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> “I Spent 50 Hours In Ketchup” > In general the more extreme the better. I may be sounding like "get off my lawn" guy right now but should there be some real

• smcl 2y ago
  Maybe more "old man yells at cloud" but I am kinda with you in thinking it's trash. The thing is that every generation has had its own equivalent swill for kids, this one is no different. His channel won't last, there's too much baggage around it, but it'll get replaced with something equally trashy.
  • smsm42 2y ago
    I have a lot of memories in my childhood, but I can't remember anything on this level. Sure, I grew up in a very different environment than the US, but even in the US - say, was there a constant stream of content aimed at kids that is optimized to be maximally extreme and maximally attention-grabbing? All I can remember was cartoons - but were kids spending hours glued to the screen watching cartoons? I surely wasn't.
    • dymax78 2y ago
      Having been a young kid in the 80s, what I recently discovered was the primary concern with parents at the time (because, I genuinely don’t remember) was using those afternoon and Saturday morning cartoons as a vehicle to sell products to kids - a barrage of advertisements. Seems pale in comparison to extreme behavior that potentially endangers others, e.g. deliberately crashing your airplane for views/hits.
    • ThrowawayR2 2y ago
      Don't afterschool cartoons every weekday and several hours of Saturday morning cartoons qualify? IIRC that was the usual habit of children a few decades ago.
    • aniviacat 2y ago
      And such is the age old tale of old people forgetting what they were like when they were children. The younger generation always has been, and always will be, totally so much worse than the older generation.
    • jrflowers 2y ago
      > All I can remember was cartoons - but were kids spending hours glued to the screen watching cartoons? In the US in the past few decades? Yes. Absolutely. Going back to at least the 1990s a kid could watch cartoons before school and then for several hours afterwards on broadcast channels. For households with basic cable there were also very popular networks running all day full of children’s content (Disney Channel, Nickelodeon etc.) These networks were very successful because they excelled at grabbing attention and keeping eyeballs on screens. For one example of these corners of hyper-popular children’s entertainment that kept kids glued to screens before YouTube just look at the works of Dan Schneider. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dan_Schneider https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dan_Schneider
    • bigger_cheese 2y ago
      I would say it depends a lot on environment the children are raised in, I grew up in the 90's my family had one television set in the house (in our families living room) and it was only turned on if someone was watching a program. There was a tv guide which you would consult, if there was nothing you were interested in then tv would never get turned on. My Dad in particular would get annoyed at what he saw as "needlessly flicking between channels". I can remember visiting friends houses where there would be multiple television sets (including tv sets in bedrooms) and television would always be turned on, even if no one was watching it. It was like a constant low level background noise. I found it strange but it was normal to them, they were used to eating dinner or playing with legos etc with tv constantly on in the background.
    • tpmoney 2y ago
      > but even in the US - say, was there a constant stream of content aimed at kids that is optimized to be maximally extreme and maximally attention-grabbing? Depends on your era. The 90's gave us Beavis and Butthead, Southpark, Ren & Stimpy and the Power Rangers. It gave us XTREME!!! everything. It gave us Mortal Kombat and AOL. There was a lot of parental concern about the stuff the "kids these days" were consuming. The 80's gave us Transformers or Voltron. It gave us MTV and the rise of Nickelodeon. It gave us GI Joe cartoons, He-Man, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and an endless supply of toys imported from japan and accompanied by 30 minute commercials for those toys (see also Transformers, Voltron, He-Man etc). There was a lot of parental concern about the stuff the "kids these days" were consuming, heck they got the federal government involved they were so concerned. Bugs Bunny and Looney Tunes had people concerned for its mindless violence and effect on kids. Remember that Mr. Rogers started his show (and pitched continued funding for PBS to congress) on the concerns that TV was just mindless dreck rotting children's brains. Start going much earlier than that and the ability of entertainment to be just broadcast into your life and home reduces considerably, but I imagine parents in the 1800's also had plenty of concerns about various mindless entertainment drivel that was luring their children off the godly paths.
