of stunts on the regular while at the same time so many people are so desperately poor that their lives can be changed by being gifted mere crumbs in comparison. Mr Beast may be a relatively good person but that he (i.e. his channel/brand) can exist at all should be deeply concerning.
It’s a bit hard not to be cynical when he himself describes how he developed his channel by optimising and a/b testing everything “like a psychopath” including the amount of views per dollar given away - he says himself that 100k seems to be the inflection point, you don’t get so many more views by going from 100k to 500k or 1m. Not once did he ever appear to have thought about the impact on the lives of the people receiving this random lump sum, which plenty of research on lottery winners shows is often very disruptive and negative on their overall long term wellbeing. As for his “donating” for blindness surgery etc, there are plenty of actual charities staffed by volunteers working hard day after day, he could easily donate quietly to any of those and he chooses not to.
It's a flywheel with exactly one input: YouTube. If YT changes their rules or payout schedule tomorrow, it all goes away. But sure, for the time being he's hit the infinite charity glitch.
I also don't understand the take that altruism/philanthropy has to be zero sum. i.e. true altruism means that I lose something and you gain something.
Maybe it is a hold over from religion and the idea of sacrifice being the ultimate good. The times I have had the most impact (helping people in need, teaching, starting my own NPO) it has been very much positive sum.
If he has zero impact, then everyone else here has negative impact. I certainly haven't cleaned up an entire beach.
Can someone give me some examples of philanthropy that is NOT predatory/extractive?
> Can someone give me some examples of philanthropy that is NOT predatory/extractive?
Richard Stallman and his work on free software?
I think what OP is saying is that at Mr Beast's income level, he can effectively create a lasting change that most of us can't. Instead he focuses on people individually, giving them nice gestures but nothing life-changing, and he continues to do this because his viewers demand these types of low-scale altruism. So effectively he's just an entertainer that earns his salary by doing small acts of kindness, nothing more.
It's like the old proverb in a way: "Give a man a fish, you feed him for a day. But teach him to fish, and you feed him for life". Mr Beast is just giving people fish for a day, but it doesn't help anyone after that one chance encounter with him.
So the 1000 people who can see now or hear “got one fish for a day”? Come on bro.
It should be up to society to ensure the health check doesn’t return just 200 OK but that everything else that makes that 200 OK possible is also actually fine.
MrBeast is an entertainer who happens to make a brand by doing stuff that does some impactful thing. More than most people.
Now those 2000 people who can see and hear.. maybe they have a new chance at life. Even if 1% of them become mega successful that’s 1-20 people who will go on to impact more than 2000 people EACH.
Right, that's on the individual level. You and I can donate to a medical organization that helps people 'see and hear' too. Or fund a go-fund-me to help that person. It's great that person got immediate access to the healthcare they needed with this money. We can do basically what Mr Beast does right now if we pooled our resources together.
The bigger issue is why that healthcare is inaccessible to them in the first place? How do you or I go about solving this? How are you and I gonna bring this attention to Congress, and get their asses to work on that issue? Unless we both quit our careers to go into politics, it's not really possible for a random no-name person to make that change for the greater population. How about the other 10k people who can't see or hear? What about them?
If I had Mr Beast's financial or influence level, the next step I would be doing is wondering why those 1k or 2k people didn't get their healthcare and then trying to patch that. We all know how much of a scam our current system is. Once that's patched, everyone gets to eat for life, not just a single batch of 1k people in my lifetime.
Individual contributions are great and welcomed, but temporary. Societal change is where things get real. Cmon bro. It's why we have 40 hour work weeks, why women can vote and get college education, why lgbt community is accepted. And it's not like individual contributions and making society change are mutually exclusive... So what' stopping Mr Beast from going to that next step?
> If I had Mr Beast's financial or influence level, the next step I would be doing is wondering why those 1k or 2k people didn't get their healthcare and then trying to patch that.
It sounds like you know what should be done. Why don't you have Mr Beast financial or influence level? And why is that necessary to structurally improve healthcare?
> So what' stopping Mr Beast from going to that next step?
> Why don't you have Mr Beast financial or influence level?
