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Comment by isitmadeofglass | Hacker News Reader

A lot of Mr. beasts content feel like reverse kidnapping and mental torture situations. And the only “mental trick” you need to pull to illustrate just how horrible a human being he is, is to imagine he’d given them the money up front and told them that to leave his enter-torture-ment they have to pay up a ransom matching the initial gift. That’s what he’s subjecting poor people too, for fun and profit, because he knows the money is worth that much to them. And of cause because he’s making a fortune doing this.

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I'm not that badly off and have never watched a Mr. Beast video prior to this. I would gladly stay within a 300ft circle for 100 days while some dude blasted clown noises at me in return for $500k. There's a library, a garden, some exercise bands, stationery, and 3000cal/day of food. I did 21 days isolation in an apartment at the start of the pandemic, which is 20% of the way there except with less floorspace.

There's a really good essay titled The Copenhagen Interpretations of Ethics[0], which makes an argument that the moment you interact with a problem you become responsible for it in the eyes of the world, even if you strictly improved it in a utilitarian sense, and even if the people judging you have done exactly nothing to fix the problem. Reminds me a bit of this.

[0] https://blog.jaibot.com/the-copenhagen-interpretation-of-eth...

Sure, people enter in willingly. And you’d be able to find quite a lot of Poot people who’d do really shitty stuff and let you be extremely shitty to them for money. But so what? He’s still kidnapping and terrorizing poor people and excusing it by paying them off. And Better yet he’s doing so for profit, but he’s effectively have them sign a contract that means they don’t get paid if he gets them to break. It screams of what a shitty person he is in setting this up. If it was just about giving money to poor people there would be no need for the sick games he plays with them, just do a feel good show about how much the money change their lives. But propably not as much add money in it for him doing that. He used to plant trees, now he brutalizes poor people. It’s sick even if it is with consent from the victims.

You can dislike his work, but FYI you cannot repurpose the word "kidnapping" like this. First, it's a lie. Second, it diminishes the traumatic experience of real kidnapping survivors.

Stop repurposing real words and making a joke of real experiences to satisfy for your own emotional position.

Don't bother quoting the definition here and bending around the truth to further your distortion.

"So what" is that pretty much everyone I know, poor or not, would do it. It's $500k for hanging out in a house reading and digging in the garden all day for 100 days and occasionally having kids mess with you. That's not necessarily easy, but it's a hell of a lot easier than the other things I'd have to do to earn $500k in four months.

I think you're getting offended on behalf of other people, when most of the world would think it was a sweet deal. This is just reality TV for people who were born after 2000, except the prize is better, the format is shorter, and it's less cut-throat. Nobody's kidnapped, there are no victims, and "sick games" is a bit of a stretch.

> He’s still kidnapping

No he literally is not kidnapping anyone. Shawn could have walked out of the circle at any time. I don't understand why you think more choices is a bad thing. Let people labor however they want. If that means "humiliating" themselves for 100 days for millions on youtube so be it.

> If it was just about giving money to poor people there would be no need for the sick games he plays with them

No one would watch the video if he was just giving away money and therefore he wouldn't be giving away the money.

While I'm no fan of him, I think you might be too harsh.

> is to imagine he’d given them the money up front and told them that to leave his enter-torture-ment they have to pay up a ransom matching the initial gift.

People enter those challenges fully knowing how they're going to go. It's random, rules don't matter, you might get money you don't expect or not get money you expected. The point at which they get the money doesn't really matter, I don't find it a different situation.

> That’s what he’s subjecting poor people too, for fun and profit, because he knows the money is worth that much to them

Well, he gives amounts of money that are worth very much for a lot of people. I doubt there's a lot of people that can make $500k in 100 days, for example. I watched the one where there's 100 people in a circle, and people got quite a lot of money for the most random things (I think one gets several thousand dollars for being the first to go, for example). I'd get this criticism if the amounts of money were lower, but I don't think it's really the case. A lot of non-poor people would consider those challenges very much worth the money.

> And of cause because he’s making a fortune doing this.

He says that a lot of his videos lose money and I honestly believe it. Between the money he gives and the amounts he spends to make the videos (like renting entire stadiums) his costs must be incredibly high, even with as many subscribers as he has I imagine some videos might not break even. And he could very easily break even on all of them just by lowering the amounts of money and toning it down a little.

MrBeast is pushing the boundaries on the ethics and morals of how easily people with money can coerce poor people who are in dire need to perform extremely questionable things for the sake of his own amusement.

