How to succeed in MrBeast production (Leaked PDF)

What I find interesting in reading this is that it's not particularly surprising in content. And I don't mean that I expected some hugely toxic culture from a youtube company and found it. I mean that the whole document is largely pretty standard "how to make it in a competitive industry" advice. The tone might be a little unprofessional for folks who are used to big corporate talk, but if you'd leaked internal Microsoft or Google documents to a bunch of long time IBM folks they would have thought the same things I'm sure. The tone might be different, but most of the points seem identical to stuff anyone should be familiar with. "Follow up when you ask someone for something", "Don't commit to giving X if you can't actually get X", "Have a backup plan", "Try to turn a failure into something useful", "Own your mistakes", "Make sure you've exhausted all the avenues for something before you decide it's impossible", "Do the hard work early so you're not cramming it all in at the end", "You are the subject matter expert on your specific project, assume everyone else doesn't know anything". Even the "A,B,C" employee thing is pretty standard stuff folks know intuitively. Fast food is garbage no matter where you go, yet somehow Chick Fil A has lines around the block at lunch time and if there's 3 cars in a Wendy's drive through, you'll go somewhere else. Why? Because Chick Fil A really tries to not have "C" employees (relative to fast food employees in general), and it shows in the customer experience. Two fast food places can have the same quality of food, and the one with the drive through attendant that acknowledges people and responds to phatic phrases, and marks the diet soda cup is going to have more traffic and customer satisfaction than the one where the attendant barely acknowledges you've arrived at the window and leaves you to figure out which was the diet coke when you get home.

That’s one of the most interesting parts of this document. Many people will read it and think “I would never work at a place like that,” and many others would think “that’s exactly the environment I want to work in!”

More startups should be this transparent about their stated/desired culture (even if unintentionally).

> How much has that specific chosen culture contributed to their enormous success in that market?

You see this across industries. Even Google, in the early days, was people working crazy hours, sweating the details, and just generally grinding. It is something like a law of nature that extraordinary results require extraordinary effort from extraordinary people.

First time entrepreneurs are also learning how to build culture. No excuse, but still.

At face value, this is not a culture that would reward risk taking. It's very operations focused. Get x done on day y or you're fired. Maybe they do value risk taking on the creative side?

I don't think it has anything to do with efficiency, but with effectivity. You could argue producing addictive videos for teens is Mr beasts goal. And he is very effective at doing that. And actually yes, successful at that goal.

Success doesn't really have a moral component, it's relative to the stated goal. You could argue it's not meaningful or moral or worthwhile or valuable, but you can't deny that he has achieved success.

So the thing you can take away from someone like mr beast is "what made them so effective?". A lot of his strategies could be useful for other, more worthwhile goals than his! So there's something that can be learned. I think that's what people mean, not that "people in tech generally value efficiency".

> is BAD, not a "success"

that is your moral view or value. It is not a universal value.

Economic success is indeed a thing, and it can be discussed separately from moralityl.

> but we have to take a step back collectively and understand that "being efficient at producing addictive video for teens to sell ads for shit they don't need" is BAD, not a "success"

That’s seems like a judgement call and a personal one at that. It certainly isn’t a universal value among humanity.

Which is fine, but a 500+ comment HN post where people argue over personal values doesn’t make for interesting reading.

If 100% of his watchers were YouTube Premium subscribers and none of them ever saw an ad, would you feel differently?

> that's clearly because people in tech generally value efficiency

I think this is you reading this into the comment. They don't mention efficiency.

It's more about willing to fire below-A players quickly rather than having a perfect hiring filter that only lets A players in.

Looking back at 7 companies I worked at: they all had a tough hiring filter to get in. But most of them also had not that great people that they were not firing.

Firing people is hard even when you know you should do it. You have to be a heartless bastard to not have a problem firing people.

It's even worse when the company gets so big that a game of building empires starts in which case managers have an incentive to grow headcount to grow power, even if that headcount isn't very good.

The document even talks about what MrBeast considers a B-player.