> What's stopping you or anyone else?
Ad hominem fallacy. Life is not lucky for most people in the world. Don't really have to explain this if you look at how wealth disparity or how poverty trap works. You can wikipedia this yourself.
> why is that necessary to structurally improve healthcare?
Have you ever tried to intensely petition something? Or get an issue in front of your representative to take seriously? Do you know how much work and effort that takes? It's not simply doing an online poll. You literally have to go door to door every day to get signatures, to go out and talk to convince people to your cause, all the while fighting billionaire-funded counter groups and cops.
Everyone's gotta work to feed themselves and their families, get access to employer-only healthcare. People don't have time or money for intense political work. There's a reason why disinformation and interference in politics from Russia was such a big deal.. You have a state-level actor with state-level infinite money pouring into political groups creating societal havoc at the structural level. A regular joe can't do this kind of damage. Only people with serious money can.
The only other way things change structurally is through solidarity. Everyone protests in the streets. Cop reforms didn't come about because people asked nicely. People died and got mad.
So yea, unlike literally 99% of the people on earth who have to slave away at a job, if I had Mr Beast's money I would do the next step and fix issues permanently, because at that income level it's possible to give it a try. Instead, I see a few comments saying he spent a good chunk of that fortune on running a low quality burger chain lol.
> Have you ever tried to intensely petition something? Or get an issue in front of your representative to take seriously? Do you know how much work and effort that takes? It's not simply doing an online poll.
So, why do you expect mister beast to be able to change things? He's doing more than me for sure.
> if I had Mr Beast's money I would do the next step and fix issues permanently,
Exactly. What's stopping them? Nothing, right? They've got all the money they'll ever need, and powerful friends if they need something money can't buy. Yet like you said, what's being done to fix structural issues within society?
The only structural changes I see are wealth disparities getting increasingly wider in society, with laws and tax cuts being favored for the ultra rich after each new presidential leadership. Who's putting the work into this? Not me, and probably not you. So who?
They for sure donate to make-a-wish foundations or whatever, which is great. But think of it this way: how does that help you or your kids when cost-prohibitive life-saving surgery is needed? Are you gonna quit your job and camp out near a rich youtuber's house to get that lucky chance encounter in the hopes you'll get picked for the next individual success?
It doesn't help when a random person needs that surgery. But it certainly does help the random person that gets the surgery. My point is that he can't just drop $300M on some topic and get the world to change. Can you tell me how he could use his money to ensure that everyone in America gets that life saving surgery? Is he going to somehow convince die hard Republicans that it isn't socialized medicine? Biden and Trump each spent far more than Beast's net worth on trying to get elected in 2020, and one of them lost after spending $800M. I don't really see what he is supposed to do to effect structural change in the US with his measly $300M or whatever.
Does philanthropy have to be utilitarian? In the sense that if you donate money your only goal should be scale? Is that the definition?
Which one is better, donating $1 to 100,000 people or $100,000 to one person?
Similarly is donating $10,000 to cancer research better than $10,000 to one person? The cancer research may never have an impact, but it makes us "feel" good becasue it has the potential to change millions of lives.
Just an interesting one to me how we diminish the impact of helping one person when that one person could go on to be a Steve Jobs or the first person in the family to go to college. Literally life changing, where as donating for scale is a drop in the ocean and means almost nothing to a ton of people.
By the first definition it requires “unselfish regard”. If MrBeast is pulling 54 million a year (along with lots of fame and clout) he’s not exactly qualifying for the first definition.
Definition 2 is the one I’m most familiar with from the animal kingdom, and it actually requires that the giver either gain nothing or lose something. So that may be where people are coming from who take exception to his behavior being described as “altruistic”. By definition, it is not.
That makes sense. Thanks for that. If unselfish means that I can't benefit in addition to you benefiting I don't think I see altruism as a super positive thing.
Turns into "he gave up his last dollar for that person!" which is seen as a super altruistic thing to do, but now, not only does that person only have a dollar, you've taken yourself out of the game and can no longer do any more good in the world because you don't have any resources left.
I guess thats what I mean. Of course he wouldn't continue because he wouldn't have the money to continue.
