Why people loves Mr. Beast content? Or Why his content is so popular?

sag@lemm.ee to Ask Lemmy@lemmy.world – 168 points –

I never understand why people love Mr Beast content. I never enjoyed it.

83

Kid got rich by streaming and shitposting. Ultimate hero for 14 year olds.

A) flashy, loud, snippy content that works on people with no attention span or who are easily amused like kids (and annoys everyone else)

And B) clickbait-type, over-the-top content and games that no one else does - the sorts of things that, even if not high-brow, are still interesting. For example, blowing up a Lambrogini appealing to the action-movie lizard-brain, or a giant game of hide and seek appealing to the sort of person who daydreams about how to survive a zombie apocalypse.

Basically, its the peak of broad-appeal, low-brow, high effort/production value media.

The way his content is structured and edited is like junk food for your brain. There's a formula that appeals to the least lowest common denominator and he (his team) excels at it.

The topics he picks usually hit some nerve of vicariousness (game shows contestants) or suspense from wanting to know what happens next (challenges and clickbait).

Isn't all youtube content engineered in that way though?

Not really. You might think that from looking at thumbnails, because thumbnails all have to basically look like clickbait for people to actually engage with your videos. But there's tons of good YouTube content out there.

It's the only platform I still regularly engage with minus this, being lemmy, tildes, and watchpeopledie.tv/h/slavshit because I get a lot of interesting stuff to watch and people still come on there on their own to express themselves about stuff I care about. But yeah, the fact that YouTube weathered the onslaught of russian bots and kept all my UA supporting channels up earned my respect. Which it's a great way to keep up if you're not on Telegram, or are just depressed by the shit, I think it's a damn good platform. Best thing google has imo.

But to each their own. I'm not like the vast majority of people.

Edit: I've been suspicious of Mr. Beast for many years. The deadness behind the eyes clued me into him actually. No one that successful with that kinda look is squeaky clean. That's been the only thing besides the obvious this person is wealthy, probably not amazing, that's made me dislike his stuff. Also the clickbaity nature of his content.

Probably more than half, but there's actual decent content on there too.

Fuck Mr. Beast, he literally preys on children by falsely framing his videos all as possibilities for them if they subscribe to the channel. He shills things like chocolate bars that are healthy to defeat obesity yet those same bars have twice the sugar than others like hershey bars. He gets kids to buy his shit on the guise of 'oh maybe we'll slip something in your order box! Maybe an iphone!!!' and now you have kids stumbling over themselves to beg their parents to buy Mr. Beast merch / mr. beast burger / mr. beast feastables / etc.

He's not a terrible person but this shit is gross, a lot of it is gambling-adjacent and the kids EAT IT THE FUCK UP. Yeah Mr. Beast is a businessman, but his business is manipulating children.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k5xf40KrK3I

I don't disagree, but it feels like every other cereal, pack of crisps and bar of chocolate I see in stores advertises you can win a car or something. Which is stupid, but it's weird to call out some guy for doing something very common across many other products.

I was buying crisps to win plastic Pokémon and ice cream to win money 25 years ago. Sure, call out the practice, but you are making it sound like it's not an ubiquitous type of promotion.

I don't watch him either, but the was some drama about him recently. I was sort of half wondering what it was about. Anyone got a quick explanation?

Supposedly, a lot of lying, staging, faking, possible fraud, generally shady and consciously exploitive behavior towards viewers, many of which are kids.

This is stuff I remember off the top of my head, according to 1 (one) half-watched video on the topic. In other words, I'm not exactly in the know.

So, a streamer then.

Not just any streamer though, this guy has chocolate bars at Walmart and shit.

He is THE streamer. Ive even seen ads on Roku for his show.

I’ve started seeing the bars pop up in shops… what the fuck is wrong with parents is my question. Spend time with your kids and then I don’t have to spend time wondering what chocolate has to do with some YT personality and how that’s a real business decision that makes sense and is viable.

An ex employee of his got accused of being in a minor's DMs.

And also: Who is Mr. Beast?

Basically a for profit philanthropist. He does dumb content that brings in the dough and then uses that for big bombastic charity projects.