Made a mistake once? That's fine. Fuck ups are a price of ambition.

Made the same mistake twice? Need to be told the same thing multiple times? Not an A player so fired.

I’ve seen multiple teams hire mediocre people despite having a choice. Usually it is because either:

- they believe velocity is simply additive (A player + B player > A player)

- they look too much into credentials (big name school / employer) and do not adequately vet ability

- they start with the attitude “let’s give this person a chance and see if they work out” and become too reluctant to fire when they turn out mediocre.

Teams should be more comfortable staying small longer in my opinion.

It does come from a point of privileged. Steve jobs said "A players hire A+ players. A+ players hire A++ players". That was because he saw A players hiring B players. B Players will hire C players - and so on.

That is all well and good when you are the golden goose that is Apple. Most people just do not get the opportunity to hire like that.

Startups usually have no choice, they cannot afford A players. There are businesses which do hire A-players such as OpenAI, Jane Street, Netflix, etc. but A players require A compensation.

>I always love the "just hire A-players" line. As though startups are trying to hire mediocre people instead of having no choice.

If a startup can't attract talent (a sign of bad traction), that startup probably is not that good and more people won't solve the underlying problem. You would also be surprised how many startups outsource dev/marketing/etc. in their initial stages.

If you can't convince smart people to work for you and that your idea is good, good luck trying to convince customers of the same.

>And that 95% of startups don't know their metrics. Pretty sure almost all do but again don't have the skills or resources to meaningfully move them.

I said most don't know them as well as Mr. Beast. Read "Chapter 1: What makes a Youtube video viral?". Most founders have not put the same amount of time into seeing how to track, measure, and impact metrics. He identified key KPIs and then experimented with changes until he found what worked. His whole north star to, minute by minute, structure each video, is informed by the KPIs. His whole strategy is built upon metrics by metrics.

He clearly is obsessed with them to a degree few are. Some startups don't even know how much money they make, how much money they lose, etc.

>trying to hire mediocre people

It should be "always retain A-players". You can hire as many ABC's as you like - some of those C's will become B's and A's, and some of the B's will become A's, and the rest .. you let go with severance.

Thats the free market, baby. Live with it, or perish.

> As though startups are trying to hire mediocre people instead of having no choice.

Well one choice you might make is to hire some number of 'mediocre people' instead of one 'A-player'; the ratio of more junior to more senior; etc.

I am hearing this stuff from bigger companies too now. By definition, everyone cannot hire A players.

Having recently switched jobs, I was again reminded of just how terrible most interviewers are. The more senior the interviewer, the more terrible.

> I think it's pretty clear he has figured out how to "master" YouTube better than anyone else ever has by a very wide margin.

content for dumb kids

> and hiring the unqualified personal friends that he does in practice for all kinds of production roles

How do you know they are unqualified?

> Clearly some people do like the terms of employment, otherwise they wouldn't work there.

This is a deeply naive understanding of employment.

Almost no one has a huge array of job opportunities, and they can select the one they want based on company culture.

Most people have one viable job offer at a time, and they have to work hard for it. This is even more true in entertainment fields. Many people in entertainment feel lucky to be a paid employee at all, and they can't choose between a job that requires all-nighters and one that doesn't.

> bad culture

The let "let boys be childish" part and the overall psuedo-human tone kind of alarmed me. The random "hahas" littered around, seemed like a robot trying to be a human.

> micromanaging

He has a playbook/formula that works and all employees are solely focused on executing that vision. People have little operational ownership. In other words, employees don't have freedom in vision.

I even said it probably is necessary for the success of his business that employees don't have that freedom. I just would not enjoy working in a environment like that and I think employees (especially early ones) need to have that kind of operational freedom in startups (which is the context of my comment).

> where you saw bad culture or micromanaging

Mr. Beast is ultimately the star of the video, so he has to micromanage at some point or another. That's his brand. He can't let his employees plan a video that he won't like.

I did find the comments about all-nighters off-putting... And I personally don't like working on multiple things at the same time. But that's personal preference; I don't particularly like Mr. Beast's videos, so I don't see myself working for his company any time soon.