I give you 30 grand or cure your blindness or buy you a house and you participate in my video. It seems like a win win.
If the argument is that he is making more than they are making off that one video, again, that goes back to me having benefit less than you.
Maybe the problem is the framing people have of it being a charity? Even in that light, he creates content for people to consume for free, the content is driven by him giving things away, the people who pay him are businesses who also get a service provided by all of those people finding out about their product/service. It seems a lot less extractive than most business models.
> I guess thats what I mean. Of course he wouldn't continue because he wouldn't have the money to continue.
Not exactly what I was saying. Let's say he stopped today. Or when he hit $25M in total wealth. Some figure where he could live a comfortable life while still contributing to these kinds of acts.
Would he still do it? Or is continued profit / brand building / etc a key component? Is this fundamentally a transaction?
I would assume not. I don't think he thinks of it as a charity, but the tension between continued profit and doing amazing things in this case doesn't bother me. I think it's positive in that the better he does the more people he can impact. Transactions can be incredibly positive even if they are dispassionate.
I understand your point. It's a good one and well taken. Very eloquently put.
Those two things are definitely not always aligned and probably arent always in this case either.
So is the problem that he has a lot of money or that he is telling people about it?
If the former, it goes back to my point about good being about sacrifice and pain. I.e. me giving 10,000 is better than bezos giving 10,000.
If the latter, the charities they donate to are all talking very loudly about what they are doing. That is literally their job is to bring awareness to a cause and fundraise. They brag about their donations in that they tell you all the good that they have been able to accomplish.
I asked the question because I’m trying to understand the dissonance people feel with him that they don’t feel with what I just outlined.
I listened to an interview with him and Lex Friedman a while ago. Interesting discussion. He's very systematic and data driven and that's part of what drives the success of his channel. A lot of what he does is indeed ruthlessly optimized to tap into whatever it is people appreciate across the different social media channel he targets. The guy undeniably has some serious skills and he's built a highly effective revenue engine around the most pointless thing on this planet which is people spending hours looking at whatever big for profit social media companies feed them via their algorithms. It's a big market opportunity to tap into and he's done so effectively.
Instead of getting hung up on what is or isn't altruism, the other point of view here is that he leaves a trail of people that are objectively better off having encountered him. That's advertising money that is spent on worthy causes. Yes, it's self serving. But that money also serves the people he helps. It's an interesting dynamic. Ceasing to do what he does would actually be bad for the people that are on the receiving end of this. So, why should he?
He's found a way to funnel of some of the stupid money slushing around on the social media platforms. There are billions of it. And he's managing to do something more interesting with it than just squirreling it away. Compare that with the average influencer, viral marketing expert, troll farm or other sources of clickbait that are thriving on these platforms. At least this goes somewhere vaguely useful. Good for him and whoever is on the receiving end. And if he pockets some of that, how much worse is that than all the other nonsense on those platforms where most of the publishers just pocket 100% the revenue? I'm not judging that either.
If you are going to watch stuff on Tik Tok, Youtube, or whatever, you might as well watch his. Best case some random people benefit from this, worst case you watch some silly nonsense and are mildly entertained by that. Either way you feel good and nobody is getting hurt. I don't watch this stuff myself but that's just because I have other things to watch that I find more interesting.
I listened to the same interview and can recommend it too. The key to understand him is how he views what he does as hacking: mastering all aspects of YouTube, every detail that attracts views.
Instead of getting hung up on what is or isn't altruism...
It's interesting how people gets stuck in that point. They want him to suffer in order to qualify for saint status. Otherwise, doing good is meaningless. On the contrary, I find very nice his happy, positive, laid back persona.
I wonder what people criticizing him thinks of well-known NGOs.
Instead of getting hung up on what is or isn't altruism...
Until BeastHQ PR agency decides that it needs to plant stories in major news publications to counter the original narative and rebrand away from hacking: mastering all aspects of YouTube, every detail that attracts views to full fledged saint.
> thinks of well-known NGOs.
I have many uncharitable words for the vast majority of charities, workers, donors and charity galas - the problem with both cases is when people stop being honest and go from admitting the reality to claiming they are a saint.
