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MrBeast's Faux Philanthropy

108 points by elsewhen 2y ago

electriclove 2y ago
Wow, this guy sure hates Mr Beast. I haven’t seen much but I did see the one where he created 100 wells. The author says these wells will fail soon and do not get repaired or maintained. I think the reasoning is ridiculous. Shame someone for digging a well because it might not be repaired in the future????
- michaelmior 2y ago
  There's also been a number of analyses that suggest he was lying about the number and location of the wells.
  - M4v3R 2y ago
    There was one video from a disgruntled ex employee, who just noticed that in the video footage some wells are missing/duplicated. That does not prove he didn’t build them. It's only one of the possible reasons. The other possible reason is the footage for these wells might've been damaged or missing so they had to go with what they had. Now don't get me wrong, some of the stuff he's being accused to has much more merit, for example in one video he showed a dilapidated hospital that he claimed to rebuild from scratch, but other footage revealed that the hospital was in fact in much better condition initially. So he's basically trying to make it look like he's doing more than in reality, and that's definitely something that needs to be called out.
    - michaelmior 2y ago
      There are many plausible reasons to be sure, but I think in those cases, it would have been much better to do actually explain what happened than effectively lie. (It may have been a lie with no real ill intent, but still a lie.)
- decremental 2y ago
  [dead]
- alwa 2y ago
  I feel like part of the author’s point was that the well-digging thing is a long and tired example of attention-hungry rich outsiders prancing in to “fix things” and not caring about (or considering) the long-term consequences of their ideas. Even the really good development organizations are constantly learning lessons about unintended second- and third-order consequences: it’s particularly cynical, then, to make a spectacle out of doing the naive thing that seems obvious but that we already know doesn’t really work well. Doing something pointless with your lavish resources is insulting when, with the same resources and the humility to study what works and ask for good advice, you (or the local population) could instead have done something sustainable. It’s putting your ego and your public profile ahead of the very real material needs whose egregiousness you’re profiting from. It’s bad enough when it’s nonprofits just making their (sometimes lavish) salaries off the pointlessness. In this case, the man has made a career out of directly turning people’s disability and economic disadvantage and suffering into his primary product that he profits from. His $750-million company got that way entirely by exploiting people’s misery for views and profit. By selling the idea that the problems aren’t all that real, that all it takes is a rich dude with a magic wand and some righteousness. “Fixing” 100 people’s problems and pretending you fixed a society’s worth. And his little treatise that leaked a few weeks back makes his logic explicit: do the minimum to sound flashy. > He argues that it is far cheaper and funnier to offer a prize of five packs of Doritos a day instead of $20,000. Then one section asks “What is the goal of our content” before replying “the goal of our content is to excite me”. At least an evil capitalist WellCorp, Inc. would have to dig wells that keep working after the camera crew leaves, if it wanted to stay in business for very long!
  - boxed 2y ago
    > Doing something pointless with your lavish resources is insulting when, with the same resources and the humility to study what works and ask for good advice, you (or the local population) could instead have done something sustainable. That seems like a false dichotomy no? The article is specifically about MrBeast, who would NOT have "lavish resources" if he did what you propose. The stunt nature of the work IS the income stream. I think it's more reasonable to ask if he's just creating short term gains, or making things worse. I would guess the former. Which is honestly better than the alternative which is he does cruel prank videos with the same budget.
- stackghost 2y ago
  It's the same phenomenon as the What Three Words thing. The pitch was that it would solve commerce because in parts of the world they don't have "proper" street addresses. Or the Three Cups of Tea guy. His foundation had a bunch of schools built in the Himalayas, ostensibly to educate girls, but many of those schools were empty or used to store grain shortly after being built, and less than half of the funds he raised actually went to building "schools". Just another outsider who thinks they know better.