Personally I don’t think this is good in any meaningful way. You could only rationalise such behaviour with the same arguments that other forms of exploitation are explained.

I'm not arguing that it's good, only that it's not as exploitative as the parent made it to be.

Also, until now, the most questionable thing would be the 100 days in a circle one, and the reward is $500k. I think most people, even if not in dire need, would happily go and do that. Here in the comments you already see examples of that.

And, most importantly, I don't see the "coercion" anywhere. Most of the people participating are subscribers to him, he's not just searching for poor people out of the street.

The argument is that money is coercive.

Following that line of argument, every interaction with money involved is coercive. There must be something else that defines whether there is coercion or not.

Is mrbeast worse than a McJob at fast food?

I’m currently doing tech support for mr cooks phone company and the abuse I’ve endured this week has been insane.

The premise is mostly the same as a lot of game shows. You don't see rich people showing up to get on game shows. From glimpses I've seen of Japanese game shows, Mr Beast's takes a lot from them with the ridiculousness and over the top entertainment factor, the money involved is much more.

Another counterpoint is that they do good as well - 30+ million pounds of trash cleaned out the ocean with TeamSeas. Go see the one where they take over a bank in his hometown, no game show antics just handing out money in an entertaining way.

The problematic part is that Mr Beast offers little if any critical reflection about the systems that create wealth inequality, pollution, etc. and even less regarding his own role as a perceived philanthropist within that context.

It's not that it's inherently morally wrong to clean up the ocean, open a free bank or handing someone 500k for staying 100 days in a 100ft circle. It's the manifest obliviousness of not challenging the system and the premises that allow him to make his videos that's - industries generating single-use plastics, people not able to take out a mortgage,... - which is the issue.

His videos aren't in any way a social commentary. They are nothing more then entertainment, and they don't pretend to be anything else. That's what makes all of this morally questionable.

> Mr Beast offers little if any critical reflection about the systems that create wealth inequality

Why should he?

For the exact same reason why we teach little kids to throw their litter in the garbage bin instead of the ground, and hope that it will stick into adulthood: a range of values and ideas that display a due sense of caring and compassion.

> and hope that it will stick into adulthood

Littering is often a criminal offense in many places and/or you have to pay a fine so you are comparing apples and oranges here.

People don't want a world utterly suffused with politics. You are doing your movement harm by expecting it.

I didn't know parenting was suffused by politics, but apparently here we are.

Everyone should, but he seems to be particularly in a position to do so.

> Everyone should,

Why though?

Exactly - we all don't have to be doing that all the time. And MrBeast does not choose random people or even poor people for these challenges, he chooses only his own subscribers - people who are already interested in this content and presumably watch it regularly and are delighted to be in one of the videos.

> You don't see rich people showing up to get on game shows.

You do, but on different ones. On shows that make them look good.

How can it be unethical if the person knows full well what's coming with no surprises, and the person judged that it was in their best interest to do it? That'd be saying it's unethical to provide someone with a benefit-cost > 0 which they've agreed to, and I don't see why that should be true.

I'd agree it's unethical only if their cognition was compromised (meaning he wasn't capable of analyzing the costs and benefits and deciding if it was in his interest) or if there were surprises hidden (meaning he didn't really agree to what happened) or if it's a particular type of decision where people are known to not be capable of factoring in long-term costs properly into their decision making. But we don't know if any of this is true, do we?

An argument I would be sympathetic to would be that it's unethical not because of what happened to the subject in particular (after all, he net benefited if the above assumptions are met), but because of the negative flow-on impacts to culture and the social fabric.

There used to be a website where someone gave homeless people money to fight each other. Perhaps it still exists. Is that ethical?

I thought of bumfights when writing this, and decided that no, it's not ethical, because homeless people often suffer from mental illnesses which violates one of the assumptions that I laid out.

What if the person isn't mentally ill, but doesn't reliably have enough to eat to survive adequately, and can get it by fighting for the entertainment of others (who do have plenty to eat, and more to spare).

Is that ethical, because it's a rational cost-benefit analysis?

There are few people in the US who don't have enough to eat to fuel their bodies, but in other countries there are more. I am not trying to describe the particular people in "bumfights", who I don't know, but hypothetically working the boundaries of this analysis.

I also don't in fact think that people can be divided, in binary fashion, into those who are "rational" and "not rational".

