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Comment by Dig1t | Hacker News Reader

Man this is such a cynical take.

I listened to his interview on the Joe Rogan show and was really impressed.

Mr. Beast built his channel by taking all profits from each video and plying it into the next video. Using this approach he was able to produce progressively larger and more expensive videos. He has demonstrated his frugal lifestyle, has publicly given away an incredible amount of money to good causes, and has stated his future goals for his businesses will be for charity. Everything about his actions strikes me as genuinely good, it just seems like the publicity is the best way to get more money to accomplish the charitable goals.

You're right that what he's doing does not conform to the definition of altruism specifically, but that doesn't mean what he's doing is not good.

How can you watch the video where he pays for the blindness surgery for all those people and say that that was anything other than an amazing win for all those nice people?

View on HN

"Mr. Beast built his channel by taking all profits from each video and plying it into the next video"

To me this seems like a semi-obvious minmaxing solution to making popular videos: make essentially zero profit, regardless of revenue. At some point you get so much revenue that you can't spend it all so the next logical step is to simply give it away as part of the video. And in this case it's a virtuous cycle - apparently giving away money generates more revenue so it just keeps going. But this doesn't strike me as being done out of any noble purpose - all he wants is YT view and charity is just a side-effect of that.

"How can you watch the video where he pays for the blindness surgery for all those people and say that that was anything other than an amazing win for all those nice people?"

My criticism would be that it's local change vs trying for structural change. Why don't those people already have access to surgery? The counter-argument to this would be that structural change is somewhere between very hard and impossible, so just spend the money locally. A more cynical take is that lobbying for restructuring the US health care system doesn't generate YT revenue, so he's incentivized to fund the most clickbaity charity projects.

The reason those people don't have access to surgery has nothing to do with mrbeast.

Do you think he could actually get a law changed and help more people than he already did? Why wouldn't a "Mr Beast goes to Washington" style video get as many views as his direct support videos got?

"Do you think he could actually get a law changed and help more people than he already did?"

The most popular YT video creator could probably start a fairly large lobbying effort although yes, the multi-trillion dollar US for-profit health insurance industry could probably do better.

"Why wouldn't a "Mr Beast goes to Washington" style video get as many views as his direct support videos got?"

It might, there's only one way to know.

Team Trees and Team Seas weren't enough?

Good lord, y'all are just never satisfied with charity work.

"Mr Beast literally cured blindness for a thousand people and gave them a bunch of money, no strings attached."

"Yeah but he did it for views!"

So what?! He markedly improved 1000 peoples' lives in the process. What have YOU done today?

Get over yourselves.

Not only did he improve 1000 lives. He bought awareness to 100s of 1000s of people who didn’t know it’s relatively affordable or can be cured for some.

> What have YOU done today?

None of us are in his position to make as much change though. Are we not allowed to criticize someone that has far more power than us for not using it to its full potential?

You can criticize anyone for anything you want. Many people will ignore you or think you're a crank when you criticize someone for restoring the sight of 1000 poor people because it wasn't "to its full potential".

The stereotypical HN user is a highly paid SW engineer. Have you donated to charity lately?

No. That's such an absurd take that I don't even know where to begin.

I thought he was cool until he launched a chocolate line. Really? Is that what we need? Most of his audience is young gen z, and I'm sure the last thing the most obese generation ever needs is someone pushing more sugar on their diets

It's better than an energy drink line I suppose.

Are you joking? I can't really tell. Chocolate?

Do you think girl scouts are scumbags too?

Girl scouts are children selling sugars to adults. Mr beast is an adult who sells sugar to children.

Anyway, I don't think he's a scumbag. I think he's a nice guy and I'm sure I would be his friend if we took the same pottery course or whatever. I just don't think trying to "cram one more treat into America's already bloated snack hole"[1] is very 'cool'.

[1] Simpsons, season 8, episode 164, The Twisted World of Marge Simpson

Kids buy chocolate regardless of mr beast. His chocolate is considered one of the more healthier options. And parents buy it. Not kids.

Girl scouts sell junk food with corn syrup.