decremental 2y ago
[dead]
waynecochran 2y ago
I can’t believe the hate out there for guys like Mr Beast and Elon. The best gets crucified.
- happytoexplain 2y ago
  It's beneficial to try to keep the concepts of "can't believe" and "disagree with" separate in your head.
- willcipriano 2y ago
  "Thousands of years ago, the first man discovered how to make fire. He was probably burned at the stake he had taught his brothers to light."
- The_Colonel 2y ago
  People with a lot of power deserve extraordinary scrutiny.
  - ekianjo 2y ago
    So when do we scrutinize politicians next?
    - left-struck 2y ago
      Politicians in democratic countries are inevitably hated by roughly half the people, and that’s if they are popular!
    - simonw 2y ago
      Are you suggesting powerful politicians don't get scrutinized?
      - ekianjo 2y ago
        Not really. Do you see many of them go to prison? Because statistically some should.
    - 2y ago
MisterKent 2y ago
There's another comment referring to Elon. I'll leave that aside, but I think the same analysis can be done for him. Clearly the population is split on wether or not intent matters when it comes to philanthropy. Some people say, it is only respectable if you're doing it out of the goodness of your heart, not for some ulterior motive (like repairing/boosting your image). On the other side, you could argue that the majority of philanthropy is done for image improvement, and without that benefit millions of people would be left without help. Hoping for "true altruists" to save us is probably never going to work. True altruists that can gain enough power and resources to make a difference is a paradox. I need 10 billion dollars before meaningful impact happens (random number, but the point stands _a lot of money_). That's more money that any altruistic person would ever get to, since they'd start donating at the 100million or less mark. The closest we have to a true altruistic person with power is someone like Mackenzie Bezos. No derision here, but she didn't have "what it takes" to get there, but she does have the desire to help. Which is also why we don't hear much about her donations, compared I Mr. Beast, despite her giving orders of magnitude more money away. And more correctly. Then, we could look one level higher, how do these people acquire their wealth? Clearly selling garbage food to kids, creating fake giveaway videos, and other things isn't exactly helping the world along the way. Making electric cars cool / hip? That's pretty good. Embrace, extend, extinguish? Terrible. Holistically, Mr. Beast is earning his money off of children and "legal scams". Then, fixing his reputation by donation pennies on the dollar of that back to the world. Overall, probably not a great person. Couple that with how conscious he is of what he's doing based on various leaks, and is say definitely not someone I'd categorize as deserving of any adulation. Obviously not actively evil, but definitely overall harmful to society in his pursuit of fame and wealth. Aside: how isn't this titled "MrBeast's Faux-lanthropy"?
- neom 2y ago
  Do you think also part of it is that to amass that amount of wealth is to extract that much money, I wonder how many "true altruists" would even play that game to begin with?
  - _factor 2y ago
    How is value created? Every accumulation of wealth is countered by an equal loss of wealth somewhere else. If you’re in a service industry and devise a process that saves $20 per transaction for a customer, then charge $10 for it, you’re making $10 per transaction in efficiency gains. So that compensates and is still altruistic. Not all businesses work this way of course, but there are ways of extracting wealth without leaving the other side worse off.
neom 2y ago
From the rich people I know their philanthropy seems to fall into one of two buckets. allaying guilt, or, make more money.
- throwaway2413 2y ago
  Not sure how big of a minority we are, but for some of us, philanthropy does actually come from a place of deep gratitude for our community
  - toomuchtodo 2y ago
    I don’t care about the idea of community, I just want the people I interact with to suffer less. That’s what the money is for.
- notpushkin 2y ago
  Why not both!
  - neom 2y ago
    honestly... I didn't put or both because I was lazy to think through if "one of three buckets" was the right way to phrase it, and additionally, too lazy to think of another way to phrase it, so yeah, or both. :P
- schiffern 2y ago
  > allaying guilt We all know the mere act of being rich makes someone guilty, so that's a tautology.