It seems pretty clear to me that enticing desperate people to fight each other, for the entertainment of others who find their desperation emotionally engaging, and for the profit of the promoters -- is unkind and disrespectful and an attack on their dignity. Even if they are not "mentally ill." It seems hard to argue otherwise. Is it how you would treat a relative or friend? To hypothetically say, well, sure it's unkind and disrespectful and an assault on their dignity, and I wouldn't do it to someone I loved, but it's not unethical to do to make a buck or a laugh -- what is the point of "ethics", then, exactly?

> To hypothetically say, well, sure it's unkind and disrespectful and an assault on their dignity, but it's not unethical to do to make a buck or a laugh -- what is the point of "ethics", then, exactly?

But is it unkind? You're giving them a benefit (+$) and taking a cost (-dignity), and they've calculated that $ > dignity. Assuming their calculation was accurate, aren't you actually being kind? You are increasing their utility.

> I also don't in fact think that people can be divided, in binary fashion, into those who are "rational" and "not rational".

Yes, there isn't a clear dividing line between those who are capable of rationally calculating what's in their true best interest, and those who aren't. A dose of pragmatism is obviously needed. Homeless people are statistically much more likely to suffer from a mental illness which erodes their ability to rationally calculate costs and benefits more than others.

Would you offer that deal to a family member or close friend in need of money? Why not?

Definitely not, it would make me sad to subject them to that. I'd also feel pretty bad if I got them them to clean my house for money if they were in need. But that doesn't mean it's unethical, does it?

You wouldn't consider it either unkind or unethical to arrange for a needy family member to fight for money, you just wouldn't do it becuase it would make you sad? It doesn't seem an unkind thing to do, really?

But, yes, I think intentionally subjecting strangers to something that you wouldn't subject your loved ones to because it would make you sad, is at least a signal that something is likely to be unethical.

In general, I'd say profiting off of desperate people trading their dignity for money is probably unethical. Yes, I'm aware this can apply to other parts of society.

Is your opinion basically that there is no such thing as unethical employment of someone? That if someone is of sound mind, any employment conditions are always ethnical, there is basically no way for an employer to behave unethically with regard to their employees? No matter how degrading, how awful their experience is, it isn't actually possible to consider any such conditions unethical, because the desperate employee chose to engage in the employment?

> No matter how degrading, how awful their experience is

Correct, as long as my above assumptions are not violated. That is, no surprises post-contract signing, and so on[1].

Your actions are a net benefit to them. It can't be unethical to benefit someone, unless we're operating under a non-utilitarian moral framework.

I'd argue it's unethical to not provide them that terrible job, if the only alternative is for you to not engage with them whatsoever. You are leaving them worse off by choosing this so-called moral high ground. Society may pat you on the back for your upstanding choice, but you are leaving them worse off, so I believe it to be immoral to not provide them that job.

[1] In practice, this is fraught because of the power asymmetry -- the employer can easily introduce new conditions post-signing. But I'm assuming that the employer doesn't abuse that asymmetry. It's also fraught because people aren't rational creatures that are capable of perfectly evaluating costs and benefits. So we'd have to evaluate each situation on a case by case basis.

> You wouldn't consider it either unkind or unethical to arrange for a needy family member to fight for money

I would consider it less unethical to do that, compared to withholding the money. There's a rank order here. It's more ethical to pay them to fight (under my above assumptions) than it is to withhold the money, because you are maximizing their utility by doing so, i.e. you're helping them the most by doing that, relative to that alternative.

Of course it would be maximally good to just give them the money with no strings attached. But that doesn't imply that it's unethical to pay them to fight.

> make you sad, is at least a signal

I am highly skeptical of such evolved responses that are there because of kin selection, reciprocal altruisim, etc. If I feel bad, it means that I'm doing something that's correlated with a reduction in genetic fitness, that's it. Moral certainty based on feelings has motivated genocides, anti-sodomy laws and many other terrible things.

> I'd argue it's unethical to not provide them that terrible job,

Then why would it make you sad to provide a family member or loved one with that terrible job, say fighting homeless people for the entertainment of those who find their pathos entertaining? Why wouldn't you feel great, providing them with that job that is a net benefit to them? I mean, maybe not as good as if you were able to just give them a gift, but there's no reason to feel sad, right, you've given them a net gain, setting them up to fight homeless people on youtube?

I think if everyone acted according to your principles, there would be a net gain in human misery. Speaking of utilitarian frameworks. Human dignity benefits from, well, valuing human dignity and feeling a responsibility for it.