I haven't heard "altruism" or "charity" from Mr. Beast's mouth, it's the article that uses those words and then proceeds to attack the characterization. He talks about giving away money to get views and entertain watchers.
Let me insist in watching the interviews instead of reading about him. The guy is very straightforward about what he does, why and how.
the problem with both cases is when people stop being honest and go from admitting the reality to claiming they are a saint.
So you judge people for what they will do?
Anyway, the charities, from the start, claim that they're saving the world and keep claiming that when corruption cases arises.
Despite what you've been taught, every act of charity comes from a selfish need (ego). Whether that is predatory or not from the standpoint of the donor, I'll leave that up to you to decide.
And to be clear, his acts of charity have made an impact in the people who have benefited from it. Whether the public response is positive or negative is besides the point.
> Despite what you've been taught, every act of charity comes from a selfish need (ego).
This may be some kind of projection or just your personal opinion of society and human motivation. You aren't inside the brains of every human and can't possibly know everyone's motivations at all times. It's quite possible that some or many of them experience authentic altruism.
The idea, cynical as it may seem, comes from the perspective that the feedback loops that govern basic behavior are set up for survival and that things that make you happy are more like survival than not. So it becomes very difficult if you introspect deep enough to not answer "why did you do that" with "it made me feel good" which is viewable as selfish.
Seems to me you've just selected a prior perspective - "the feedback loops that govern basic behavior are set up for survival" - which doesn't allow for altruism.
I see reasoning like this online all the time. A person donates $10 billion, and people say they it must have given them a warm fuzzy feeling, and that feeling is by definition worth $10 billion, because that's what they paid for it. As if the idea of selflessness or human goodness or anything existing outside the real of rational economic exchange is so challenging they find it more plausible that a warm feeling is worth $10 billion.
(Not that I think MrBeast is particularly an example of altruism - although it's probably an example of good)
I was about to type that maybe it's about intention, but then I realised that expectation of feeling good is a reward based motivation.
Having behaviours that benefit your group rewarded and reinforced seems an obvious survival trait. It feels good, like reproduction. I wonder it's purely societal evolution or if there's a genetic component there.
Maybe it's hard to reconcile all this because calling something altruism is subjective, since we are not all knowing.
Selfish means to lack consideration for others or to be concerned only with your needs. A donation that makes you feel good but benefits others doesn’t really fit that term. If it’s done purely to advance yourself through brand or something like that, or gain financial opportunities then I think I’d agree it could be selfish.
Like those act of kindness videos on YouTube with millions of views and earning the creators thousands of dollars.
You sound a little too defensive there, perhaps thou protests too much?
Only joking, but no it is not "projection". It is definition. It goes something like "people do what they want to so if they donate something to others it is because they wanted to do it and therefore it was not selfless."
It's a pretty stupid and pointless definition though, probably sprung from someone's need to economicsify human nature. Even then you can easily get around it by defining selflessness to be the selfish need to give to others.
You’re not wrong, but there’s a big difference between donating money to feel good about yourself or even hope others like you more, and building a capital engine with a veneer of philanthropic paint.
I'd much rather perform my acts of charity publicly for the same reason I like open source coding: to get feedback so I can do it better.
Anonymous charity is more often than not even more a road towards satisfying a selfish need. It elevates the sense that what you're doing is more just because it is anonymous so "surely I can't be doing it to make a show of it" except this perverse thinking often leads to elevating one's own desire to feel righteous above, y'know... Actual proof that the charity works and does any good. Doing it anonymously also means you avoid any criticism so you get to safeguard the selfish narrative in your head that you're a good person because nobody can point out any flaws in your charity acts.
I'd trust someone who is public about their altruism and opens it to criticism any day of the week more than someone who hides it. I trust people who are public about their charity and respond and change based on valid criticism the most.
> I'd much rather perform my acts of charity publicly for the same reason I like open source coding: to get feedback so I can do it better.
What kind of feedback can you get when the donation is not anonymous that you can't otherwise? I really can't think of anything.
