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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
by chimen 3y ago
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.
- scrollaway 3y agoThis 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. Put your comment in context.
- kagevf 3y ago> his actions do more good than harm I feel like you meant the opposite. . .
- edmundsauto 3y agoIono, this is definitely a grey area… but he definitely impacted the lives of peoples who sight restoring cataract surgery he paid for. I agree there is something icky (discussed in the article) but it’s weird to say zero impact.
- jquery 3y agoAnd 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.
- Timber-6539 3y agoDespite 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.
- JauntyHatAngle 3y agoI would quibble on relating the idea of selfish donation in the personal satisfaction sense, with the monetary and brand reward sense. Two different concepts that should be looked at separately.
- ta8903 3y ago>Despite what you've been taught, every act of charity comes from a selfish need (ego). True. Which is why a lot of people recognize this and perform acts of charity anonymously. I don't mean to say there is anything wrong with non-anonymous donations by the way.
- chongli 3y agoTrue. 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!
- Timon3 3y agoIsn'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?
- morugam 3y ago[flagged]
- watoc 3y agoHe's right. That's not altruism it's just business.
- elif 3y agoI 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...
- slim 3y agowhere "spends" includes his undisclosed wages ? (guy does not seem to have any other source of revenues)
- ilyt 3y ago> (guy does not seem to have any other source of revenues) I mean I googled "mr beast merch shop" and now I'm pretty sure it does, so dunno why you throw that claim without checking literally anything
- nfw2 3y agoHe 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.
- adamwk 3y agoIt’s philanthropy the same way Who Wants to Be a Millionaire is philanthropy
- ethbr0 3y agoNo, because the whole point of game shows is they restrict how often someone wins the jackpot, to make it profitable. Afaik, all of MrBeast's stuff is conducted with the rule that at least 1 person is going to win the jackpot.
- motoxpro 3y agoI find this take on him so strange. 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?
- batmaniam 3y ago> 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.
- moomoo11 3y agoSo 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. And they can tell people MrBeast was the reason.
- batmaniam 3y ago
- HDThoreaun 3y agoHis videos make hundreds of millions of people happy and probably more likely to donate or be charitable. That seems like more than zero impact to me.
- libraryatnight 3y agoHe's a greedy snot manufacturing consent for some kind of hunger games dystopia.
- kcb 3y agoThe latest Marvel movie makes hundreds of millions of people happy too.
- HDThoreaun 3y agoThey probably have a positive impact too
- goodpoint 3y agoBy this logic a casino is altruistic and charitable.
- HDThoreaun 3y agoIf the casino donated half its earnings many people would call it charitable. In fact charity poker is pretty common.
- Dig1t 3y agoMan this is such a cynical take. 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?
- guyzero 3y ago"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.
- oh_sigh 3y agoThe 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?
- dataviz1000 3y agoAfter 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.
- isoprophlex 3y agoIs 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? Don't overthink it too much, yo.
- Invictus0 3y agoTerrible 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.
- chimen 3y agoIf 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.
- jazzyjackson 3y agoYa, point is Mr Beast bootstrapped the revenue to be able to perform acts of charity.
- abenga 3y agoIfs and buts, my friend. Only thing we know for sure is you haven't. And MrBeast has.
- chimen 3y agoAbsolutely, not taking away from his marketing skills.
- HDThoreaun 3y agoNo 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.
- imgabe 3y agoIt's a lot easier to complain about how someone else isn't helping people the way you think they should than to help people yourself.
- chimen 3y agoI don;t complain of anything, let's just call a spade a spade. This is not philanthropy or altruism. It's marketing, a business and entertainment.
- beAbU 3y agoIs Bill Gates a philanthropist?
- patrick0d 3y agoThose 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.
- imgabe 3y agoPhilanthropy 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?
- j45 3y agoIt 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.
- ly3xqhl8g9 3y agoOne 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. [1] https://jacobin.com/2021/10/philanthropy-is-a-scam https://jacobin.com/2021/10/philanthropy-is-a-scam [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tragedy_of_the_commons https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tragedy_of_the_commons [3] <https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/spinoza/#:~:text=This%20is%20what%20Spinoza%2C%20employing,this%20is%20identical%20with%20God. https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/spinoza/#:~:text=This%20i...>
- websap 3y agoYikes! 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. I hope you find some optimism in your life.
- chimen 3y agoLet's not leave aside the altruism because that the main beef I have with this comment.
- nextlevelwizard 3y agoTop comment is exactly what I expected it to be. 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.
- chimen 3y agoNo, 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.
- jxramos 3y ago"""Don't I have the right to do what I want with my own money? Or are you envious because I am generous?"""
- jazzyjackson 3y ago> 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.
- interlinked 3y agoThink of it as a reality show where the participants are needy people. He's employing them.
- jillesvangurp 3y agoI 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.
- NoPicklez 3y agoCouldn't agree more
- narag 3y agoI 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.
- avereveard 3y agoHe 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.
- mihaic 3y agoMy 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.
- em-bee 3y agowhich better solutions would that be? 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.
- NoPicklez 3y agoOthers have put it better than I have. 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.
- bsaul 3y agoSo 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.
- NoPicklez 3y agoFirstly, 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.
- bsaul 3y agoWould be able to tell that to someone ? I know i wouldn't, i would just feel like shit. Because it is shity. I'd rather have him keep doing silly video and dedicate 10% of his revenues to non-profit, period, no filming, totally anonymously.
- NoPicklez 3y agopeople are blowing this out of proportion. 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.
- teawrecks 3y agoI 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 .
- sokoloff 3y ago> his actions do more good than harm I agree with what you typed there, even though based on the rest of the context, it's probably not what you meant to type.
- 2-718-281-828 3y agomight 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.