- rowanG077 2y ago
  I think you can make a very convincing argument ALL philanthropy falls into either category. That doesn't it make it bad either. If someone does something that helps other it doesn't really matter in the end why they did it.
whoknowsidont 2y ago
I would highly recommend a book that covers the business and motivations behind a lot of philanthropy: https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/539747/winners-take-all-by-anand-giridharadas/ https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/539747/winners-take... MrBeast is unfortunately just one part of this. And he's not even the worst offender sadly.
- moralestapia 2y ago
  Can you give a summary of what is it about?
  - IncreasePosts 2y ago
    [flagged]
    - huimang 2y ago
      If you don't know or are unsure about something, you can simply not comment and leave it for someone else. I don't understand what compels people to go "I don't know, but let me ask the often-wrong-bullshit-generator" and post it as a reply on a forum. The parent commenter could've done that...
      - IncreasePosts 2y ago
        The parent commenter could have also found a summary themselves. The parent commenter made a lazy post, and so did I in response.
        pavel_lishin 2y ago
        Do you think your lazy response improved things overall?
        IncreasePosts 2y ago
        Actually, yes. The summary is plausible enough to believe in the context of the discussion(which it doesn't know about via the prompt), and in fact turns out to be basically true.
imaginationra 2y ago
With that weirdos fake ass forced smile- I imagine in years to come there will be many more articles like this one about this boring androids dark side.
xbmcuser 2y ago
Is it really Faux Philanthropy what he is doing is using his platform for promotion of different causes he likes. From what I understand and see none of the things he has done are something unique rather charities and organisations were already doing it he just financed/donated to those organisations and charities. The awareness these organisations and charities received from the video are probably actually worth a lot more than what him doing in his video.
- talldayo 2y ago
  > Is it really Faux Philanthropy what he is doing is using his platform for promotion of different causes he likes. Kinda? There's a thin line between donating food to a homeless shelter and setting up a camera crew to film a vetted contingent of contestants who have to fight in potentially dangerous conditions where Beast Ltd. cannot be held accountable for injuries. One is selfless - the other is petty exploitation. It feels very clear where "the line" is here. I guess you could argue that Mr. Beast has an incentive to set up these things to maximize profit so he can "donate more to charity" (cough cough buy cars and houses). But at the end of the day the publicity alone is enough to argue that he's exploiting the people involved - the additional ad revenue and inherent high-performance incentive of his work makes it hard to call the whole thing charity. Maybe gambling or, at the most absolute generous, a "game" show.
  - mikeyouse 2y ago
    That whole line of thought where you can justify immoral acts because you'll donate some of the proceeds is just shitty Effective Altruism with better PR. Really wish we'd stop celebrating that particular line.
  - xbmcuser 2y ago
    What has his game show or other videos have anything to do about his philanthropy videos.
  - evoke4908 2y ago
    No, no, game show is probably right. It's a game show where the contestants are poor and the prize is basic necessities. Staged for the entertainment (and ad revinue) of the less-poor because it makes a number go up slightly in one of the wealthiest companies in history.
hahahacorn 2y ago
There’s a heuristic in here somewhere regarding philanthropy & first principles. I respect the authors commitment to showing how MrBeasts philanthropy can be ineffective if not counter productive. But, in his stated intentions of getting google admoney and redistributing it to people in need, what else is he supposed to do? We can agree to disagree that this itself is a bad premise. What I’m really interested in is knowing what the Beast Philanthrophy has to say about these things. Are they aware that 6/10 wells are in disrepair in some parts? Are they willing to invisibly commit funds to future maintenance? How does Beast Philanthropy vet orphanages to ensure they’re not the mentioned “farms”? On the hierarchy of benevolent individuals in this example we have: 1. Rich People Philanthrophy with the intent of helping the less fortunate 2. Journalists stating 1 is inefficient for X, Y, Z, and working with 1 to improve the efficacy of their philanthropy, with the intent of helping the less fortunate 3. Rich People Philanthrophy with the intent of improving their own self image 4. Journalists writing about 1 or 3 with the intent of making them look bad instead of improving outcomes for those in need.