But ok, this conversation is going as far as it's going to.

If I had realized you thought it was literally impossible for any employer to behave unethically toward an employee, I wouldn't have gone this far with it. Now I'm curious if you are the same Ayn Randian I had a similar conversation with a few weeks ago, looking through my history... nope, that was someone else! It is very convenient for those who profit from taking advantage of desperate people to believe it is literally impossible for this to be unethical; less convenient for the desperate people being taken advantage of.

  "Then why would it make you sad to provide a family member or loved one with that terrible job"

It would also make me feel extremely sad to not give them money with no strings attached if they're in need. What's the point? Are you saying that it's unethical to not give your money to family?

If they needed the money, I would feel better getting them to fight for it (because after all, that's better than them dying of cancer or whatever the money is for!) than I would not giving them the money, but I'd feel bad in both situations, because all I'd want to do is maximally help them, and either of these options isn't that.

  "I think if everyone acted according to your principles, there would be a net gain in human misery."

That's funny because I thought the same about your views. There are people on the left that want to shut down trade with China or Bangladesh because they view low wages as exploitative. They would condemn these people to the outcome of poverty and death because of their ad hoc ethical rules that have no grounding in outcomes.

  "If I had realized you thought it was literally impossible for any employer to behave unethically toward an employee"

I said the opposite. Look at my list of assumptions. In those assumptions are all the typical violations of the employee to employer power dynamic, such as unexpected surprises after the contract is signed (say, unexpected occupational hazard, whatever), deceptive fine print in the contract, pressure tactics to get them to agree to something they don't want to, and so on. That's hardly a Randian perspective. Rand thinks none of these things are possible because people are rational creatures that will never agree to something that isn't in their best interest.

It'd be unethical not to offer them the fight. That would mean they would continue to starve. If I had the choice between fighting and starving I'd probably choose fight, and if a do gooder came into the ring as it was about to begin and said "no no no, this is unethical" I'd be pissed because their actions are condemning me to starve.

No, because you're specifically targeting people who are in need, and fights carry a very high risk of damage.

Unless you want to consider 99% of paid work as unethical, monetary need cannot be the only factor in considering whether something is ethical or not.

Is boxing ethical? People make choices because they believe it will make their life better. If the homeless people think the money is worth the fight that means the website is literally making their life better and therefore ethical.

> How can it be unethical if the person knows full well what's coming with no surprises, and the person judged that it was in their best interest to do it? That'd be saying it's unethical to provide someone with a benefit-cost > 0 which they've agreed to, and I don't see why that should be true.

Because it's inherently degrading and dehumanizing. Ethics is more than just benefit vs cost.

It shouldn't be because then people can use their disgust response to moralize about other people's behavior, and that's historically done a lot of real-world harm. There needs to be an actual moral justification instead of ad hoc assertions. But I get that there's a lot of scope for different views under the banner of meta-ethics.

It's unethical to ask people to perform an action which you know they would never agree to if it wasn't for an imbalance of power or financial pressure/incentives.

Otherwise you could say why did Harvey Weinstein get prosecuted. When he asked women to suck him off and they did it voluntarily then it's not wrong is it? I mean they could have just walked away and not get hired for his next film.

  "It's unethical to ask people to perform an action which you know they would never agree to if it wasn't for an imbalance of power or financial pressure/incentives."

Under utilitarianism you need to compare it to the alternative. You can't say X is immoral if Y is the alternative and Y is worse than X. In many cases, X=terrible job, Y=nothing. Otherwise you're actively opposing someone's wellbeing. This is the fatal problem with these ad hoc ethical rules that aren't grounded in actual outcomes.

Consider the reductio ad absurdum. Almost everyone has a job because of financial pressures. Even upper middle class people feel pressure to secure themselves for old age and unforeseen circumstances. Is almost every job unethical? If yes, then you're saying that our species functioning is unethical, which is an absurdity. If no, then you don't believe it yourself.

  "Harvey Weinstein"

No because he violated two of the assumptions I laid out, making it unethical under utilitarianism. He often introduced it as a surprise after the business relationship started. And he engaged in what was effectively high pressure sales tactics which jeopardizes the ability for the person to decide whether it's truly in their best interests (this would be a form of compromised cognition, similar to mentally ill homeless people in the Bumfights example).

A third thing: the attempts themselves were a sort of menacing assault which subtracted utility from the person, which they didn't agree to be subjected to upfront.