I'm more concerned about Mr. Beast overextending himself. With Mr. Beast (the person) being the brand and the star, I don't think he can scale himself much more.

I personally think (and I think the prevailing sentiment is) that giving early employees equity is crucial. There is no way I would do any work for an early stage startup (or, in general, if I can help it) with no stake in the company.

In bigger companies, it's a zero sum game. They don't really care about you because their scale makes it hard to identify who cares for them, so everything is just a business transaction.

Pretty well so far

So most tech startups?

Maybe the subheading “no does not mean no” can be also taken literally.

Unfortunately, the person he'd hired to predict the future was not a A-player.

Just like you can't argue about a lion eating a gazelle keeping the lion alive. Some people think it's gross but the lion is alive and ready to hunt again.

He gives clear and actionable definitions, which is what makes it remarkable and different to everyone else saying or implying what you wrote.

You can't strip out the valuable content from a sentence and then claim it was always identical to valueless sentences.

In this profile from 2022 Jimmy said his goal was to become the number one YouTube channel: https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-features/mrbeas...

According to this Wikipedia page https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_most-subscribed_YouTub... he finally achieved that goal on June 2, 2024.

So definitely successful by his own chosen metric.

> I do not consider Jimmy successful. In relation to classical virtues, he hasn’t truly lived up to many. That would be success to me.

He was a tiny YouTuber 6 years ago with under a million subscribers, and has become the biggest despite tens of thousands of competitors who were better placed than him. The difference between just a few short years ago and now is what impresses me and makes me consider him a success, he has gone from a one man show counting numbers in his room to a million to the biggest on the platform with many other ventures.

> But success has different definitions.

Yes, except doesn’t Mr. Beast define the kind of success he’s aiming for in the PDF?

> I do not consider Jimmy successful.

By the definition he set for success or the one you made up?

Seems like a version of not counting points and giving all the kids a gold medal. It's pink and fluffy.

Good by what measure?

I think this is exactly the point that MrBeast is trying to make.

By being best YOUTUBE videos it means to focus on whatever appeals to the algorithm. It doesn't mean you are better informed, or better entertained, as long as the click-through-rate is great and the minutes people watch the video is maximized.

You could say the same thing is true for Xerox, for them the best doesn't necessary mean that they sell you the best most reliable copier, but the highest grossing product, with a guaranteed post-sale income.

And this is why we can't have nice things.

> Some counterpoints:

The goal would be to be more customer-focused in those cases.

"No one prospers without rendering benefit to others." — Tadao Yoshida, founder of YKK zippers, https://ykkamericas.com/our-philosophy/

With MrBeast, the "best YOUTUBE video" would be one that causes engagement with the viewer throughout the video:

> The creative process for every video they produce starts with the title and thumbnail. These set the expectations for the viewer, and everything that follows needs to be defined with those in mind. If a viewer feels their expectations are not being matched, they’ll click away - driving down the crucial Average View Duration that informs how much the video is promoted by YouTube’s all-important mystical algorithms.

You have to both entice the viewer with the thumbnail/title, and meet the expectations of the viewer so they continue watching.

Your counterexamples are a bunch of instances where the company did not meet customer expectations.

Their definition of "best copier possible" was "most-profitable copier possible", meaning they had to balance getting people to not hate it so much they chose competitors, while not being so reliable it didn't need warrantees and services and parts etc?

>- Ford didn't fix Pinto's fuel tank, prioritizing cost minimization over "best possible car in its class".

This is a nit-pick, but for the record, The Pinto didn't explode at higher rates than other similar automobiles, also there wasn't an internal Ford Memo, it was an attachment to a letter to the NHTSA --but all people remember is the this so called "memo" Anyhow a myth was born and it seemingly refuses to die. By the numbers:

In 1975-76, the Pinto averaged 310 fatalities a year. But the similar-size Toyota Corolla averaged 313, the VW Beetle 374 and the Datsun 1200/210 came in at 405.

