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Comment by smcl | Hacker News Reader

When it comes to people that wealthy, the money they're using for their "good deeds" are the bare minimum they think they need to get you off their case. So when you say "I don't think someone should be a billionaire, that means something has gone seriously wrong" they can point to how he filmed himself giving a homeless guy a house.

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In the case of MrBeast it's not even really reputation laundering, he's just an algorithm goblin who iterated through different shticks until landing on giveaways and contests as the things which consistently brought in the most clicks. I don't think he was even that rich when he started doing them, as far as I can tell his first ever prize was just two $50 iTunes gift cards while still recording in his bedroom, and after that it wasn't long until nearly all of his content revolved around giveaways.

The whole operation is optimized to the gills for maximum engagement above all else, down to A/B testing a hundred different thumbnail variants for every video: https://x.com/Creator_Toolbox/status/1783995589543227402

> down to A/B testing a hundred different thumbnail variants for every video

To be fair, this is apparently table stakes for being a YouTuber at the moment. Maybe not hundreds but definitely several. Veritasium did a video [0] about how he has to do this to maintain enough viewership to keep YouTubing viable as a full-time job.

[0]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S2xHZPH5Sng

It makes sense though. Or to put it another way, it seems odd to expect that there's always a global thumbnail optimum for a given YouTube video.

So to bring in the most views, put out different thumbnails to attract different viewers. Ideally YouTube would have support for this where you can just upload a dozen thumbnails or so, and YouTube figure out who needs to see which.

Eh, Veritasium is now majority owned by PE now (Electrify). This is why they’ve been introducing new hosts and Derek is doing more intros / voiceovers - the end goal removing reliance on the original channel owner.

So does he need to do it to remain profitable or does PE need to do it to pay for all their overhead / etc?

Ah interesting, didn't know that. The video is at least 4 years old, so suppose it depends on when Derek sold. Anecdotally, I think all the new hosts came after that thumbnail video, but I couldn't say how closely the changes you mention followed.

In general, it seems this is a thing that YouTubers feel they need to do to avoid being swallowed, but the extent to which MrBeast does it could well be extreme, and thereby worthy of suspicion.

It’s not that difficult to become a billionaire. If you can collect $1 dollar from a billion people, you’ll be a billionaire. If you increase that to $10, you only need 100 million people, roughly a third of the United States.

What you need is some kind of platform on which you could collect those dollars. In recent history the internet has become a powerful platform and that is why we have so many more billionaires.

But what has not changed is our sensitivity to good deeds. If you’re a billionaire, giving all your wealth away is not really going to be appreciated much more than doing some highly visible good deeds that give smaller amounts of wealth away. So why do it? There is diminishing returns for good deeds. You’re better off staying a billionaire until you die, after which your wealth will be distributed anyway.

> If you’re a billionaire, giving all your wealth away is not really going to be appreciated much more than doing some highly visible good deeds that give smaller amounts of wealth away. So why do it?

You could do it for the intrinsic satisfaction of being a decent human and creating a better world. Could probably end or avoid a few wars, too. You’d certainly go into the annals of history is you eradicated poverty in whole areas of the world (which you could easily do, as a billionaire).

> It’s not that difficult to become a billionaire.

Please show us. Then give all your money away and see how that worked out. Don’t knock it until you try it. If you later regret it, that’s OK, shouldn’t be that difficult to become a billionaire again.

The idea that giving all your money away makes you a decent human and or it would create a better world is just flawed logic.

and this is downvoted why? giving all your money away in no way makes you a decent human or guarantees a better world. It's flawed logic. A platitude.

Please stray from the meta "why am I downvoted!". It's low-effort, reddit-esque commentary that only serves yourself. You can edit your other comment.

You're being downvoted because you're not responding to the comment in earnest. The comment says,

"You could do it for the intrinsic satisfaction of being a decent human and creating a better world."

Obviously, that implies good intention. Your contrarian take sidesteps this for no real reason: you present no argument other than being contrarian for contrarian-sake. Maybe try explaning why you think the logic is flawed.

His logic is not flawed to anyone who thinks about it:

1. You have to be a shitty human being to become a billionaire. 2. If you give away all your money, you’re not a shitty human being. 3. But if you’re not a shitty human being, how could you have become a billionaire in the first place?

???

There is no way to win with these people.

You're arguing against points no one made. No one in this immediate thread, at least. No one here said you have to be shitty to be a billionaire, or that giving money away stops you from being shitty.

Please don’t straw man. Engage with the arguments in earnest, with what the person said, not what you imagine they said.

> You could do it for the intrinsic satisfaction of being a decent human and creating a better world.

Do you think we're extrapolating too much into the meaning of "decent human"?

Say you asked “what’s the point of running? Why should I do it every day? I’ll only get tired” and I answer “you could do it for the intrinsic satisfaction of pushing yourself, out of love for the sport, to be healthier, to become an athlete”. Do you understand that to mean “anyone who doesn’t run every day is unhealthy, not an athlete, and doesn‘t love sports”? Hopefully not, that would be ridiculous. All that’s needed is to point at a swimmer or a cyclist as a counter example.

So yes, you are extrapolating too much. Saying “doing this is good or decent” does not automatically mean “not doing this is bad or indecent”. You are not reading some “obvious subtext” (as you put it in another comment), you’re making up beliefs and ascribing negative intentions to complete strangers.

Can you quote this thread where somebody said any of that? If you can't, can you explain how you came to those conclusions? And finally, what are you trying to "win," and why? lol

Frankly I disagree and am pointing out the obvious subtext.

if giving all my money away leads to "the intrinsic satisfaction of being a decent human and creating a better world."

Then it's not much of a step or even a leap to go the other way with it. If I horde all my money or even don't give it all away, then I will be denied that intrinsic satisfaction because I'm not a decent human or creating a better world.

Do you think we're extrapolating too much into the meaning of "decent human"?

The goodness isn’t in giving all the money away, but in the positive change you can induce while making even a fraction of it available to a worthy cause. Obviously you wouldn’t create a better world by giving your money away to another billionaire or Polluting Genociders Inc, but if you engage in good faith and steel man the argument you can surely find some examples you’d agree with, such as preventing wars for resources and saving people from painful slow deaths due to starvation. Can we agree those are positive things? That working towards improving the lives of others without expecting a return makes one a better person?

Consider this: A billionaire (not even a multibillionaire, just one on the “lower end”) who gave away $1 a second would be giving away $86400 a day. Sounds like a lot, until you realise it would still take them 32 years to give it all away, and that’s assuming they wouldn’t be making any money in the meantime.

Now consider the number of people living in extreme poverty.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extreme_poverty

Tbh i don't see a problem with this take other than people don't like it.

People just vastly overestimate the power of money at scale. There is more power and inspiration in doing highly visible good deeds that people will see and feel good about than just cutting checks to large groups of people. It takes a billionaire to truly understand this.

Getting $1 from a single person is already a challenge. Automating that is incredibly hard and clearly not something you can do alone, and if you don't do it alone then everybody gets a cut, including your bank, IRS, etc.

If you're a billionaire, you don't feel the need to win the unaffected public's affections. You just do good because you have the resources to do it and can derive satisfaction from the people who are benefiting. You don't get to being ruthless enough to become a billionaire if you're dependent on what uninvolved strangers think of you. If you were, you'd be giving it all away well before piling up enough to become a billionaire.

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