I think the comparison with Squid Game is apt. Of course he's not killing anyone, it's all voluntary, legal, and far more benign than what the Frontman in Squid Game does, but in essence it's still using extreme monetary reward to tempt people to subject themselves to treatment they wouldn't otherwise consider.

Then again, if you keep scaling down like that, in what way is regular work any better?

> People enter those challenges fully knowing how they're going to go.

People who have financial need aren’t able to clearly decline and have agency over their decision. Asking someone who supports a family if they will degrade themselves for $500k if not really a fair question and people will say yes.

It’s like saying that people who blow their boss do it knowing fully well what they’re getting into. There is a power imbalance so even perceived consent isn’t really consent because of the leverage and greater power of one party.

> People who have financial need aren’t able to clearly decline and have agency over their decision. Asking someone who supports a family if they will degrade themselves for $500k if not really a fair question and people will say yes.

Except that this isn't targeting people who have financial need. At the prices we're talking about, quite a lot of people will find it a good deal. And "degrading" might be a strong word, maybe the being alone in a circle for 100 days is pushing it, but from what I've seen (which is not too much) it's mostly games and small challenges.

> It’s like saying that people who blow their boss do it knowing fully well what they’re getting into. There is a power imbalance so even perceived consent isn’t really consent because of the leverage and greater power of one party.

Well, applying that strict line of thought, you can argue that people can't really consent to having a job, or playing the lottery, or betting on a game because there is a power imbalance and greater power of one party.

For a more practical approach, the useful thing is to look at how many people can realistically reject the offer if they don't want to do it. In the case of "blowing your boss", rejecting the offer means losing a job you might need to survive. In the videos case, rejecting means just not getting the money, it'd be similar as offering lottery tickets specially given how the participants seem to be random subscribers.

> Except that this isn't targeting people who have financial need.

I don’t think it’s fair to say that. The person who “won” the chance has two young kids and a spouse. I’m fairly sure he really needs $500k. If he’s like a typical person he has student loans, bills and lots of debt.

It would be kind of perverse to have someone compete who didn’t really need the money.

If you ask a random human to degrade themself for $500k there’s a power imbalance as most people don’t lead a zen existence where that’s not a life changing amount of money.

But that person was randomly selected among subscribers. And it’s not “need” in the sense that it doesn’t look like he’d suffer serious consequences from rejecting the challenge. It’s not like “if I reject this job I’ll be homeless”.

The issue with your line of thought is that it leads to concluding that most jobs are unethical.

People will say yes because it's a good deal. Obtaining 500k is incredibly difficult and requires a full decade of work for most people. How is creating a business that enables people to get a decades worth of work done in 100 days unethical? No one is forced into these videos. Everyone can leave just as well off as they started. If the videos didn't exist the people who got the money would be much worse off. In fact, I'll go ahead and say shutting down his channel would be unethical because it removes the choice he is giving people.

> He says that a lot of his videos lose money and I honestly believe it.

Lot of big Youtubers say that the videos themselves dont make lot of money but the more views a video has the more merch they sell, that brings in the profits.

Mr. Beast himself used to subject himself to torture for profit, so it's not surprising that other people are happy to do the same. His first viral video was counting to 100,000. There was another video where he tried to spend 24 hours underwater and stopped because he had built to much CO2.

As a content creator Mr Beast only acts as a conduit for what we, the audience, are willing to pay for. It's not he who is the monster but us.

Exactly. Don't hate the player. Hate the game. And the game is humanity, who wants this type of content.

But overall i disagree that anyone is monster here. No one forces these people to be a part of these challenges.

Why not both? And why does "criticism" imply "hate"?

You could get people to fight to the death with enough money as a reward. Is that ok?

No, but we're not talking about that. We're talking only about if these particular videos cross some kind of imaginary line which is different for everyone and constantly shifts in our minds based on the last comment we read on HN.

While true I love how the norm of discussion about this is bouncing between two things as if they are mutually exclusive.

Yes Mr. Beast is just following incentives that youtube + attention economy + other factors created for him.

But also: he chose to do that. I've personally walked away from good gigs when I was eating rice and beans because they didn't align with my values. He doesn't seem to realise or care. And maybe that's because of his situation, which should the also be addressed. But there still remains some personal responsibility for choosing to make money (lots of money) this way

Mr. Beast is giving away millions of dollars. Imo his channel is unequivocally making the world a better place by providing entertainment and giving people the choice to forego a decade of work for 100 days of humiliation.