Would an alcohol, gambling, drug or other line be more acceptable since suns are being compared?

Should’ve started a MrBeast asparagus line.

There’s a deeper question of altruism not being able to have a financial engine to fund it.

Learning about the different types of social enterprise, it’s not uncommon for for profit ventures to incorporate aspects.

Still, some of this can come down to sour grapes that earning money can disproportionately and more sustainably be used for good than normal.

A line of anything already pegs you as a run-of-the-mill influencer, exploiting the parasocial relationship your victims have with you to peddle them substandard ware at high markup.

I am always shocked when I see the prices for "merch". Why does a hooded sweatshirt, that might cost 10-20 USD at Uniqlo, cost 55 USD as "merch" with a 2-5 USD silkscreen print. I agree: It is absolutely "exploiting the parasocial relationship your victims have with you".

No regular price hoodie sweatshirt costs $10-$20 at Uniqlo. They start at $40 for adults, most are $50. They start at $30 for kids. https://www.uniqlo.com/us/en/men/tops/sweatshirts-and-hoodie...

Uniqlo's core business is apparel. They buy in massive bulk. Mr Beast buys in maybe tens of thousands.

Those are pretty high prices. Are they manufacturing those sweatshirts in the US or other Western country, or are they just positioning themselves as premium brand and selling with 400%+ markup?

Or has the clothing market in the US hollowed out in the middle completely? That's what I'm worried about where I live (Poland, EU) - I feel like the middle tier, of normally priced, regular quality clothes for regular people, is all but gone now, leaving us with the choice between a) second-hand stores and bazaars selling counterfeits imported from the East, and b) lifestyle brands selling rags at ridiculous prices.

I guess the prices for Uniqlo are massively marked up in the United States. In Japan, pull-over sweatshirt costs 1,290 yen, or about 9.50 USD.

Ref: https://www.uniqlo.com/jp/ja/products/E458468-000/00?colorDi...

No they don't. That is the sale price and none are available.

https://www.uniqlo.com/jp/ja/men/tops/sweatshirts-and-hoodie... 2990 yen and up for regular price.

> 2990 yen and up for regular price.

That's still only about $20 and up, so right there is a factor of 2x between Japan and the US.

It’s never enough. This guy is throwing millions towards others and helping their lives, but because he’s not suffering enough to do it, or doing it out of your defined pure intentions, it’s hardly good at all? It’s clear you care more about the sacrificial theater of giving than you do about actual impact.

What good have you done for anyone but yourself in the last month? Do you even fulfill your own standards? Is any charity less than implementing your preferred political policies useless? It’s hard to even describe how childish and selfish your take is.

I sleep soundly knowing Mr Beast gives less than zero shits about my opinion.

Well said.

He is a content producer who has built a brand on large cash prices not a charity manager. It’s a for profit company. The fact that apparently half of the readership can’t make the difference is a bit worrying to me.

Of course it’s for profit. No one dispute that. But his business involves giving away money. It doesn’t matter if he keeps 50% of the profits for himself and 50% is given away. He’s doing a million times more to help people than anyone on this forum.

I seriously doubt he's producing more QALYs than some effective altruists on this site. Someone on a typical software engineering income (going w/120k) can donate enough to save ~2-3 lives a year[0] at 10% giving, let alone someone trying to maximize their impact (of which I'm sure there's several). [0]: https://www.givewell.org/impact-estimates

I finance significantly more through taxes than American giving 10% of its income to charity which allow every citizen of my country to enjoy the benefits of socialised medicine and unemployment insurance. The idea of cheering from someone making money by paying from basic medical treatment for poorer people makes me frankly queasy.

Eye laser surgery is considered elective. What country do you live in that covers it as part of socialise healthcare?

Eye laser surgery? (LASIK, PRK, etc.)

I thought the discussion here was about cataract surgery.

Australia has "free if you're poor and can wait" o/wise relatively cheap depending on your private health insurance.

https://www.finder.com.au/cataract-surgery-costs

Working vision correction to avoid glasses | contacts is purely elective in .au

https://www.finder.com.au/laser-eye-surgery

Sorry I meant cataract surgery. I just happen to be discussing eye laser surgery with a friend considering it.