- throwaway48476 2y ago
  There's also a heuristic for people whose smile doesn't reach the eyes.
- aimazon 2y ago
  Many of the philanthropy videos are either manipulated or outright frauds. If you state your aim is to earn a million dollars to spend a million dollars on philanthropy and then after earning the million dollars you spend half a million dollars on philanthropy, the half a million spend is not a great philanthropic gift, it does not justify misappropriating the other half. Philanthropy as a shield is a strategy as old as time. We can forgive people for failing to meet their stated aims if they failed due to naivety following an earnest attempt. Can we forgive people for failing to meet their stated aims wilfully? The premise of your position is that philanthropy is always a net good, but that isn't true: philanthropy can be harmful. Homelessness is the easiest example to think about, where half-baked philanthropic efforts can have immediate harmful consequences, as we see time and time again.
- pkphilip 2y ago
TheRealPomax 2y ago
Phauxlantropy. Why pass up that opportunity.
dyauspitr 2y ago
How is it faux if he’s giving away a lot of money for pretty objectively good things?
stonethrowaway 2y ago
[flagged]
- runeblaze 2y ago
  Half jokingly, MrBeast is a decent source of learning other languages given (1) how children friendly the contents are, and (2) how many dubs/subs the videos have. I particularly like the Takeuchi Junko Japanese dub.
- morgansmolder 2y ago
  He hacked the YouTube algorithm and went from 0 to a super millionaire. You might not like the guy, but there are plenty of hacker centric lenses through which to view his story
cryptica 2y ago
Philanthropy never works. Philanthropy requires large amounts of money. Only the monetary Ponzi yields that kind of money. So effectively, philanthropy is funded using the proceeds of theft. It's about diffusing harm to all and concentrating the benefits towards a select few.
tgsovlerkhgsel 2y ago
The article seems to be one of the popular "let's shit on a successful person out of envy" articles with little substance behind it. It primarily raises generic concerns about these kinds of projects, without linking them to these specific projects, after some generic mud-slinging starting with "racist comments made as a teenager" and a very careful wording of "teen grooming allegations" that may leave readers thinking that Donaldson (MrBeast) was accused of grooming a co-host rather than what actually happened (the now-dismissed co-host being accused of grooming). The well video doesn't mention it but the project site does mention sustainable maintenance of the wells. Of course, this could be either a serious and effective effort or a bit of text on a web site, but the article doesn't try to distinguish that either, it just assumes the worst.
- FireBeyond 2y ago
  > The article seems to be one of the popular "let's shit on a successful person out of envy" articles with little substance behind it. How much substance do you think is here? https://news3lv.com/news/local/las-vegas-staff-say-mrbeast-should-be-blacklisted-cite-osha-setting-medics-for-failure https://news3lv.com/news/local/las-vegas-staff-say-mrbeast-s...
  - rowanG077 2y ago
    There is a difference between shitting on someone because of hard facts and shitting on someone because of vague rumors and popular opinion. The article is obviously in the latter category.
outlore 2y ago
I remember that video where Mr Beast paid for cataract surgery for a few dozen people and restored their sight. Regardless of intent, that was an immediate and material benefit to many people. It’s fair to question the motives of altruists, especially those who rely on extravagant public shows to pull viewership. But more eyeballs means more ad revenue, which means the altruism experiments can continue. If this is the most efficient, targeted model for altruism, then I’ll take it. Side note, the Mr Beast handbook is an interesting read https://www.slideshare.net/slideshow/how-to-succeed-at-mrbeast-production-handbook/271808765 https://www.slideshare.net/slideshow/how-to-succeed-at-mrbea...
tiahura 2y ago
"His stunts promote the concept of simplistic solutions to challenging problems, wrapping the munificent American donor in a warm glow of benevolence as he drops in to spread a little of his MrBeast largesse to some lucky recipients." A grown adult man really wrote this.