> Anonymous charity is more often than not even more a road towards satisfying a selfish need. It elevates the sense that what you're doing is more just because it is anonymous so "surely I can't be doing it to make a show of it" except this perverse thinking often leads to elevating one's own desire to feel righteous above, y'know... Actual proof that the charity works and does any good.
Yea, one can know if charity works without putting their name to it...
> What kind of feedback can you get when the donation is not anonymous that you can't get otherwise? I really can't think of anything
I don't even know where to begin... This is like saying "what kind of feedback can you get when the products you buy are not anonymous." When I buy a phone or some set of products it's usually public in the sense that I go to forums to talk about it, or my friends see the products I use, etc etc and people see what I use and I get feedback of the "hey, there is this product that might do this thing you care about better"
Likewise, if what you care about is x and you just go and donate to some charity, nobody can tell you something of the form "hey, there is this charity that might do this thing you care about better"
Just like with products, de-anonymizing also increases trust when you see a positive review. Same goes with charities. It opens up a more worthwhile place where discussions can be held.
> yea, one can know if charity works without putting their name to it...
Totally true. Except you still run the risk of fooling yourself more if you keep it to yourself. I don't trust myself and prefer to defer to those who research charities for a living. I talk with these people a lot, tell them what my values are, and then get charity recommendations.
I suppose a counter-argument you might make is you can still engage with people anonymously and learn what you need. That I also totally agree with.
I think you and I might be using the word "anonymous" differently.
What I'm arguing against is a kind of charity that is anonymous where the person doing this charity is an island and doesn't talk to or engage with anyone or anything about it out of principle. I think a lot of people think this is a good principle to hold. I am completely opposed to it. Is there even one good reason to do charity in complete secrecy? Even if you prefer to be anonymous (which is completely understandable), it is still better to engage with people to learn why a charity is a "good buy."
True. Which is why a lot of people recognize this and perform acts of charity anonymously.
Curb Your Enthusiasm did a whole episode on anonymous donations. Absolutely roasted the entire premise! The ego of anonymous donors is just as big, if not bigger! The anonymity is worth even more ego points!
Isn't this incredibly circular reasoning? You're critiquing someone for their action (donations come from selfish need), yet any attempt to make the situation "better" makes it even worse. You're defining their good actions as bad for no apparent reason. The only solution would be not to donate.
Let's apply this reasoning to a different topic - if there is a puppy drowning in a river and somebody jumps in to save it, will you also tell them they are doing it to fulfill a selfish need?
My main complaint is with the altruist label. It’s a secularized version of “saint”, as far as I’m concerned. I have no problem with someone doing good deeds for other people and deriving personal satisfaction (and the validation of others) from it. I do this myself. My problem is when we start calling some people “altruists” when they have the same motivations as I do.
As for the puppy, try this: replace it with a black widow spider drowning in a toilet. How many people will save it now?
>Isn't this incredibly circular reasoning? You're critiquing someone for their action
I think it's perfect, as arguably, you could say that about the initial point as well (it's not altruistic because ego). When reduced this way, it doesn't really matter if ego is involved if the result actually makes an impact and betters someone else's life.
This is incorrect. The modern American Gordon Gecko derived brand of capitalism that helps people justify being selfish to themselves.
The OCEAN model demonstrates that we are distributed into camps of "principally considering self first" and "principally considering others first". You take the most high Trait-Agreeable people, and they will all routinely sacrifice their own resources, position, opinion and wellbeing for others. This is fundamentally where maternalism is rooted psychologically too.
But to your point - I agree that if people have benefited from it, then it's still a good thing.
He figured out a sustainable way to keep giving money away. I call that smart philanthropy, not selfish philanthropy. Yes, he makes a lot of money but it mostly goes back into growing his channel and charities.
Here we have some dude who is earning money by helping people - yet for some reason this is one of the biggest sins he can do in eyes of a lot of people. Why? Just because he can't help everyone?
This is so weird take on the matter. What are you doing to help people? Are you taking credit for that work? And if not would you not be able to help more people if you had some notoriety?
There are things that you can criticize MrBeast on - like the MrBest Burger internet kitchens - but him making money off of helping people is not one of them.
