> In general the more extreme the better.
I may be sounding like "get off my lawn" guy right now but should there be some realization that these people are a cultural analogue of if not heroin than at least cigarettes? They are making a good living from making things objectively worse in a society by tickling the base instincts of the addicts. I am not calling for government intervention or any of such BS but is it too much for me to expect at least some cultural pushback here?
Why is this BS? It wouldn't be unheard of to pass stricter age restriction laws so that at least the kids are not so easily exposed to brain damage. Same thing with the drugs you mentioned.
Your larger question of “why haven’t they made things I don’t personally find appealing illegal yet?” is worthy of exploration, though I don’t think many posters here are in a position to dig into it deeply for you
But sometimes you want to eat a soggy kebap and not a Michelin-star gourmet meal, and that's fine too (and I can't stand people who malign what other people enjoy because it's "not pure enough").
Now, the question why the larger US (or English-speaking) culture isn't uniformly doing the same is much more interesting, but there's no known reason for this and most of the common explanations are both somewhat political, and not backed up by much evidence, so discussion often degenerates to talking about why your theory is more plausible.
I wish we knew.
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.
> 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.
Because the cure would be way worse than the disease. Both parties don't have my best interest in mind, but only one party has the power to ruin my life. I am not inclined to add to that power any more that it is absolutely necessary. And we're so far beyond that point that any addition at this point is extremely suspect.
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?
The younger generation always has been, and always will be, totally so much worse than the older generation.
Kids I know find all sorts of things ridiculously amusing and entertaining and it all seems stupid, brainless and mind rotting to me. But then again, the stuff I found ridiculously amusing and entertaining at that age was (I can attest, having gone back and watched some of it) was just as stupid, brainless and mind rotting. Some of it is not having a "sufficiently developed palette" for humor and entertainment. Some of it is because that humor and entertainment was genuinely new to me at the time, where as now I've seen it before so when it shows up in the kids stuff, it's not entertaining anymore. It's sort of the reverse of the "Seinfeld isn't funny" issue. We're not looking at something in the past and wondering why it was so great because it's been out shadowed by what it inspired. Instead we're looking at something from today and wondering why it's entertaining because we've been entertained in the same way in the past.
It’s like going to the store to buy fun. It doesn’t work that way. Excitement and wonder occur organically and typically in real life, and at the very least as the product of something truly awesome. In the case of Mr Beast, it seems like the ostensible happiness and excitement of the crew and contestants is combined with money to convince viewers something really great is happening. But it’s simply not. It’s vapid and fluffy, and really loud and obnoxious.
But I also feel a bit like Mr Skinner wondering if I’m out of touch. Yet… This stuff probably would have weirded me out as a teenager, too.
My view is, you need to educate parents (backed by solid peer reviewed etc studies), and give them the tools (and free time) to help their kids. Most parents I know are too busy working to put food on the table to spend time encouraging their kids not to watch trash tv/youtube.
In the US in the past few decades? Yes. Absolutely.
Going back to at least the 1990s a kid could watch cartoons before school and then for several hours afterwards on broadcast channels.
For households with basic cable there were also very popular networks running all day full of children’s content (Disney Channel, Nickelodeon etc.)
These networks were very successful because they excelled at grabbing attention and keeping eyeballs on screens. For one example of these corners of hyper-popular children’s entertainment that kept kids glued to screens before YouTube just look at the works of Dan Schneider. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dan_Schneider
I can remember visiting friends houses where there would be multiple television sets (including tv sets in bedrooms) and television would always be turned on, even if no one was watching it. It was like a constant low level background noise. I found it strange but it was normal to them, they were used to eating dinner or playing with legos etc with tv constantly on in the background.
Sports = watching grown men play with balls, Games = giving yourself unnecessary problems to solve, TV/Reading = learning (usually) completely useless information
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.
yet, sitting in ketchup is brainrot content - 0 value
Also he clearly states it shouldn’t be illegal. You should read posts more carefully before resorting to ad hominem attacks
Apart from that, what surprised me was that it had vibes of 1950s: watercolor still images, and the music score not with analog synths (that we'd expect from the '80-s), but a (small) orchestra with TRUMPETS leading. (This was the biggest '50s factor for me.)
This statement is misleading because the broad appeal of both Shakespeare and Mozart today is the culmination of centuries of attempts to understand (and misunderstand) them. Calculus can be taught to high schoolers nowadays, but how many scientists in Newton's days could understand the Principia in its entirety?
Not to mention that Shakespeare and Mozart were both able to produce works of the highest sophistication that leaves most of their contemporaries (and many today) baffled. Harold Bloom wrote that the sophisticated word play in Love's Labour's Lost was not surpassed until Joyce, and Mozart's contemporaries complained endlessly about the complex textures in his opera finales. When Mozart wrote piano trios for the public, his publisher cancelled the series after two pieces because they were judged far too difficult for the masses, and when Mozart intended to write some easy piano sonatas at the end of his life, the first (the only one he completed) turned out to be the most difficult he ever wrote.