108 points by elsewhen 2y ago

Wow, this guy sure hates Mr Beast. I haven’t seen much but I did see the one where he created 100 wells. The author says these wells will fail soon and do not get repaired or maintained. I think the reasoning is ridiculous. Shame someone for digging a well because it might not be repaired in the future????

michaelmior 2y ago
There's also been a number of analyses that suggest he was lying about the number and location of the wells.
- M4v3R 2y ago
  There was one video from a disgruntled ex employee, who just noticed that in the video footage some wells are missing/duplicated. That does not prove he didn’t build them. It's only one of the possible reasons. The other possible reason is the footage for these wells might've been damaged or missing so they had to go with what they had. Now don't get me wrong, some of the stuff he's being accused to has much more merit, for example in one video he showed a dilapidated hospital that he claimed to rebuild from scratch, but other footage revealed that the hospital was in fact in much better condition initially. So he's basically trying to make it look like he's doing more than in reality, and that's definitely something that needs to be called out.
  - michaelmior 2y ago
    There are many plausible reasons to be sure, but I think in those cases, it would have been much better to do actually explain what happened than effectively lie. (It may have been a lie with no real ill intent, but still a lie.)
decremental 2y ago
[dead]
alwa 2y ago
I feel like part of the author’s point was that the well-digging thing is a long and tired example of attention-hungry rich outsiders prancing in to “fix things” and not caring about (or considering) the long-term consequences of their ideas. Even the really good development organizations are constantly learning lessons about unintended second- and third-order consequences: it’s particularly cynical, then, to make a spectacle out of doing the naive thing that seems obvious but that we already know doesn’t really work well. Doing something pointless with your lavish resources is insulting when, with the same resources and the humility to study what works and ask for good advice, you (or the local population) could instead have done something sustainable. It’s putting your ego and your public profile ahead of the very real material needs whose egregiousness you’re profiting from. It’s bad enough when it’s nonprofits just making their (sometimes lavish) salaries off the pointlessness. In this case, the man has made a career out of directly turning people’s disability and economic disadvantage and suffering into his primary product that he profits from. His $750-million company got that way entirely by exploiting people’s misery for views and profit. By selling the idea that the problems aren’t all that real, that all it takes is a rich dude with a magic wand and some righteousness. “Fixing” 100 people’s problems and pretending you fixed a society’s worth. And his little treatise that leaked a few weeks back makes his logic explicit: do the minimum to sound flashy. > He argues that it is far cheaper and funnier to offer a prize of five packs of Doritos a day instead of $20,000. Then one section asks “What is the goal of our content” before replying “the goal of our content is to excite me”. At least an evil capitalist WellCorp, Inc. would have to dig wells that keep working after the camera crew leaves, if it wanted to stay in business for very long!
- boxed 2y ago
  > Doing something pointless with your lavish resources is insulting when, with the same resources and the humility to study what works and ask for good advice, you (or the local population) could instead have done something sustainable. That seems like a false dichotomy no? The article is specifically about MrBeast, who would NOT have "lavish resources" if he did what you propose. The stunt nature of the work IS the income stream. I think it's more reasonable to ask if he's just creating short term gains, or making things worse. I would guess the former. Which is honestly better than the alternative which is he does cruel prank videos with the same budget.
stackghost 2y ago
It's the same phenomenon as the What Three Words thing. The pitch was that it would solve commerce because in parts of the world they don't have "proper" street addresses. Or the Three Cups of Tea guy. His foundation had a bunch of schools built in the Himalayas, ostensibly to educate girls, but many of those schools were empty or used to store grain shortly after being built, and less than half of the funds he raised actually went to building "schools". Just another outsider who thinks they know better.

decremental 2y ago

[dead]

waynecochran 2y ago

I can’t believe the hate out there for guys like Mr Beast and Elon. The best gets crucified.