Seems misleading for that site to say it’s free. There’s small fees which you end up paying that Medicare doesn’t cover. And afaik you require a referral for public hospital which is not covered.

I gave the situation in Australia - I have no idea which country the GP lives in.

I'd wager that small referral fees in Australia amount to considerably less than surgery costs in countries with no socialised health care systems.

Majority of people don’t donate. And majority of people here don’t live in America earning 120k/yr.

You’re kidding yourself if you think people on HN are contributing anything to better society.

If not structural changes, does Mr. Beast continue to donate every month to some fixed cause(s)?

AFAIK they do food donation drives regularly (or something similar) and probably supports other causes consistently. Those come from a place of passion, vision and commitment. Otherwise the YT videos are good execution to serve the audience and sponsors.

Tbh I haven't been tempted to watch his videos. Like many other commenters, I find something is off

> But this doesn't strike me as being done out of any noble purpose

Money given away doesn't have to have a "noble purpose", the act is good in itself. The people receiving it don't care about motive, I don't care about motive, and the only reason you care about motive is because you're threatened by another person doing good. There's no virtue inherent to giving anonymously. A piece of food or a warm house don't care about the intentions of the original owner of the money.

In fact the only reason I could see for someone pushing a narrative of "only some donations are good because of motive" would be to discourage donations, which I'm not sure why anyone would do unless they are utterly evil.

I used neither the words "good" nor "bad" so I think you're responding to something that I didn't write.

Why is the "noble"ness of his actions relevant?

He's not viral because of charity, he's charitable because he was already a highly viral video creator. It's not a comment on his videos, it's a comment on the NY Times framing.

As much as I agree with that analysis. I still think being charitable instead of blowing money on hookers, drugs and cars is something to applaud.

Just like many other celebrities that continue to make money of their lifestyle which isn’t something to applaud.

I believe Snoop Dog did his fair share of charity but I definitely don’t applaud his endeavors in pornography and drugs.

On the other hand I don’t have any idea if mr.Beast spends money on hookers.

But if I would choose which content should be more available on the internet I’d go with me.Beast not Snoop Dog.

> There's no virtue inherent to giving anonymously.

Maimonides has a different viewpoint: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tzedakah

Maimonides and about everyone who has thought about the concept of charity for a while

What about when the public act of giving causes you to be able to give more?

Is it better to give privately, knowingly kneecapping your capacity to do so again in the future?

> I don't care about motive

Pablo Escobar gave free money away. Would you take the money? He also built schools.

Motive matters. His intents were to build loyalty masked as charity. MrBeast is building (or has built) something else, masked as charity.

I hope MrBeast never stop giving away money and curing people, but there are some considerations to make here, and not just taking as granted the reasons the very same person doing charity is clearly trying to transmit.

What you are talking about is accepting stolen funds or goods. That means the source is illicit, but it doesn't say anything about motive. Motive and source of the funds are different things. I obviously don't support crime or people knowingly accepting stolen funds. You can have a bad motive with legal funds, a good motive with legal funds, a bad motive with illegal funds or a good motive with illegal funds. Your conflating of these concepts is bringing a different aspect I didn't comment on, but I can:

If Mr. Beast steals money to donate it I'd be against it regardless of motive.

it very much depends who he would be stealing from. see robin hood.

"My criticism would be that it's local change vs trying for structural change. Why don't those people already have access to surgery?"

The reality is that Mr.Beast will not be changing the entire U.S. healthcare system. And that hundreds got life changing surgeries they wouldn't otherwise have gotten.

Do you think if you asked those people, they would say Mr. Beast is predatory? Would they have preferred that he Mr. Beast not run a donation-focused youtube channel?

He's created quite an ingenious way to siphon money from advertisers to random people. It's not the most 100% effective way of creating change, but viewing it so negatively is throwing out the baby with the bathwater.

> The reality is that Mr.Beast will not be changing the entire U.S. healthcare system.