Additional info: https://newmarksdoor.typepad.com/mainblog/2005/07/the_pinto_...

That's not a counterpoint, that's a list of examples of exactly what they're saying.

They're not saying make the best product possible, they're saying make the product that sells the most despite quality.

I do not view these as counterpoints. You are making the same point, which is that the metric one optimizes for is extremely important. MrBeast is solely focused on maximizing revenue on the YouTube platform. The examples you cite also demonstrate the same exact metric (i.e., profit) in other domains. I know HP was in the habit of crippling its printers to extract more money, to add to your other examples.

Out of curiosity, what's wrong with Intel? Are you referring to their selling more capable parts for more money? If so, that does not strike me as a shady practice to maximize profits. More like how the best fruit goes for export, where it can fetch the most return.

Well a lot of these aren't counterpoints but rather examples of when companies naively followed KPIs to their own detriment. Boing has fallen from dominance to a distant second, Windows has been steadily losing dominance, Ford's darker years were around the Pinto fiasco.

While Microsoft as a whole is still quite strong, Ford and Boeing lost significant market position and the losses are partially attributed to these very mistakes.

Those are problematic business goals, right? I think that's very different to aligning team goals to company goals.

You are not wrong, but I'd suggest that in those cases the company prioritized short and medium term profit over the long term success of the company. Each of the situations you list ended up costing those companies dearly (except maybe Dyson?), and today they serve as cautionary tales. So I think the original point of "keeping the main thing the main thing" stands.

A good example here is Betamax. A lot of people lament that Betamax lost despite being better on a lot of measures: picture quality, etc. But what Betamax wasn't better at than VHS was runtime, and an early application of home VCRs was to time-shift NFL games, which ran longer than Betamax could record. It turns out that the end of NFL games is often the most important part, so people bought VHS instead of Betamax. So best is not some idealized thing, but depends a lot on what exactly you're measuring.

But also... this isn't doing well for Boeing? It's costing the money? I don't think Boeing is a template for success.

Those still seem like examples of “whatever the company is trying to achieve”, be it profitability, domination, cost minimisation etc.

> - Dyson's some batteries are notorious for killing themselves via firmware on slight cell imbalance instead of doing self-balancing. Dyson prioritize "steady income via killing good parts early" instead of "building the best vacuum possible".

Any good alternatives?

> Some counterpoints:

Maybe all of these companies succeeded _despite_ these?

I suspect the intent was the best for the customer. Like it or not, YouTube is the customer here. The viewers are YouTube's customers.

What? Literally that’s the pint. If your goal is to screw over your costumers to maximize profit then the active still applies. Depends on what your goals are.

[flagged]

I see this all the time. Organizations which are solely dedicated to stop things from happening instead of allowing things to happen.

One example is a disaster readiness organization which mandates that teams cannot deploy code in only a single datacenter. What they should really be doing is making it so code automatically runs in multiple datacenters.

Facilitate instead of forbid.

TBF there are orgs at companies whose sole role is to play DEFENSE - lawyers, CSO etc… if they deem something too risky it IS their job to block it, and then it’s up to upper management to override them if the situation calls for it.

Now that said they should still try to advance the mission within that framework, and not be lazy.

Ok but the main issue is the stopping things from happening instead of finding solutions.

Who said anything about consumers? I think viewing "the best YOUTUBE videos possible" in line with "the best CIGARETTES possible" is probably the right framing here.

His competition and giveaway videos are just the modern version of reality TV and game shows, where the draw is the horse race and human drama. You might call that "toxic, useless brainrot," but personally, I feel like such fare is about on the same level as any number of classic novels (including pretty much anything authored by a Bronte sister). Your enjoyment likely hinges on your level of empathy for the people involved, as they're thrown into complex social situations with their livelihood at stake, or whatever.

>toxic, useless brainrot

I assumed that's what all his videos were for years and hadn't ever watched any (given I am not a child, among other reasons), but I gave one a chance out of curiosity and found myself surprisingly enjoying some of the competition videos. The competitions are often well-designed and adeptly narratively structured.