happytoexplain 2y ago
It's beneficial to try to keep the concepts of "can't believe" and "disagree with" separate in your head.
willcipriano 2y ago
"Thousands of years ago, the first man discovered how to make fire. He was probably burned at the stake he had taught his brothers to light."
The_Colonel 2y ago
People with a lot of power deserve extraordinary scrutiny.
- ekianjo 2y ago
  So when do we scrutinize politicians next?
  - left-struck 2y ago
    Politicians in democratic countries are inevitably hated by roughly half the people, and that’s if they are popular!
  - simonw 2y ago
    Are you suggesting powerful politicians don't get scrutinized?
    - ekianjo 2y ago
      Not really. Do you see many of them go to prison? Because statistically some should.
  - 2y ago

MisterKent 2y ago

There's another comment referring to Elon. I'll leave that aside, but I think the same analysis can be done for him. Clearly the population is split on wether or not intent matters when it comes to philanthropy. Some people say, it is only respectable if you're doing it out of the goodness of your heart, not for some ulterior motive (like repairing/boosting your image). On the other side, you could argue that the majority of philanthropy is done for image improvement, and without that benefit millions of people would be left without help. Hoping for "true altruists" to save us is probably never going to work. True altruists that can gain enough power and resources to make a difference is a paradox. I need 10 billion dollars before meaningful impact happens (random number, but the point stands _a lot of money_). That's more money that any altruistic person would ever get to, since they'd start donating at the 100million or less mark. The closest we have to a true altruistic person with power is someone like Mackenzie Bezos. No derision here, but she didn't have "what it takes" to get there, but she does have the desire to help. Which is also why we don't hear much about her donations, compared I Mr. Beast, despite her giving orders of magnitude more money away. And more correctly. Then, we could look one level higher, how do these people acquire their wealth? Clearly selling garbage food to kids, creating fake giveaway videos, and other things isn't exactly helping the world along the way. Making electric cars cool / hip? That's pretty good. Embrace, extend, extinguish? Terrible. Holistically, Mr. Beast is earning his money off of children and "legal scams". Then, fixing his reputation by donation pennies on the dollar of that back to the world. Overall, probably not a great person. Couple that with how conscious he is of what he's doing based on various leaks, and is say definitely not someone I'd categorize as deserving of any adulation. Obviously not actively evil, but definitely overall harmful to society in his pursuit of fame and wealth. Aside: how isn't this titled "MrBeast's Faux-lanthropy"?

neom 2y ago
Do you think also part of it is that to amass that amount of wealth is to extract that much money, I wonder how many "true altruists" would even play that game to begin with?
- _factor 2y ago
  How is value created? Every accumulation of wealth is countered by an equal loss of wealth somewhere else. If you’re in a service industry and devise a process that saves $20 per transaction for a customer, then charge $10 for it, you’re making $10 per transaction in efficiency gains. So that compensates and is still altruistic. Not all businesses work this way of course, but there are ways of extracting wealth without leaving the other side worse off.

neom 2y ago

From the rich people I know their philanthropy seems to fall into one of two buckets. allaying guilt, or, make more money.

throwaway2413 2y ago
Not sure how big of a minority we are, but for some of us, philanthropy does actually come from a place of deep gratitude for our community
- toomuchtodo 2y ago
  I don’t care about the idea of community, I just want the people I interact with to suffer less. That’s what the money is for.
notpushkin 2y ago
Why not both!
- neom 2y ago
  honestly... I didn't put or both because I was lazy to think through if "one of three buckets" was the right way to phrase it, and additionally, too lazy to think of another way to phrase it, so yeah, or both. :P
schiffern 2y ago
> allaying guilt We all know the mere act of being rich makes someone guilty, so that's a tautology.
rowanG077 2y ago
I think you can make a very convincing argument ALL philanthropy falls into either category. That doesn't it make it bad either. If someone does something that helps other it doesn't really matter in the end why they did it.