Invoking the popularity of Shakespeare or Mozart as analogues to Mr Beast reveals a fundamental misunderstanding of the longevity of both Shakespeare or Mozart, and leaves unmentioned the extensive body of difficult works on which their reputation rests today.
This is a good question. I would say that I don’t know how to quantify “societal progress” aside from arbitrary wishes that I can imagine, so I guess since we still have war, hunger, illness, poverty, crime and indignity in our society… all of it? All societal progress has possibly been killed by mrbeats.
I haven’t had a lot of time to reflect on this. What in particular do you envision society could have accomplished without this man on youtube?
What does this mean? You introduced the idea of government intervention unprompted because you wanted to be misunderstood by me?
Generally speaking if I do not want to introduce a topic to a conversation I just don’t do that. The laying of rhetorical traps is too complex for me when conveying something simple like “I don’t like this guy on youtube”
You make a good point though! There are definitely a non-zero amount of productive hours resulting from his videos, just as there are a non-zero amount replaced with his videos. It would be fascinating if there was a way to quantify this, but it’ll likely forever be a philosophical argument
Looking at this phrase in isolation is such a fun. There are whole industries which work exactly like this (food, news, games, politics). These particular people aren't the cause, they are one of many many symptoms of the causes.
Causes are in rules, norms and incentives of the social and economical systems. We can't solve the problem at the leve at which it was created. These videomakers aren't even close to that level.
> but is it too much for me to expect at least some cultural pushback here?
And they are getting it. Which is not enough for a change, as "benefits" they are getting are way greater. Main driving forces behind the phenomena is rooted somwhere else, not in space of scope this type of conversations (moral, value, human-centric or achievement-centric aspects).
Watching my nephews grow up, I'm sort of gobsmacked about what my sisters are allowing them to watch. It's quite literally brainrot, I genuinely think what they watch is actively detrimental to their mental health and intelligence, especially since they're all below 10. It's just constant stimulation every single millisecond with no room to breathe, filled with random sound effects and noises constantly, while the "plot" is always some nonsensical crap.
The minecraft ones are the absolute worst for this, and to me the saddest thing is they'd rather watch some brainrotting machinima-style thing rather than play the damn game themselves.
As a side note, reading this comment back I'd like to formally apologize to my parents, because it seems I've turned into them and saying the exact same things they said about my hobbies :)
It's very interesting that the phenomenon itself is multi-cultural, though. Or maybe it's internet-cultural? It's probably tied into the nature of human beings and people exploiting that.
Depends on your era. The 90's gave us Beavis and Butthead, Southpark, Ren & Stimpy and the Power Rangers. It gave us XTREME!!! everything. It gave us Mortal Kombat and AOL. There was a lot of parental concern about the stuff the "kids these days" were consuming.
The 80's gave us Transformers or Voltron. It gave us MTV and the rise of Nickelodeon. It gave us GI Joe cartoons, He-Man, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and an endless supply of toys imported from japan and accompanied by 30 minute commercials for those toys (see also Transformers, Voltron, He-Man etc). There was a lot of parental concern about the stuff the "kids these days" were consuming, heck they got the federal government involved they were so concerned.
Bugs Bunny and Looney Tunes had people concerned for its mindless violence and effect on kids. Remember that Mr. Rogers started his show (and pitched continued funding for PBS to congress) on the concerns that TV was just mindless dreck rotting children's brains.
Start going much earlier than that and the ability of entertainment to be just broadcast into your life and home reduces considerably, but I imagine parents in the 1800's also had plenty of concerns about various mindless entertainment drivel that was luring their children off the godly paths.
If not and any criticism or even-surface-level inspection of how a question or statement is made, wouldn’t it be best to codify the “Yes, and…” improv rule (1) into your link (2)?
Mods on HN are people, and there's one person who posts publicly and responds to emails (dang). Moderator comments are not automated AFAICT, though they do lean heavily on standard language for all manner of self-evident reasons.
Mods also tend to get overwhelmed with busy threads and we've had a few particularly contentious ones in the past couple of days (middle-east conflicts).
Most HN moderation overall is accomplished through member votes and flags, and some automated tools to up- or down-rank submissions and automatically flag or kill submissions. There are a number of other factors at play, including the flamewar detector (<>>40437018 >, generally, posts with more comments than votes), and banned sites / userIDs. But none of those result in moderator comments to the thread.
If you have further questions, email mods with your concerns at hn@ycombinator.com. They're quite patient in explanations, which is how I know much of what I'm saying here, along with reading dang's mod comments, as I did when I found this thread.
Do you think you are happier in life when you at the top? I tell you a secret, no.
Its for sure better to not stress about stuff like money but your definition of success is not universal.
I only do that in cases where it's appropriate (e.g. where both people were breaking the site guidelines to approximately the same degree), but in such cases it's convenient because it cuts out the "why me? what about the other person?" complaints which otherwise tend to be common.