What's wrong with making things for others' entertainment? The moralization of this is bizarre. Don't like it, don't consume it. This man has figured out how to create a ridiculous amount of value, whichever way you slice it.

I'm going to interject my own experiences and note that some legal advice seems excessively risk averse and honestly just defaults to "no" and lazy. I suspect that's what the OP might have been referencing.

I know we're generally concerned with the folks playing fast and loose with the rules here, and that's 100% true, but. I find in big orgs sometimes it's far more on the other end of the spectrum.

And sometimes security or IT just play it excessively, and never allow anything just to make sure they can't be blamed for anything:

"No, you can't improve the situation with the Linux servers that hasn't been updated since 2013 because those servers don't exist in our roadmap, and therefore there's no policy document that we can lean on to make any decisions. So the servers stay in their miserable state until we can phase over all customers that use those servers to some other product eventually. In a few years. Hopefully."

Note that the above isn't fiction, but exactly what happened a few months ago. Luckily I managed to transfer to a team that didn't have to deal with those servers.

See this all the time - for example, zealous dev "if I had production DB read/write I could get things done so much faster."

Sure, but the production DB has an incredible amount of PII and we are audited out the wazoo, but even if that weren't the case and it was totally fine, all it takes is you being careless with your credentials one time and the company's hosed or we have a massive breach, or some rogue employee encrypts the data with ransomware. So, yes, it would make you faster, and no, you can't have it. It's insane how often I have this type of conversation and insane how often I am the bad guy in it.

It is pretty honest guide on how to succeed at Mr. Beast productions. They have their own metrics of success which may or may not align with your morals or ideals. It is a collection of all their learnings in making the videos.

While I agree with you, his goal is probably to make the most money. But I understand why he might not have phrased it that way. For any company their final goal is obviously to make the most money possible. But this goal is kind of unclear. It's better to approximate it like Mr. Beast does through saying that he makes the best YOUTUBE videos.

> Mr. Beast, like Hollywood production companies before him, can say "don't forget, your job is lowest common denominator slop."

This feels to me like an intentionally hostile reading of the content. I think all of us have had the experience of working with a co-worker who is either brilliant but extremely prone to going down rabbit holes, or a co-worker who seems to have a completely different idea of what we’re doing than everyone else. “Make the best YouTube videos possible, not the highest quality” is the same sentiment behind “eventually you have to actually ship your software”. It’s the same sentiment behind the derision in the term “architecture astronaut”. It’s the same sentiment behind the “worse is better” axiom. It’s the same sentiment behind “don’t let perfect be the enemy of good”. In other words you need to know what it is that pays your bills and be laser focused on delivering that. A YouTube channel isn’t the place to make art house silent films. A community theater production isn’t the place to practice your improv comedy skills. If your company sells a database, it’s not the place to be writing memory safe shells in rust to replace bash, no matter how annoying maintaining your startup bash scripts are.

Honestly I never met Jimmy even though I was in his studio for two weeks working on the video. I did meet a ton of his employees, many of whom I'd gladly work with again, just not on a MrBeast production.

I just can't speak to Jimmy Donaldson himself. Not even sure how much he's involved in the day to day at the company (outside of being the public face).

The bigger the company gets, the more separate it becomes from its founder/face/whatever.

Inevitable.

(Although this document clearly sets out that this distinction should be fought at every step, so that counts against what I'm saying. It is trying desperately to ensure the company reflects the man as much as possible)

> While everything was going good, MrBeast the person took all credit for MrBeast the company. Now, it seems like everyone is on tip-toes to clarify they are trash-talking MrBeast the company, not MrBeast the person.

Yeah, I can't really understand why someone would craft a persona with a unique bespoke name and then name the company the same thing other than to try to make sure that the company is viewed as synonymous with the persona.

He is fricking 26 years old. He hasn't given his life for anything. At the moment he is, yes, but likely after some years he is retired on his yacht.

Giving up your life for many millions of dollar is a choice.

