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He isn’t genuine. In his origin story you’ll notice he talks about trying lots of different strategies to maximize his views and engagement. That’s his only rea
by iamleppert 3y ago
He isn’t genuine. In his origin story you’ll notice he talks about trying lots of different strategies to maximize his views and engagement. That’s his only real goal. He stumbled upon his current formula by accident after significant iteration.
It strikes me that he could have just as easily be producing any kind of harmful content if the rules of what’s acceptable to society and YouTube were different. It just so happens that in his case the content is self-reinforcing and easily defensible.
He is the same as the people who film themselves giving flowers to lonely elderly people. Such people do not feel good about doing good acts because of the actual act, they crave the attention and praise that doing good often brings, and they need it in great quantity.
The act itself is just a vehicle for vulnerable narcissism and wouldn’t exist or have been done in the first place without these outlier personality traits enormous investment.
- _9omd 3y agoBut if he’s honest in telling his origin story about figuring out how to optimally drive engagement, doesn’t that actually make him genuine? There’s no lie here. He’s upfront about how he’s optimizing content for views and using profits to drive further content, grow the business, and donate to charity. I don’t really find his content very interesting, but he seems like a decent guy and you can definitely make an argument he’s doing some good in the world.
- iamleppert 3y agoIt may make him honest but he doesn’t deserve the type of praise people give to him. He never set out to help people, that isn’t the root of his motivation, and never has been. He is motivated to create content that gets a lot of views and “wins YouTube”. The content isn’t the point in his mind, it’s getting as many views as possible. So that’s what I mean when I say he isn’t genuine, because the content is only there to get the views, and he’s only doing it because it’s what works.
- chrisbolt 3y ago> He stumbled upon his current formula by accident after significant iteration. Wouldn't many people call this "learning"?
- ayewo 3y agoIn this context, I’d probably just call it “experimentation”.
- HDThoreaun 3y agoSo what if he’s not genuine? He makes viewers happy. The contestants come out happy. Why does it matter if he’s doing it to enrich himself? The difference between the flower TikTok’s is that the contestants in his video signed up for it.
- mkaic 3y agoThe way I see it, if those lonely elderly people's days are brightened by being given a flower, who cares what the intentions of the flower-giver were?
- kcb 3y agoBecause once they realize their supposed misery was exploited to make the stranger $10,000 it will probably not feel great.
- Dig1t 3y agoAlso, what if the viewers of the video also had their day brightened by seeing someone being nice? No wonder negativity bias is such a thing in media, not only do negative doom-and-gloom articles get more views, but positivity is actively scorned.
- jerojero 3y agoThis is a very utilitarian way of viewing the world. Under other philosophical frameworks, intentions do matter, not just consequences. For a deontologist, for example, thinking of Kant's categorical imperative. My point here is that "who cares what the intentions are" is not really, at all, such an obvious thing. And there's a wealth of philosophy that's non-consequentialist. I honestly invite you to read a bit more on these kinds of ideas because they might genuinely give you a new perspective on morality.
- idank 3y agoOn a micro scale it's a nice gesture, macro wise it could be seen as inauthentic and meaningless. There's a comparison to be made to choosing to stay in the matrix or unplug yourself from the illusion.
- jjcon 3y agoBy that logic no one should ever do something nice because it doesn’t register at the macro scale. That’s ridiculous and a very dark and distorted way to view the world