Mr Beast’s “youtube success hacking”, or whatever you want to call it, excels in the most obvious of ways: use hyperbole all of the time and use extreme and borderline misanthropic interpersonal interaction to achieve goals.
I don’t think either of these activities would surprise anyone at achieving success in _some_ form, despite how manipulative and sociopathic they are. What exactly is to be learned here? Where is the deep understanding?
People click on things that are hyperbolic. When people are threatened with losing their jobs unless they perform at an extremely high level, they will work to the best of their ability to achieve that level, at the expense of practically everything else they value in their lives. None of this is new or novel.
Most people avoid employing these structures because they’re viciously misanthropic and cynical. Some, of course, do, but I don’t see us using that information to ignore them or prevent them from existing. I just see them lauded for “thinking outside the box” on Hacker News.
I don’t catch any major celebrations of abusive tactics on HN, but then again I tend to be late to the comments and those posts are buried by the time I arrive.
(The book is historical fiction)
Again, more overwrought language. People are doing this out of their own free will, and benefiting substantially from it. If you truly care about people being exploited in uneven financial situations, you would do well to put all your effort towards enacting a higher minimum wage, removing part-time and contractor classification for all low-paying jobs, etc. Because complaining about fun YouTube videos paying people six figures for not all that much time ain't it. And if you really think that people who don't have lots of money can never consent to doing anything, well god isn't that a paternalistic approach that infantilizes adults.