His employees are probably payed well, but obviously don't make as much as he. So I guess asking them to give up their lives for less compensation is to say their lives are or less value...

the audacity to ask other people to give up their life for helping you fulfil your dream and even sell it to them as them fulfilling their dream.

is it the same "temporarily embarrassed millionaires" shtick the american dream brainwashed americans with?

if you have that much drive and want to invest so heavily in work - do yourself a favour and do it as a leader where you call the shots and have the equity instead of as a follower.

This is what we call a cult.

People should not do that, though. There are better things to dedicate lives to.

That's like me saying I've given up my life to have the job that I have currently and live where I do. Or you've given up your life for however you spend it.

It just about makes some sort of sense in the context of something like giving up a professional career in a developed country and moving to a remote African village to do aid work, but giving up your life to make a tonne of money creating viral YouTube videos is an absurd description.

I would like to believe that's true, but honestly, I know some really hard workers who are gluttons for abuse.

"C-Players" tend to keep "A-Players" out of legal trouble, so Jimmy might just now be learning their value.

I bet the folks at Train & Pit Co. Couldn’t believe their ears.

This is why those who can appropriately select good information will flourish in this age. I still suck at it (get pulled into mindnumbing shorts for 30 minutes), but then I learned a new musical instrument for _free_ using YouTube.

Agreed, YouTube is the PBS of the internet. It's free and fast.

> Disagree. The outliers don’t determine the value of the platform.

Agreed.

> The videos of people creating, fixing, coding, diagnosing, doing every day random things - those are a gift to humanity.

These seem like the outliers.

Mr Beast and similar viral videos are hardly the outliers given that their traffic absolutely dwarfs the best educational videos. There is a lot of useful and interesting content on Youtube, but that's very much a niche use. The vast majority of watched hours are on content much closer to Mr Beast than learning how to code or a diy woodworking project.

This is not how YouTube, or people, or virality work though.

The fact there is some useful educational content is a byproduct of the machine of lucrative trash of the capitalist hellhole spiral, and the written word will always prevail comparatively. You can always bet on text. https://graydon2.dreamwidth.org/193447.html

Also, as you likely know, YouTube is owned by Google so it’s very silly to say it’s “more important.”

> However, I've curated my YouTube feed to be almost entirely stuff that is interesting, educational, and that I think I'm getting value from.

Those creators are still making orders of magnitude less money than people who make zero content attention grabbing controversy meme slop videos.

IF it were a net good, they'd let me disable Shorts. But they don't.

> This type of criticism reads to me as a general hatred of what humanity actually is.

No, that's really shallow. "Humanity" is a perennial struggle. If I'd be looking for a word for the lowest common denominator it would be "beastliness", to stay on topic of the thread.

That criticism reads to me as a general hatred of what beastliness actually is.

Are you arguing that the public fascination with it makes it morally acceptable? If so would you consider gladiatorial fights to the death and gruesome public executions, both of which have been massive crowd-pleasers in the past and no doubt would be again if they became socially accepted, justified by the same argument? If not, what do you think is different here that makes condemning Mr. Beast for feeding unwholesome public appetites wrong, but condemning Roman emperors for it right? Just a question of the degree of nastiness?

Personally, I think human behaviour is massively influenced by culture and that we have an individual moral responsibility to take actions that work in favour of having a healthy culture. And I see that individual moral responsibility as resting particularly on those who profit from culturally influential activities (and if Mr. Beast isn't "culturally influential", please can we retire the term "influencer"). I see arguments often made that amount to justifying amoral, or even actively immoral, behaviours by the fact that money can be made from them, with an implicit assumption that humans have no free will when it comes to money, that an action that makes money has to be carried out and that this somehow morally absolves the one who does it. I see that as a corrosive meme and evidence of a deeply unhealthy culture, not as a conclusion that follows from adopting capitalism as the primary organising principle in a society.

Human nature is full of self-conflict and contradiction. There are more base aspects of it and higher ones as well. This has been known up and down the ages. Vices and virtues. "You're against vice, hence you're against humans because vice is what humans like to choose!" Well, no. You can be against catering to the base urges. You wouldn't feed your dog 10 cakes even if it continues eating it. And that's not hatred of dog-ity.