No, it's not a sin. Just don't call it altruism or philanthropy because it's an insult to others who are really doing it without selfish reasons or profits.
Btw he is not "earning money by helping people", he is "helping" people to earn money.
Is this the cynical hacker news version of that Friends episode where Joey tells Phoebe that her selfless good deeds aren't actually selfless because they make her feel good too?
I mean I haven't seen his tax returns but from what he says, he spends 100%+ of revenue on the next video. I'm not sure if you are unaware of that claim or just don't believe it.
Sure he is extremely generous to his employees, but that would also fall under altruism...
> a selfish way of milking poor people for emotions in order to generate income.
Monsters, Inc. comes to mind! In that movie they are scaring children, bottling their screams as energy and selling it as a commodity. The happy ending is our protagonists stumbling upon the fact that laughter is a much better source of energy than screams, and so the staff of monsters become slapstick comedians for children everywhere.
YouTube managed to become the boring-dystopia middle-ground where they make money off both.
Those people who were suffering from curable blindness that had been forgotten by society sure are marketed, businessed and entertained by their restored sight. He's doing good things to improve peoples lives and entertaining millions along the way.
Philanthropy can also be marketing. The two aren't mutually exclusive.
Like, what's your goal here? Nobody is allowed to help anyone unless they do it wearing a hairshirt and flagellate themselves afterwards? Are you trying to have fewer people get helped?
Of all the things in the world to gatekeep, you pick helping people?
One caveat: the issue is not that someone does "philanthropy" wrong, as if they could also do it right, the issue is that a society hoping for, needing large-scale/impactful philanthropy is fundamentally unstable. In harsher words: philanthropy is a scam [1].
Instead of having a system able to detect it's pain points and be able to self-heal, our current system "solves" issues by borrowing/stealing from the future: from printing money with the velocity of an unleashed spam bot to using finite resources (wood and steel, but also energy, time, attention, expertise) to build ridiculous boats for a few billionaires.
Also, we have a better word than "large-scale/impactful philanthropy": the state. And yes, there has been and there is no state in the world, beyond all the branding and the flags of the nation-states, mainly because we are unable to solve the tragedy of the commons [2], because perhaps in order to solve it we need to develop a natura naturans [3]: how does one build a god? Because, effectively, that's what a system able to care about everyone and everything becomes.
And people saying "it should be free though", maybe should read Mr. Beast's tweet on the issue... he *agrees* it should be free and is advocating for that.
I'm glad MrBeast is the top YouTuber, it could've been anyone, but philanthropy and a spirit of giving took the #1 spot. Good on Gen Z.
After releasing Schindler's List, Steven Spielberg donated several million dollars to the Shoah Foundation. In an interview, he said that he rarely gives his name when he donates to a cause and made the exception because he wanted to use his name to bring light to what the Shoah Foundation was doing — creating an archive of witness accounts of Holocaust survivors. The reason he said he donates anonymously is that, according to his religion, God does not recognize giving to charity unless it is anonymous. The moment a person does a good deed, and their name is given or known, the act is not recognized by God because it was done in pride and not humility.
I don't have a horse in this fight, but, isn't your criticism only valid if he is gaining wealth at a significantly faster rate than he is giving it away?
I think we can both agree that if he gives away more than he makes in ad revenue, he won't be able to keep doing that for long. And hopefully we both agree that if he's able to make back roughly equal to what he gives away, there's no problem there either? At that point he's basically a non-profit. It's only really an issue if he's giving away 1 million and pocketing 10 million, right?
Or is that not quite it either? Because what if he's able to invest that 10m such that the next video gives away 5m and pockets 50m?
My question is, where is the line between being a force for good vs bad, given that his philanthropic potential can grow along with his profits, and he seems to have a track record of doing so? Is it when he starts making 100m but is still only giving away 5m? I have no idea what the actual numbers are, maybe he's already well beyond that point, and now he's just investing his profits into PR to make himself look like a good guy .
But I don't see how his impact is absolutely ZERO when he's at least given 1000 people his vision back.
There's pranking people for money online, then there is giving people life altering treatments for free.
Imagine having a life where you make money helping people and bringing joy to other people's lives. The only caveat is that those people are featured on a video... that they agree to.
