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Posted by elsewhen 10/26/2024

MrBeast's Faux Philanthropy(unherd.com)
108 points | 88 commentspage 2
imaginationra 10/26/2024|
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.
TheRealPomax 10/26/2024||
Phauxlantropy. Why pass up that opportunity.
tiahura 10/27/2024||
"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.

decremental 10/26/2024||
[dead]
stonethrowaway 10/26/2024||
[flagged]
runeblaze 10/26/2024||
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 10/26/2024||
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
waynecochran 10/26/2024|
I can’t believe the hate out there for guys like Mr Beast and Elon. The best gets crucified.
The_Colonel 10/26/2024||
People with a lot of power deserve extraordinary scrutiny.
left-struck 10/26/2024|||
Yes exactly. It reminds me of this video by veritasium, which is in turn inspired by Adrian Tan where he says “Be hated” and describes how in being successful you should seek to be hated by those with poor values. Not that I agree with everything Elon, Mr beast or Veritasum does by any stretch, but they have all seemingly embraced this. I also think it’s inevitable with fame, and perhaps a good check on the actions of those with power.

If I were Mr Beast and I read this I’d shrug it off and think you can’t impress everyone. Again, I don’t agree or even follow what he does but it actually doesn’t matter, if you do good, or bad, or do much of anything notable, you will attract hate.

The_Colonel 10/26/2024||
> Again, I don’t agree or even follow what he does but it actually doesn’t matter, if you do good, or bad, or do much of anything notable, you will attract hate.

Of course, and you need to accept that you will get hate, but it shouldn't become a source of validation. Getting hate from bad people doesn't mean you're doing good - e.g. Stalin was hated by Nazis, that doesn't make him a good guy.

> where he says “Be hated” and describes how in being successful you should seek to be hated by those with poor values

I think that even if you're in fact the good guy doing good things, seeking hate / outrage from the bad people is wrong or at least tactically a bad decision in the sense they will get even more deep-seated in their bad values.

left-struck 10/26/2024||
No you’re totally right, and Derek from Veritasium does point out that being hated shouldn’t be a moral compass. I think the point is more that you should know that even when you’re doing something right some people, maybe many people, will hate you for it. Incidentally if you’re doing something wrong you might be quite popular as well. Popularity isn’t a good judge of character.
tgsovlerkhgsel 10/26/2024||||
There is a difference between "extraordinary scrutiny" and "finding reasons, no matter how far fetched, to shit on people just because they're successful". They sometimes overlap, but this seems to be mostly the latter.
The_Colonel 10/27/2024||
I kinda agree on MrBeast. In the big picture he's pretty irrelevant, and I don't even want to invest enough energy to make an opinion.

With Musk, it's quite different. He's the richest person on the planet, exchanging favors with a presidential candidate of the most powerful country on earth, both of them having pretty "flexible" views on democracy and upholding the law. Musk is powerful and dangerous.

ekianjo 10/26/2024|||
So when do we scrutinize politicians next?
simonw 10/26/2024|||
Are you suggesting powerful politicians don't get scrutinized?
ekianjo 10/27/2024||
Not really. Do you see many of them go to prison? Because statistically some should.
ryandrake 10/26/2024||||
Who says we aren't? It is possible to scrutinize more than one thing.
llIIllIIllIIl 10/26/2024||||
The worst part that there are politicians that do not care if you scrutinize them or not. In a majority of nations on the planet.
left-struck 10/26/2024|||
Politicians in democratic countries are inevitably hated by roughly half the people, and that’s if they are popular!
advisedwang 10/26/2024|||
Look these guys have become millionaires and billionaires. That money represents other people's labour. That they command the lifetime output of hundreds or thousands of people's work* alone suggests we should examine how they have come to their positions and what they do with it. That is why they peddle philanthropic PR, which in turn necessitates that we examine their philanthropy.

* https://www.ssa.gov/policy/docs/research-summaries/education... shows the average lifetime earning of an american is between 1/2 and 3 million dollars depending on sex and education level.

whoknowsidont 10/26/2024|||
I mean maybe the reality is far different from the PR spin they spend a lot of money and time creating?
willcipriano 10/26/2024|||
"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."
happytoexplain 10/26/2024||
It's beneficial to try to keep the concepts of "can't believe" and "disagree with" separate in your head.