What the algorithm seems to favour is a better indicator of what people use Youtube for overall.

I'm also using youtube almost exclusively as a means of education, but a net positive for us doesn't really mean much. If for one more educated viewer you get ten more radicalised and dumber ones, we may be better off without it.

Youtube is the single most important and valuable learning tool that exists on the planet. There are lectures on literally everything, i have been recently learning my way into geometric algebra and lie theory for my physics phd. Sure, there's a lot of crap and youtube is just as happy to waste your time but if you search out and only watch educational content, your Frontpage will become educational content. It's hard to keep that way because there's tons of fun but uneducational things to watch, but there's browser extensions and things to help with that. Extensions that block the homepage and video recommendations, extensions that let you group your subscriptions and create your own feed. It can be amazing if you use it right, it's hard to use right sometimes

"YouTube does not offer math lectures about volume calculation."

oh really did you try searching because I found one in about two seconds: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B1qXIkr05tk

It absolutely does offer more maths lectures than you could ever conceivably watch.

There are plenty of terrible books and trash novels. Easily 99% of books are junk (often junk dressed up as non-junk). I think it's very possible that in 2024, YouTube is net more educational than reading. (Speaking in terms of total amount of knowledge acquisition.)

Maybe but YT recommendations are good enough so that you don't see those 99% you are not interested in.

So, you always go to the library for every problem you have where you need a detailed guide?

Yeah, this is the brilliance of the novel format. Someone presents an insight, and it can see obvious in isolation but then seems obviously wrong in context. "Of course we should favor throughput over efficiency" is obvious until you realize it means, for example, allowing idle time on incredibly expensive machines to favor responsiveness, which just seems wasteful.

In the novel, you get to see the characters bang their heads against these "paradoxes" again and again until it sinks in.

It's also included in Spotify Premium for free.

It's only available for certain channels. You can see more info here.[0]

[0] https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/13338784

You mean he talks more like a normal person talking about a product rather than a Youtuber going over the top with everything? The fact that he is genuine is a big part of his appeal.

He’s been doing it a long time, has an excellent understanding of the tech industry, and is a master at producing content that is easy for everyone to digest. I’ve been watching him for years and have always thought he had a knack for his craft. Just because he has a calm demeanor shouldn’t take away from what he does, but in my opinion should add to it even more.

The #1 rule is clearly not show energy, show enthusiasm. It's the #1 rule for a subset of content, like MrBeast. The content world is a big place, and the silent majority has no interest in loud and obnoxious.

Is product fetishism really better than light entertainment? The MKBHD slop is just branded with that same vibe of the products he likes to cover, namely the self-satisfactions of luxury goods that people mistake for high quality. That gives the false signal it provides more value than Mr. Beast. Yes, MKBHD technically covers products, but so did Top Gear. The content is neither necessary nor sufficient to make an informed purchase decision.

Watching a review on a device you'll never buy is hardly a net positive compared to watching a yacht get blown up.

Not so sure, while I like Marques, he has a 100% focus on consumerism.

MKBHD feeds the worst aspects of consumer culture.

Come on, they're both useless consumerist slop (i watch a lot of slop not throwing stones just don't see either as beneficial at all)

Would you say the same about companies, that the only interesting ones worth talking about are the ones in the Fortune 500? If anything, I would say many of them are rather boring examples, we all know roughly how they're managed and run.

goes to show formal language isn't a necessary component of high communication. might even be antagonistic

Just an aside, not arguing...

You don't necessarily need to hire someone like Anders to pick their brain.

A lot of people who are not huge in the zeitgeist (and also are not assholes) are surprisingly reachable.

Funnily enough, I've chatted with Anders about programming language design -- I got the impression he thought my ideas were terrible.

For a while, you could just email Noam Chomsky and he would respond.

> You may not find it appealing, but the truth is that most major successes are driven by obsession.