The reality is that Mr Beast has a better shot at it than 99.99% of americans; the argument is he won't take that shot because he prefers to be Mr Beast

Not to mention this is not all or nothing. He could flip or decide hundreds of thousands, maybe millions of votes, in favour of candidates that do want to reform the healthcare system. All it takes is about half the politicians plus one, no?

I'm not an US voter and don't suffer its healthcare system, so maybe it is an immutable part of life and I can't grasp it - but I doubt it

The reality is that Mr Beast has a better shot at it than 99.99% of americans

better by what margin? given that the likelyhood of anyone else making that change is almost zero, even if his chances were 10 times as high, that is still not enough to make any dent.

part of the problem here is thinking that changing the system can only be done by some single person with superhero powers, when in reality it takes a mind change in all of society. the US healthcare system will not change until everyone starts demanding that change.

the best MrBeast can do is to influence his audience, but he'll need to convince more than a few million people before a change can happen.

"My criticism would be that it's local change vs trying for structural change."

Does that have to be a thing? If he was growing vegetables for his neighbours or his community wouldn't we be going 'what a top bloke'?

> He has demonstrated his frugal lifestyle, has publicly given away an incredible amount of money to good causes, and has stated his future goals for his businesses will be for charity.

Pretty much all of this is typical “rich philanthropist” stuff, just dialled down to appeal to a demographic cohort of 20-35 year olds.

It’s incredibly easy to be altruistic when literally every financial and social incentive says you should. I think people are uncomfortable with this because he hasn’t sacrificed anything. His financial incentives just line up with “doing good things”. When they no longer align it still remains to be seen whether he will act the same.

>Mr. Beast built his channel by taking all profits from each video and plying it into the next video. Using this approach he was able to produce progressively larger and more expensive videos.

That's what every sensible businessman does in the early years of a new venture. It's only a stark contrast to the avera social media personality who takes out as much as they can early on to fund car leases, rent for fancy homes and designer brand clothes.

Lemme know if he does it without filming and I'll be the first to call out my BS. Some people just don't see the forest from the trees but it's all good with me, MrBeast needs you for income. True altruism is hard, this is business.

Filming it is how he raises funds for the next act of charity. Your suggestion not to film it is killing the golden goose to spite your face.

"Look at me doing good for these people! This was MR BEAST that did this, me, I'm MR BEAST AND I HELP PEOPLE! REMEMBER THE NAME FOLKS, IT'S ME, MR. BEAST. Make sure to like and subscribe!"

-->

"This guy is a champion of generosity, a paragon of goodness. I admire him so much." --people like you, and other children

That last sentence is just not true, I think it's okay to deeply respect someone with a BUSINESS MODEL (because it is what it is) that's based on helping others for views. Let's say he stopped doing it and just worked a shitty job and gave all his money, being then a true altruist, the impact he'd have on the lifes of people would be far lower than the one he's having now.

Yes the media overhypes his actions as some sort of altruism god, as they do with everything, but that doesn't take away that he came up with a model that feeds on helping people, and that alone deserves my respect.

No, he came up with a model that glorifies himself to the max (by helping people.) There is a gigantic difference. I cannot imagine respecting that.

There are so many people out there who deeply deserve your respect and yet this guy is the one with your attention - because vainglorious self-promotion is his mantra and his mission. Go read about any of the countless people out there making serious, meaningful contributions without pasting a photo of their face and bio links over everything they do. Oh, I guess it'll be a bit harder to find them. Easier to just keep watching Mr. Beast and pondering how much respect his brilliant business model deserves.

It is youtube who decided that they were willing to allow and encourage it. He is their mascot.

Nobody said he is a champion of generosity or a paragon of virtue, that's your take on strawmanning an easy to win point because you don't want to have an actual conversation here.

The alternative is advertisers spending their money on rap videos glorifying selling drugs to kids and committing felonies. Personally, because I don't see the world in black and white, I see Mr Beast as a massive upgrade from the previous status quo.

A lot of it isn't filmed and just happens in the background

https://www.beastphilanthropy.org

Why does it being a business make what he does any less? Don’t the acts stand on their own without the need to pontificate on his motives? He could have started or ran his business in many ways, he chose a charitable one… I think that’s all that matters

Being a cynic isn’t cool, and it is not being objective - the good he does is staring you in the face and you can’t even see it

Major charities does the same.