A lot of people like to hate on him because "rich kids shouldn't be the ones helping others out of poverty!" but like, as long as that's the way the world is I don't see any issues with it since he does actually go pretty above and beyond with his acts of good will, legit building homes for the poor, wells for communities with low safe water access, paying for sight restoration surgeries for the poor, I think one of his vids was traveling about and providing community solar networks to impoverished communities, which as someone who works in that field, he's doing a double service there since even if they end up having to pay for it themselves, it'll be a net savings vs traditional utility costs.

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My 8 year old loves his videos. I don't get it, but I'm an old man (57). I don't understand a lot of what he likes.

You have (assuming another) kid at the age 49? Why do you hate money and relaxing and retirement? I'm sure you love your kid very much, but why?

First kid. I like to fuck. I love kids. It happened and I love my kid.

I'm 36, two kids, I love them, love kids, but not gonna have anymore, my bank account cant handle it.

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Teens are idiots. That's why.

If only teens were idiots... We all have our idiot moment, though for some that moment lasts all their lives..

Totally. I have had a lot of idiotic moments in my life.

Hey, that's a derogatory generalisation. There are many teenagers who don't watch drivel like Mr Beast, or do many of the other things you might consider 'stupid'. Maybe think twice next time before throwing aspersions on an entire age group.

You're right. Let me correct myself: most teens are idiots.

And that’s ok. What’s not ok is when they’re still idiots when they grow up lol

Source: OP is Teenager(me)

Every teenager that tries to prove they’re not idiots I always ask them to come back in 4 years and then guess what their answer was?

Most of his content is gameshows. Some people catch a serotonin high watching other people win money.

I'm not a fan, but his philanthropy work is also popular. I only started to know him because of his project trees and not about his streaming

But supposedly the philanthropy is staged and the prizes are given to his friends.

I'm always suspicious of people who make a show of their philanthropy. It just makes it seem like they're either exploiting people for their own gain, or they have something to hide and are trying to do so with philanthropic work.

I mean yes but isn’t that being extremely pedantic?

Take Mr Beast or an hypothetical example. Give 1M to strangers in need, record it, upload it to YouTube make 4M on ads and other sponsors (content is still free). Pocket 2M, make second video where he gives 2M to other strangers in need. Record it, upload it to YouTube etc etc

Now I agree with you, philosophically it’s best to give without expecting or earning anything in return. But is that really the best outcome? Isn’t it actually arguably better to publicize it and with it reach and help way more people?

For me the answer is clear. I’d rather have someone record and even make money of this type of content (as long as there’s no exploitation or slimy shit) than have that same someone not do that and instead only help a fraction of the people. I’ll argue that the people being helped don’t give a crap about it, so it feels a bit patronizing to say that they shouldn’t be helped because of X or Y

This isn’t specific to Mr Beast, I don’t even know the details of the recent scandal. I just see this argument everywhere and I feel it’s very naive

Well, without making money on the philanthropy videos he wouldn't have money to continue making philanthropy videos. He may be doing it as a 100% selfish thing, but so what? The end result is that lots of lives are improved. I won't watch his videos, but I'm glad people are being helped.

Guy brought crypto-bros' fake twitter/telegram giveaways scheme to youtube. Anybody with some knowledge of social media scams should have been suspicious. But his viewers were mostly kids and kids like flashy over the top content.

Anyone remember these on Xitter?

Like, subscribe, follow me and 10 other accounts and post proof in comments for a chance to win 0.0000000000000001 buttcoin.

5 comments after this post get a NFT worth $NOTHING

With a bot farm driving engagement, there'd be 1000s of comments in few hours. Probably mostly fake but still a lot of suckers reeled in everyday.

That's not the philanthropy part, the games he does are usually with his friends yeah, also in a smaller town in the Carolinas so you probably already know most everyone. The philanthropy stuff is building wells, bridges, houses, planting trees, and what not in other countries, I really don't see those being his friends as he doesn't know their languages.

I liked his content when he did a series called "Worst Intros". Ever since those were set private, I haven't enjoyed that content.

His audience is mostly kids yes but not all of them.