whoknowsidont 2y ago

I would highly recommend a book that covers the business and motivations behind a lot of philanthropy: https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/539747/winners-take-all-by-anand-giridharadas/ https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/539747/winners-take... MrBeast is unfortunately just one part of this. And he's not even the worst offender sadly.

moralestapia 2y ago
Can you give a summary of what is it about?
- IncreasePosts 2y ago
  [flagged]
  - huimang 2y ago
    If you don't know or are unsure about something, you can simply not comment and leave it for someone else. I don't understand what compels people to go "I don't know, but let me ask the often-wrong-bullshit-generator" and post it as a reply on a forum. The parent commenter could've done that...
    - IncreasePosts 2y ago
      The parent commenter could have also found a summary themselves. The parent commenter made a lazy post, and so did I in response.
      - pavel_lishin 2y ago
        Do you think your lazy response improved things overall?
        IncreasePosts 2y ago
        Actually, yes. The summary is plausible enough to believe in the context of the discussion(which it doesn't know about via the prompt), and in fact turns out to be basically true.

imaginationra 2y ago

With that weirdos fake ass forced smile- I imagine in years to come there will be many more articles like this one about this boring androids dark side.

xbmcuser 2y ago

Is it really Faux Philanthropy what he is doing is using his platform for promotion of different causes he likes. From what I understand and see none of the things he has done are something unique rather charities and organisations were already doing it he just financed/donated to those organisations and charities. The awareness these organisations and charities received from the video are probably actually worth a lot more than what him doing in his video.

talldayo 2y ago
> Is it really Faux Philanthropy what he is doing is using his platform for promotion of different causes he likes. Kinda? There's a thin line between donating food to a homeless shelter and setting up a camera crew to film a vetted contingent of contestants who have to fight in potentially dangerous conditions where Beast Ltd. cannot be held accountable for injuries. One is selfless - the other is petty exploitation. It feels very clear where "the line" is here. I guess you could argue that Mr. Beast has an incentive to set up these things to maximize profit so he can "donate more to charity" (cough cough buy cars and houses). But at the end of the day the publicity alone is enough to argue that he's exploiting the people involved - the additional ad revenue and inherent high-performance incentive of his work makes it hard to call the whole thing charity. Maybe gambling or, at the most absolute generous, a "game" show.
- mikeyouse 2y ago
  That whole line of thought where you can justify immoral acts because you'll donate some of the proceeds is just shitty Effective Altruism with better PR. Really wish we'd stop celebrating that particular line.
- xbmcuser 2y ago
  What has his game show or other videos have anything to do about his philanthropy videos.
- evoke4908 2y ago
  No, no, game show is probably right. It's a game show where the contestants are poor and the prize is basic necessities. Staged for the entertainment (and ad revinue) of the less-poor because it makes a number go up slightly in one of the wealthiest companies in history.

hahahacorn 2y ago

There’s a heuristic in here somewhere regarding philanthropy & first principles. I respect the authors commitment to showing how MrBeasts philanthropy can be ineffective if not counter productive. But, in his stated intentions of getting google admoney and redistributing it to people in need, what else is he supposed to do? We can agree to disagree that this itself is a bad premise. What I’m really interested in is knowing what the Beast Philanthrophy has to say about these things. Are they aware that 6/10 wells are in disrepair in some parts? Are they willing to invisibly commit funds to future maintenance? How does Beast Philanthropy vet orphanages to ensure they’re not the mentioned “farms”? On the hierarchy of benevolent individuals in this example we have: 1. Rich People Philanthrophy with the intent of helping the less fortunate 2. Journalists stating 1 is inefficient for X, Y, Z, and working with 1 to improve the efficacy of their philanthropy, with the intent of helping the less fortunate 3. Rich People Philanthrophy with the intent of improving their own self image 4. Journalists writing about 1 or 3 with the intent of making them look bad instead of improving outcomes for those in need.