  • sensanaty 2y ago
    I'm only 26 and I'm also perhaps falling into the "old man yells at clouds" thing, but this feels different to me. Not Mr Beast by himself perhaps (never watched anything he's made), but just in general the kind of content that is being pushed to kids algorithmically is insane to me. Watching my nephews grow up, I'm sort of gobsmacked about what my sisters are allowing them to watch. It's quite literally brainrot, I genuinely think what they watch is actively detrimental to their mental health and intelligence, especially since they're all below 10. It's just constant stimulation every single millisecond with no room to breathe, filled with random sound effects and noises constantly, while the "plot" is always some nonsensical crap. The minecraft ones are the absolute worst for this, and to me the saddest thing is they'd rather watch some brainrotting machinima-style thing rather than play the damn game themselves. As a side note, reading this comment back I'd like to formally apologize to my parents, because it seems I've turned into them and saying the exact same things they said about my hobbies :)
• tqi 2y ago
  I think it's worth reflecting on why you feel that way. I don't see how other people are spending their time is something I need to push back on...
• juunpp 2y ago
  > I am not calling for government intervention or any of such BS Why is this BS? It wouldn't be unheard of to pass stricter age restriction laws so that at least the kids are not so easily exposed to brain damage. Same thing with the drugs you mentioned.
  • mardifoufs 2y ago
    Yes, but there's a difference between drugs and this. The lack of evidence that they are the same or even similar for example.
    • wingworks 2y ago
      Also, would govt stepping in even help? We all know where that led to with the "war on drugs" in the US. I think there is no simple/easy fix. My view is, you need to educate parents (backed by solid peer reviewed etc studies), and give them the tools (and free time) to help their kids. Most parents I know are too busy working to put food on the table to spend time encouraging their kids not to watch trash tv/youtube.
  • smsm42 2y ago
    > Why is this BS? Because the cure would be way worse than the disease. Both parties don't have my best interest in mind, but only one party has the power to ruin my life. I am not inclined to add to that power any more that it is absolutely necessary. And we're so far beyond that point that any addition at this point is extremely suspect.
• jrflowers 2y ago
  I like the idea that entertainment made for broad appeal is an existential threat to society worthy of comparison to drugs that kill hundreds of thousands of people per year. People have been appealing to the lowest common denominator for forever and yet the world soldiers on. Your larger question of “why haven’t they made things I don’t personally find appealing illegal yet?” is worthy of exploration, though I don’t think many posters here are in a position to dig into it deeply for you
  • llamaimperative 2y ago
    Meh, we don't know what the counterfactual of a different media environment would be. For example, it seems not-even-crazy to believe that media's addictiveness has played a major role in sedentary lifestyles which in turn is a major contributor to several of the top causes-of-death in the developed world (far greater than drugs).
  • smsm42 2y ago
    It's not just "broad appeal". Shakespeare plays were made for broad appeal (he was a professional playwright, after all). Mozart's music was made for the broad appeal. I see nothing wrong with the broad appeal. It's what this appeal is made to and how. Humans have a lot of ways to appeal to them, and this particular way of appealing targets very base very addictive psychological mechanisms that ultimately hurt the person - just like addictive substances do. They don't make the users better or smarter or calmer or anything like that - if anything, they make them dumber and more attention-deficient. That's my problem with it. > why haven’t they made things I don’t personally find appealing illegal yet You are not good at reading, are you? I specifically said "I am not calling for government intervention or any of such BS" because I knew you are around and you are going to maliciously misunderstand me. But I guess the joke is on me since you didn't even bother to read that part.