I have heard anthropologists tell anecdotes about Red Cross refusing to help a village just a couple of hours drive away from their outposts because there is no press coverage and they would rather spend their supplies on places where it'd get reported on, because the report brings in more donations. Emotionally I sympathize with the people that the speaker spent time with and resent Red Cross's decision, but pragmatically I can see that it make sense.

I've talked to nurses who volunteered at MSF say they passed by many villages that needed help on their way to their destination, a more well-known location that will bring more attention for their services. Lord knows they lamented over it, but the decision was made by the organization to ensure they get the maximum donation needed to help more people.

I have literally never watched a single Mr Beast videos, but going by what I'm seeing in articles like these, I fail to how what he's doing is any worse than most charities.

> Man this is such a cynical take.

It’s not a competition; OPs view is not yours.

Emotional responses to content are subjective. It’s never been, never will be, that all humans are of a normalized opinion on anything, I’m not sure what the point of your take on OPs take is?

Must we role-play feeling like Shiny Happy People about everything? Why must everything be framed in toxic positivity?

I'm sorry, but I don't buy into this concept of "charity" myself[1].

It is wonderful that people can see, but how much money you have should have no bearing on whether you stay blind or not.

These people are victims of a system and charity is just painting over the cracks.

Perhaps he could devote his energy to start the change.

Charity (and alms) is what people did back in the day. Some societies moved on.

[1] Better said: I'm not against charitable acts. I'm against charity as a replacement for an humane and fair society. Sometimes it feels like having a water station next to workers being being whipped to build the pyramids. Perhaps stop the whipping?

> I listened to his interview on the Joe Rogan show and was really impressed.

I wonder many of the critics in this thread have seen him like this. I've also seen a few videos where he's talking about his channel and he certainly has me convinced he's not in it for his own benefit.

It's not cynical, it's fairly neutral. It doesn't mean he's a bad person. There are worse things he could do with his money and at the end of the day, he's doing a lot of good.

But it's not altruism, it's philanthropy. It's more about the performance than the act itself. Some of his videos literally reycle game show ideas ("do X contrived thing successfully and you get $Y money"). His antics help people and that's a good thing. But he's also making them jump through hoops (not literally AFAIK, though I wouldn't be surprised) and perform gratitude for his audience. Things can be good and bad at the same time.

Consider the American trope of "feel good" news reports about, say, an elementary school kid doing a successful fundraiser to pay off his classmate's school lunch debt. Yes, it's amazing that an elementary school student did that but it's also horrifying that this means school lunch debt is just a thing society has come to accept as normal and that society is so dysfunctional a literal child had to take the initiative instead of just getting to be a child.

I think Mr Beast is one of the better people when it comes to using their ridiculous wealth and social capital for good, but it's horrifying that people have to perform misery for an online audience to get relatively cheap medical treatments and frankly it's horrifying that a single person can have access to and control over such an amount of wealth that they can perform this kind of stunts on the regular while at the same time so many people are so desperately poor that their lives can be changed by being gifted mere crumbs in comparison. Mr Beast may be a relatively good person but that he (i.e. his channel/brand) can exist at all should be deeply concerning.

It’s a bit hard not to be cynical when he himself describes how he developed his channel by optimising and a/b testing everything “like a psychopath” including the amount of views per dollar given away - he says himself that 100k seems to be the inflection point, you don’t get so many more views by going from 100k to 500k or 1m. Not once did he ever appear to have thought about the impact on the lives of the people receiving this random lump sum, which plenty of research on lottery winners shows is often very disruptive and negative on their overall long term wellbeing. As for his “donating” for blindness surgery etc, there are plenty of actual charities staffed by volunteers working hard day after day, he could easily donate quietly to any of those and he chooses not to.

Flywheel. He’s a genius.

It's a flywheel with exactly one input: YouTube. If YT changes their rules or payout schedule tomorrow, it all goes away. But sure, for the time being he's hit the infinite charity glitch.

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