> only acts as a conduit

That's a lazy analysis. His creation is expanding a small audience into a larger one.

Our children are the victims. They're willing to watch anything, and unfortunately this is the kind of stuff that they think is normal and good.

That’s like saying it’s OK to create CP or torture someone because there’s an audience. Complete nonsense.

No, it’s not like that.

But we are not paying for it. He just gets the views and Google (YouTube) are those who think it is ok to pay for this content. People will always consume content about some crazy shit if it is made for free, but would we actually have to pay for it then it would show that most kids who watch MrBeast content today couldn’t actually care less about it.

Let’s look at it from another angle to bring my point home. If a person gets assaulted and the assault gets recorded by CCTV cameras and then shown on BBC news then lots of people click the article and view the video, but nobody (or mostly nobody) would pay the BBC to assault another person and film it and then stream it. Do you see the difference?

No, Google doesn't think it's okay. A company has no such emotions. The financial benefits just outweigh the financial downsides.

would we actually have to pay for it then it would show that most kids who watch MrBeast content today couldn’t actually care less about it

but the kids are not the ones paying. if we had to start paying for it, the result would be an argument between parents and kids.

> But we are not paying for it.

Not sure who "we" you are talking but his fans buy lot of merch from his store which brings in lot of profit.

Nonsense. Mr. Beast isn't an unthinking tool, but an intelligent human being. Exploiting people for money is unethical no matter how much 'the audience' wants to see it.

I mean, so is something like Who Wants To Be a Millionare[0] exploitative as well? The whole idea is that people voluntarily sign up, to be "tortured" with difficult questions, for a chance to win some money. Of course the TV producers make money on the show, by broadcasting the whole thing for the audience's amusement. I'm just curious where you think the line lies between this and what Mr Beast is doing?

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Who_Wants_to_Be_a_Millionaire%...

That's an interesting thought. I'll try to brainstorm a bit, since my meeting is a bit boring :)

First, what was also mentioned in the linked blog post, Mr Beast's videos lack a certain level of fairness, winners of his competitions are often decided by luck, not merit.

Second, maybe there's an added benefit for both competitors and audience when watching Who Wants To Be a Millionare. I'm not sure if that's measurable metric, but it's definitely present. I can learn something new, or test my own knowledge, maybe even decide to sign up.

> winners of his competitions are often decided by luck, not merit.

So just like real life?

The air quotes around tortured are doing 100% of the work here. There may indeed be some nervousness associated with taking part in any sort of competition, but I think most people would stipulate that white collar adult professionals answering 15 multiple-choice questions in 30 minutes in a comfortable studio wearing clothes of their choice, preparing in a green room, given access to water and bathrooms is pretty low on the torture scale. Likewise, we don't typically consider, say, taking part in a poker tournament to be torture, or taking part in a 10K race or submitting something to an art contest.

There are, in fact, quiz shows that add torture elements. Rob Lowe hosts Mental Samurai, which is a quiz show where participants are put through physical disorientation[0]. This might be a closer parallel to what you are highlighting, but even still there are coherent and easily articulated ways in which this is not torture.

There are a great many reality programs that do actually involve a sort of physical depravation which is closer to torture. Big Brother and Survivor both involve not just physical challenges, but also punishments that are centered around depriving people of the sorts of creature comforts they are accustomed to in normal life. Even then you don't have torture, because again the vast majority of the experience involves being treated with comfort and dignity, the punishments that are small in scale and support systems in place to ensure they do not present real threat. So, for instance, you might have someone being awoken in the middle of the night as a part of a challenge, but they will be informed of that in advance, given additional time to sleep later, and the disruption will be minimal.

Mr. Beast's stuff has more in common with challenges like the Hands on a Hardbody challenge[1], where poor people go to a car dealership and have to touch a truck for an extended period of time to win the truck.[1] The contestant pool are mostly people who are quite poor, some of whom seem to be mentally ill, the willingness to do it for the prize almost surely implies they have inadequate access to transportation, and it's extremely undignified. But even this has hourly breaks.

It seems like a bit of feigned ignorance to respond to someone criticizing the Mr. Beast stuff by suggesting it is difficult or impossible to draw a coherent line in the sand, and then offering such a patently absurd example as something you think would have to be definitionally included. It comes off as playing language games rather than seriously engaging the substance of the criticism.

[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O3gglCEsvGg [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hands_on_a_Hardbody:_The_Docum...

You're both equally disgusting.

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