throwaway48476 2y ago
There's also a heuristic for people whose smile doesn't reach the eyes.
aimazon 2y ago
Many of the philanthropy videos are either manipulated or outright frauds. If you state your aim is to earn a million dollars to spend a million dollars on philanthropy and then after earning the million dollars you spend half a million dollars on philanthropy, the half a million spend is not a great philanthropic gift, it does not justify misappropriating the other half. Philanthropy as a shield is a strategy as old as time. We can forgive people for failing to meet their stated aims if they failed due to naivety following an earnest attempt. Can we forgive people for failing to meet their stated aims wilfully? The premise of your position is that philanthropy is always a net good, but that isn't true: philanthropy can be harmful. Homelessness is the easiest example to think about, where half-baked philanthropic efforts can have immediate harmful consequences, as we see time and time again.
pkphilip 2y ago

TheRealPomax 2y ago

Phauxlantropy. Why pass up that opportunity.

dyauspitr 2y ago

How is it faux if he’s giving away a lot of money for pretty objectively good things?

stonethrowaway 2y ago

[flagged]

runeblaze 2y ago
Half jokingly, MrBeast is a decent source of learning other languages given (1) how children friendly the contents are, and (2) how many dubs/subs the videos have. I particularly like the Takeuchi Junko Japanese dub.
morgansmolder 2y ago
He hacked the YouTube algorithm and went from 0 to a super millionaire. You might not like the guy, but there are plenty of hacker centric lenses through which to view his story

cryptica 2y ago

Philanthropy never works. Philanthropy requires large amounts of money. Only the monetary Ponzi yields that kind of money. So effectively, philanthropy is funded using the proceeds of theft. It's about diffusing harm to all and concentrating the benefits towards a select few.

tgsovlerkhgsel 2y ago

The article seems to be one of the popular "let's shit on a successful person out of envy" articles with little substance behind it. It primarily raises generic concerns about these kinds of projects, without linking them to these specific projects, after some generic mud-slinging starting with "racist comments made as a teenager" and a very careful wording of "teen grooming allegations" that may leave readers thinking that Donaldson (MrBeast) was accused of grooming a co-host rather than what actually happened (the now-dismissed co-host being accused of grooming). The well video doesn't mention it but the project site does mention sustainable maintenance of the wells. Of course, this could be either a serious and effective effort or a bit of text on a web site, but the article doesn't try to distinguish that either, it just assumes the worst.

FireBeyond 2y ago
> The article seems to be one of the popular "let's shit on a successful person out of envy" articles with little substance behind it. How much substance do you think is here? https://news3lv.com/news/local/las-vegas-staff-say-mrbeast-should-be-blacklisted-cite-osha-setting-medics-for-failure https://news3lv.com/news/local/las-vegas-staff-say-mrbeast-s...
- rowanG077 2y ago
  There is a difference between shitting on someone because of hard facts and shitting on someone because of vague rumors and popular opinion. The article is obviously in the latter category.

outlore 2y ago

I remember that video where Mr Beast paid for cataract surgery for a few dozen people and restored their sight. Regardless of intent, that was an immediate and material benefit to many people. It’s fair to question the motives of altruists, especially those who rely on extravagant public shows to pull viewership. But more eyeballs means more ad revenue, which means the altruism experiments can continue. If this is the most efficient, targeted model for altruism, then I’ll take it. Side note, the Mr Beast handbook is an interesting read https://www.slideshare.net/slideshow/how-to-succeed-at-mrbeast-production-handbook/271808765 https://www.slideshare.net/slideshow/how-to-succeed-at-mrbea...

tiahura 2y ago

"His stunts promote the concept of simplistic solutions to challenging problems, wrapping the munificent American donor in a warm glow of benevolence as he drops in to spread a little of his MrBeast largesse to some lucky recipients." A grown adult man really wrote this.