So imagine going to someone who's blind, and say "we'll pay for your treatment, but you've got to let us film you... oh what's that ? you don't want to ?... ha.. i'm sorry, next !"
Is that really altruism ? It sounds more like a business deal to me.
Firstly, it is debatable as to whether there is anything truly altruistic. For MOST acts aren't truly altruistic but that doesn't stop us from doing good things or being seen to be a good person.
Of course there is an element of business, otherwise he wouldn't be able to make these videos in the first place if people didn't agree to be filmed. The difference here is that being on camera is a small price to pay than the price of bringing your own eyesight back, something these people cannot afford.
The ability to do these treatments doesn't come out of thin air.
How is this any different to people being filmed on a game show where they can win millions of dollars if they answer questions correctly or complete challenges in a specific time on national television. Those shows generate revenue by people watching them in the hope that people win against all odds or revel in the fact that they missed out on national television.
The difference here, is that this guy is doing it on Youtube and has a much larger impact on individuals lives.
This is a lot of unsourced, completely gut feeling statements about someone’s philanthropic impact to essentially just have an excuse to shit on them. I wonder how much your own life has impacted the world out there.
Look I don’t know mrbeast, beyond the team trees stuff from a while back. But YAWN at claiming someone’s actions do more harm than good just because your gut says it’s inspired pranksters.
Terrible fucking take that could only come from HN. How many cataract surgeries have you funded? How many pounds of trash have you cleaned up from the ocean? Let's hear what a big impact you're having if Mr. Beast's impact is 0.
If you give me millions of dollars for it? I could clean tons of trash yes, or fund a lot of cataract surgeries. I can found hundreds of thousands if by the end of the year I'm left with more money than I started. Awesome idea.
No one "gave" mr beast the money. He earned it by creating entertaining content. So sure he's not maximizing the good per dollar, but he's taking dollars that would not be spent on doing good and doing some good with them. If you can convince people to give you money for more efficient good deeds you'd be more altruistic than him, but I don't think you can.
Yikes! What a cynical take and I wonder if you bring this degree of skepticism to the world.
From the article:
> The end product was an eight-minute video called “1,000 Blind People See for the First Time.”
This is a huge quality of life improvement for 1000 people directly, and imagine the secondary effects - they qualify for jobs which they didn't, they can contribute money to their families, their families are able to use the money to fund education / savings for future generations, etc.
Leaving aside the altruism, he is a master of his craft. He understands the Youtube algorithm, his viewership, and how to grow his brand.
He managed to build a self sustaining form of altruism that doesn't depend on taxes or a field of call centers harassing people for donations, that has to be worth something, regardless of the ultimate motive.
My worry for instance is that what he's doing in not scalable on the level of a society, yet it's polluting our public thoughts so much that better solutions are stifled.
at the moment i believe the most important thing that our society needs is more awareness that there is a problem to begin with. without that awareness no change can happen.
It might be of interest to know that there is a form of altruism originating out of South Asia where you distribute to others before partaking in their earnings themselves.
There is another that says to earn a honest living through hard work.
Dictionary definitions are rarely complete and independent of the model Christian lens (and sometimes bias) that writes them. It can make things harder.
might technically still be considered "altruism" - after all there is no official definition. but your reasoning holds. i would also question whether his business deserves to be called altruistic given that he gets rich by it. he wouldn't be flying first class without his altruistic deeds.
While I see he seems like a nice guy overall, his actions do more good than harm. His impact is very low, his "philanthropy" is localised down to the individual level and his impact is absolutely none on the actual problems that people who he targets face. The more negative side of this is that he inspires the next generations to only go by extreme things on Youtube and other social media platforms and these extreme things are, more often than not, on the negative side (stupid and dangerous pranks, throwing stuff at people from 20th floor etc).
He chose this path because his viewers were probably reacting to it the most. I'm not a hater but I feel like the real altruistic people doing good stuff on a much grander scheme don't get any recognition at all while this money making business man selling snake oil to children is getting everything from the table.
Despite throwing millions and millions, his impact is absolutely ZERO. I find it quite predatory.