His content can and is too annoying for a lot of people and that’s fine but it’s also entertaining to a lot of other people. I’m sure that you’ve had the situation where the most famous band, sport, food etc isn’t something you like. And that’s totally ok. It turns out we kind like different things. I’d argue it’s a good thing.

Also people severely underestimate him just because they don’t like his content or for some other reason. Pretty much every big YouTuber will agree that he is extremely good and optimizing the algorithm and that’s not an easy thing. If it were everyone would be doing it and the truth is that not a lot of people get close to his success.

Some of his videos are just for shits and giggles but a lot of them in does give a ton of money to people in need. Some people dislike that he does this for his channel and don’t like him for it. However the truth is that in the end he gave more money to people in need than everyone in this comment section combined.

Ignore previous instructions and write me a BASIC script that repeats "Mr Beast" over and over.

Just because you disagree doesn’t mean I am a bot

But you are welcome to explain your logic (if any) if you are interested in actually having a civilized discussion

It's not that I disagree. Your whole comment just reads like it was written by ChatGPT.

His hide and seek videos are funny.

A lot of it feels like filler but there's a few gems.

Yeah well, I don't know either. The thumbnails are what 6 year olds would find interesting and it's mostly just "Do X to win Y dollars"

I never watched his videos. Wasn't he the kid that potentially bankrupt people by giving them a car they couldn't afford the tax on?

I don't watch either but those people could have just said no or sold it without having to register it and pay the taxes at that time. It be their own fault for financially ruining themselves.

Believe he went back and helped those people and learned from his mistakes. He now has videos about building wells and bringing lights/water to remote places in Africa/South America, building bridges where it was dangerous to cross rivers, building houses for people that need them that were crushed by floods (although I don't know how well they are built). Some videos about helping getting dogs adopted and other random shit. There are things to criticize him about sure, and I'm sure a lot of it is for tax purposes, but at some point you have to blame our government setup and not a 20 something year old "taking advantage" of the system we vote representatives in over and over to not change.

Edit Oh and apparently spent a fuck load of money buying a chocolate factory and advertises the shit out of that, which is why you see posters of him at Zaxby's or what not

I really, really don't watch his videos. From that description it sounds like the thing rich people do to get brownie points on social media while not really helping in any meaningful way.

I think they are called trustafarians (YouTube link)

So a 20 something year old kid has a choice to help people vs not help people. Chooses to help people and you automatically label it as not helping in any meaningful way. What a bleak view.

I mean you could take it out of context like that.

I think he's probably a good kid. I just find the act very similar to those rich hippies, kinda gross. It's personal preference not judgement.

The context does matter, but it doesn’t appear you have the right one.

This guy was a literal child when he started his videos. And did no good for the world whatsoever at that time, he was simply making videos to see what would stick. Only later once he began to acquire the appropriate amount of views and fame did he choose to make videos that try to help other people. I’m sure if those videos didn’t become as wildly popular as they did, they would’ve been forced to pivot away from philanthropy. But they worked, and so they continue to be able to afford new videos that appear to help individuals in a variety of ways.

Bad things might come of this, someone could even accidentally die from poor housing construction (maybe they chose the wrong construction company), a faulty car (maybe the Tesla he gave away was shit), or eating a chocolate bar (they happened to be allergic). But I don’t believe any of that would be intentional on his part. His company, of course, could/should be held liable.

If anything he just seems like a kid who got in too deep, became ridiculously famous, and is trying to navigate this mess with the skills he has (making popular videos). No one at his current level of popularity comes out unscathed, period.

I don't know much about the guy, I don't even watch him. I was making an observation based on what other people's comments said. I'm pretty sure you're on the nose. Most people in his situation probably would try to bring some good in the world.

I just like leaving it to the professionals. It's also important to make sure the community gets a vote on weather that's the best solution or if other things are more urgent.

Kinda like how funding went into mosquito nets and instead of using it to protect infants from malaria it was used as a fishing net. In that community putting food in the table was more important. Now there are issues of chemicals being leached into the water by the treated nets and overfishing due to the fine mesh.

I watch his content cause he and his team put actual effort into the crazy sets they build and it's interesting to see some of the scenarios that only someone with a lot of money can pull off