this post was submitted on 07 Sep 2023
198 points (86.4% liked)
Technology
59217 readers
2825 users here now
This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
Our Rules
- Follow the lemmy.world rules.
- Only tech related content.
- Be excellent to each another!
- Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
- Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
- Politics threads may be removed.
- No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
- Only approved bots from the list below, to ask if your bot can be added please contact us.
- Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed
Approved Bots
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
In my experience, people who make a big deal out of their philanthropy are typically doing it to compensate for some other moral deficiency.
What really started to bother me was when he started to make a game out of his giveaways, like "Last person to stop touching the Lamborghini gets to keep it!" and things like that. It just feels wrong, and I can't quite explain why.
I hope I'm wrong, and so far there is no evidence he's a secret dickhead, but something about him seems off.
It's essentially throwing a slab of meat into an arena and watching the starved poors fight to the death over it, then watching while you're served the equivalent of thanksgiving dinner by your butler/maids in a safe climate controlled room.
There comes a point where "philanthropy" simply becomes rich people making games for the poors to win a "prize" and seeing how they react for their own entertainment rather than any sort of benevolence. The lambo example seems pretty much spot on for that.
So Mr Beast is basically inventing the Hunger Games... sounds about right.
Nah hunger games was to impose fear and prevent a political uprising and revolution. Mr Beast is just the old bloke from squid game lol
That is a really good analogy.
I'm indifferent on the guy.
Glad he's using his money to do shit that makes some people's lives better. Strange that he uses it as content.. but better than musk hoarding wealth and belittling people on twitter.
So I guess better than my bellwether for a shitty person.
Some of these dudes doing this stuff use it as content so that they can come up with more money to do even more. Maaaaybe. I’d like to believe that.
I’ve only seen like one piece of a Mr Beast video so I can’t say much about him, but I’ve seen a lot of other folks who do that kind of stuff.
I watch one dude who started off making prank videos. He only got about 5 videos out before someone left a comment telling him to do some silly thing and give a person money. He did that silly thing (I can’t remember what) and then the dude hit him with a story about why that money was going to change his life. Dude cried, then stopped the prank stuff altogether. He went out looking for people to help after that. He’s raised 10s of thousands to get homeless people off the streets, helped people with debt and medical issues, etc.
His videos weren’t that special before, but he’s ridiculously handsome so I legit believe that’s why people were watching in the first place.
Now, the cynic in me says, “Well he got a lot of views and that’s the reason for the shift.”
Still though, he doesn’t do anything mean to anyone. No cruel pranks or anything like that. Even when he was making prank content it was silly and harmless. He’s legitimately changing lives big time and he just kind of fell into it.
I watch this other dude who is a Christian and he does really good things for people too.
I don’t know. The system isn’t working or people couldn’t make a living doing shit like this. That bums me out, but I’m happy to see things get better for people.
Like I said.. I'm super conflicted about shoving a camera in peoples faces while you give them money to help them in dire situations. just so you can get more views....(although, TV has been doing this type of shit for ever, think about the Olympics, every event they have some sob story about the athlete and how they have overcome)
I think it's super fucked up, but at the same time, they are helping people. Is it more humiliating to do it this way, or to make someone jump through redtape, bureaucracy and what not to get assistance from the state?
I watched the Mr. Beast gets people vision video because I'm all for a youtube fixing peoples vision who didn't have the funds to do it themselves. Like, that shit is literally life changing. I watched the videos, I watched the Ads, I did it all... however his other content, like staying in a circle or putting your hand on a car, that doesn't appeal to me.
Oh yeah, I’m with you all the way. Just felt the need to butt in and be a part of the conversation.
Take care bud.
When people use the argument of "oh, he does a lot of philanthropic work" as a means of defending someone, I just counter it by pointing out that Jimmy Savile did too.