zlacker

Very interesting personal experience, thanks!

I agree that doing meaningless work is soul crushing even if well-compensated.

It seems like it ought to be possible to do meaningful work without working 80 hour weeks, but maybe not!

And owning your own business isn't necessarily an easy 40 hours a week and don't think about it when you're not working, but sounds like you did have a lighter schedule? Or actually you didn't mention that! If you traded a 70-hour week as a well-compensated employee doing meaningful work for a 70-hour week being your own boss with possibility of making more money doing meaningless work -- yeah, I would make the same choice between those two! But I'd rather not have a 70 hour week, be reasonably compensated, and do meaningful work, if that were an option...

But we kind of forgot what we're talking about here... pretty sure nobody working for Mr Beast thinks it's meaningful work, and if they do, I'm worried about them.

>>jrochk+(OP)
How could anyone not think that entertaining literal millions of people is meaningful work? For some people, video production is their calling and having an audience is their life's dream.

>>stickf+Mj1
sure, but holding a mic boom for entertaining millions of people is not meaningful work

>>hacker+eC1
I (ggp) actually don't agree, contributing proper mic boom holding to a project you find important and valuable and meaningful can be meaningful. Every contribution is meaningful.

I guess to me the crass eyeball-harvesting of MrBeast seems like exploitation of everyone involved with the only meaningfulness involved being profit. But I realize based on stickfigure's response that different people find different things meaningful, fair enough. Which is different than saying "just getting lots of money is meaningful for me" -- that is a different axis than meaning, and I'm unlikely to be swayed otherwise, although some people don't need meaning they just need money. It was hard for to imagine anyone is doing it for anything but the money at MrBeast, but different people are different and some of them are hard for me to imagine, fair!

>>jrochk+qA2
Ever watch the Jackass movies? I know plenty of MFA-toting snobs that think it's high performance art. And I don't disagree.

I read the PDF; profit wasn't on the list of KPIs. In fact there was quite a lot of invective against it; he'll kill expensive projects just because he didn't think the quality was good enough. Of course $$ is related, but the focus really is on the eyeballs.

I worked in porn for a while. I found the work fun and meaningful. Not every mission involves saving the world.

>>hacker+eC1
Isn't what makes something meaningful in the eyes of the beholder? It might not be sending rockets to mars or curing cancer, but if you perceive it as meaningful, then it is.