    • Aidevah 2y ago
      >Shakespeare plays were made for broad appeal (he was a professional playwright, after all). Mozart's music was made for the broad appeal. This statement is misleading because the broad appeal of both Shakespeare and Mozart today is the culmination of centuries of attempts to understand (and misunderstand) them. Calculus can be taught to high schoolers nowadays, but how many scientists in Newton's days could understand the Principia in its entirety? Not to mention that Shakespeare and Mozart were both able to produce works of the highest sophistication that leaves most of their contemporaries (and many today) baffled. Harold Bloom wrote that the sophisticated word play in Love's Labour's Lost was not surpassed until Joyce, and Mozart's contemporaries complained endlessly about the complex textures in his opera finales. When Mozart wrote piano trios for the public, his publisher cancelled the series after two pieces because they were judged far too difficult for the masses, and when Mozart intended to write some easy piano sonatas at the end of his life, the first (the only one he completed) turned out to be the most difficult he ever wrote. Invoking the popularity of Shakespeare or Mozart as analogues to Mr Beast reveals a fundamental misunderstanding of the longevity of both Shakespeare or Mozart, and leaves unmentioned the extensive body of difficult works on which their reputation rests today.
• tgsovlerkhgsel 2y ago
  Is it shallow entertainment? Sure. But sometimes you want to eat a soggy kebap and not a Michelin-star gourmet meal, and that's fine too (and I can't stand people who malign what other people enjoy because it's "not pure enough").
  • smsm42 2y ago
    Sometimes? Sure. All the time? You'd likely to hurt yourself pretty badly doing that, eventually (and maybe sooner than you'd realize). Nutrition-wise, I think, people starting to understand that. Information-wise, not so much.
    • paulcole 2y ago
      Do you think you should go to a Michelin starred restaurant every night?
      • pawelmurias 2y ago
        Been only to one but it had decent food that you could eat ever day.
        • Uhhrrr 2y ago
          The couple I've been to were pretty rich; I don't think you'd actually want to go there every day. Example: a dish at Chez Panisse which had an inordinate amount of duck fat. Delicious, but...
      • smsm42 2y ago
        I think there are many options between pink slime and Michelin three stars. I have never been in Michelin restaurant, and I don't eat in pink slime ones, but I never felt I am lacking options for food service. The middle road is extremely wide, you don't have to go to the sides.
  • deleted 2y ago
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• throw10920 2y ago
  I don't know what subculture you're living in, but in several of mine there absolutely is pushback against this, with people avoiding consuming this kind of content and trying to prevent their children from consuming it, too. Now, the question why the larger US (or English-speaking) culture isn't uniformly doing the same is much more interesting, but there's no known reason for this and most of the common explanations are both somewhat political, and not backed up by much evidence, so discussion often degenerates to talking about why your theory is more plausible. I wish we knew.
  • userbinator 2y ago
    IMHO it's quite divisive; there's a significant percentage of the population that's addicted to this sort of content, and there's another which actually finds it boring. I've watched a few MrBeast videos and similar content, out of curiosity. It just does not appeal to me, in the same way that "influencer" content and celebrities don't.
    • steve_adams_86 2y ago
      It’s boring in part because it’s so blatantly formulated and packed up to be something that, for lack of better explanation, shouldn’t be formulated or packaged. It’s like going to the store to buy fun. It doesn’t work that way. Excitement and wonder occur organically and typically in real life, and at the very least as the product of something truly awesome. In the case of Mr Beast, it seems like the ostensible happiness and excitement of the crew and contestants is combined with money to convince viewers something really great is happening. But it’s simply not. It’s vapid and fluffy, and really loud and obnoxious. But I also feel a bit like Mr Skinner wondering if I’m out of touch. Yet… This stuff probably would have weirded me out as a teenager, too.
    • throw10920 2y ago
      Your acute observation that a large number of people find MrBeast content boring suggests part of the reason why there isn't more cultural pushback to it - because lots of people simply don't care about it.