Great, don't force it on your employees. I am not working for you for anything other than a paycheck and flexible working conditions and stimulating work.

You'll find that most undesirable human behavior and perception does. This is just "product obsession" marketing bullshit forced onto real-life relationships. If you want to engage in this type of culture because it helps you fit in with founders; fine, that's your own brain you're messing with. Don't force it on others.

So does schizophrenia.

Yea, you're right. I really hate this though.

in order to disallow obsessive work?

Fair, I should have said "tech founders" I suppose. I think it's reasonable to draw distinctions between tech, media, clothing, retail, etc startups.

Like, MrBeast seems like a media startup which is different than, say, a SaaS startup or an AI assistant startup. Fair enough?

That’s there, but the parts about taking responsibility for your work, keeping people you delegate work to accountable and negotiating with vendors and being persistent is stuff you usually get informally.

I also find those signs that it’s a more honest document. Most things publicly available are so neutered there’s not much useful grey info

IMHO it's quite divisive; there's a significant percentage of the population that's addicted to this sort of content, and there's another which actually finds it boring.

I've watched a few MrBeast videos and similar content, out of curiosity. It just does not appeal to me, in the same way that "influencer" content and celebrities don't.

It's not English-speaking community specific. In every language I can speak, I can think of an equivalent of MrBeast for that area. Maybe a majority portion of the entire world's population actually enjoys that kind of content. Nobody in my friend group enjoys that, but looking at my nephews, they're all going crazy about it. There are going to be people who grew up with him for almost a decade, and that's a crazy amount of time to build parasocial relationship with your favourite celebrity.

Most people are dumb because they are lazy and gave up long time ago. Their parents the same way, so the kids never had a chance. Like I had a house mate in my 20s. His parents just gave him everything. He busted his car, parents got him a new one. He lost his job and he just played call of duty all day and drank or smoke weed.

One day he asked me about programming and this dude just couldn’t sit still without needing a distraction.

He consumed all these meme videos and used to bug me by sending me brain rot.

Unfortunately this is the majority of people. I used to be poor so I lived like this in a house where 4-5 people shared the space.

They just cannot think because they gave up and it’s impossible to do anything for them.

On one hand I’m glad gig economy exists so it can keep people like him busy. I believe people like him would be dangerous if not provided a distraction.

I don’t understand how people don’t have curiousity to learn more. Instead they will waste time since kids just throwing all potential to waste playing games like COD or watching YT all day. It’s not even sad anymore just pathetic.

Comparison to drugs is a bit extreme, but I think that some level of concern about MrBeast-style operations and the content they produce is warranted.

It’s not just broad appeal, but the mass reach of YouTube, the audience targeting and tight feedback loop it enables, and the resulting race to the bottom for who can make the most stupid and/or shocking videos, which in turn informs the tastes of the masses. Where does it end? Will it eventually get to the point that the only profitable YouTube channels are MrBeast-style because nothing else can bring in views?

It's not just "broad appeal". Shakespeare plays were made for broad appeal (he was a professional playwright, after all). Mozart's music was made for the broad appeal. I see nothing wrong with the broad appeal. It's what this appeal is made to and how. Humans have a lot of ways to appeal to them, and this particular way of appealing targets very base very addictive psychological mechanisms that ultimately hurt the person - just like addictive substances do. They don't make the users better or smarter or calmer or anything like that - if anything, they make them dumber and more attention-deficient. That's my problem with it.

> why haven’t they made things I don’t personally find appealing illegal yet

You are not good at reading, are you? I specifically said "I am not calling for government intervention or any of such BS" because I knew you are around and you are going to maliciously misunderstand me. But I guess the joke is on me since you didn't even bother to read that part.

How much societal progress has been killed from the amount of time spent watching Mr beast videos? How many potentially otherwise productive hours were wasted watching someone in ketchup? Obviously it’s not a 1:1 ratio, but it’s a valid question to ask.

Also he clearly states it shouldn’t be illegal. You should read posts more carefully before resorting to ad hominem attacks