    • 2y ago
• tpmoney 2y ago
  I get the feeling, but at the same time, this feels like normal culture gaps. I don't get "sponge bob square pants" but there are people out that that insist it was if not a pinnacle of animation entertainment, then a hugely creative and entertaining show that deserves its place in the pantheons of animation. And all those huge 80's era properties that so many have years of nostalgic memories of, like transformers, he-man or voltron were all "cynical cash grabs" and 30 minute commercials for toys. So much so the concerned parents of the time demanded the government step in. Now the jury might be out on whether that generation is worse than previous generations, but if they are I don't think it's going to be because transformers was a toy marketing gimmick instead of high art with a strong moral message. Kids I know find all sorts of things ridiculously amusing and entertaining and it all seems stupid, brainless and mind rotting to me. But then again, the stuff I found ridiculously amusing and entertaining at that age was (I can attest, having gone back and watched some of it) was just as stupid, brainless and mind rotting. Some of it is not having a "sufficiently developed palette" for humor and entertainment. Some of it is because that humor and entertainment was genuinely new to me at the time, where as now I've seen it before so when it shows up in the kids stuff, it's not entertaining anymore. It's sort of the reverse of the "Seinfeld isn't funny" issue. We're not looking at something in the past and wondering why it was so great because it's been out shadowed by what it inspired. Instead we're looking at something from today and wondering why it's entertaining because we've been entertained in the same way in the past.
  • culebron21 2y ago
    Can't agree more. 10 years ago I looked up transformers uploaded to YouTube, and they couldn't stand the nostalgia test. Plots are primitive, characters are flat. It made me actually recall that by 13 years, I started feeling little embarrassment watching them because of thqe plot itself. Apart from that, what surprised me was that it had vibes of 1950s: watercolor still images, and the music score not with analog synths (that we'd expect from the '80-s), but a (small) orchestra with TRUMPETS leading. (This was the biggest '50s factor for me.)
• helloplanets 2y ago
  Wasn't Fear Factor this exact same concept already, twenty years ago?
  • kalleboo 2y ago
    And just reality TV in general. His "Girls vs Boys" stunt is just a budget version of Big Brother, Survivor, etc.
• j_timberlake 2y ago
  Most hobbies are just as dumb when you think about it. Sports = watching grown men play with balls, Games = giving yourself unnecessary problems to solve, TV/Reading = learning (usually) completely useless information
  • FrozenSynapse 2y ago
    watching sports is entertaining as you're watching highly skilled individuals perform at the highest level + gives you a sense of belonging; games - entertainment and skill development, whether those are multiplayer games that teach you cooperation and competition, or single-player games that is fun and in a lot of cases learning (through lore), developing motor skills, strategic thinking and so on; tv/reading - learning (nothing is useless information, it helps create more connections in your brain); yet, sitting in ketchup is brainrot content - 0 value
    • xandrius 2y ago
      To be fair, watching sports is absolutely also brainrot for people not enjoying it.
    • grecy 2y ago
      Watching sports is literally watching other people live their dream…. While you do not.
    • qingcharles 2y ago
      I'd literally prefer to watch MrBeast sit in ketchup for 50 hours than watch an NFL game.
  • yard2010 2y ago
    What do you mean unnecessary, I saved king Casimir twice, random people at the tavern are talking about it every single day.
• DaoVeles 2y ago
  Maybe a little sprinkling of PT Barnum in there as well?
• yard2010 2y ago
  I am that get of my lawn guy, no shame. You are 100% correct and I do call for bs like government intervention, as the lesser evil, ofc. See what happened with tobacco. IMO it's the same.
• wtk 2y ago
  On another hand it's a point of turning for all those that dismiss it like yourselves. Maybe culture needs this so all "bad curiosities" are catered for, so it can serve as a base for more ambitious next steps.
• podgorniy 2y ago
  > They are making a good living from making things objectively worse in a society by tickling the base instincts of the addicts Looking at this phrase in isolation is such a fun. There are whole industries which work exactly like this (food, news, games, politics). These particular people aren't the cause, they are one of many many symptoms of the causes. Causes are in rules, norms and incentives of the social and economical systems. We can't solve the problem at the leve at which it was created. These videomakers aren't even close to that level. > but is it too much for me to expect at least some cultural pushback here? And they are getting it. Which is not enough for a change, as "benefits" they are getting are way greater. Main driving forces behind the phenomena is rooted somwhere else, not in space of scope this type of conversations (moral, value, human-centric or achievement-centric aspects).