Gemeiki - Gem

Polygon

The end of the MrBeast era

Jimmy Donaldson warped YouTube in his image — but YouTube is warping him back

McLoughlin’s comments hit at another bleak possibility: Viewers may hardly see MrBeast having fun in his videos because he’s not actually having a good time. In podcasts, Donaldson tells hosts that he goes so hard, he won’t stop working until he burns out and isn’t able to do anything at all. With a laugh, he admits that he has a mental breakdown “every other week.” If he ever stops for a breather, he says, he gets depressed. MrBeast is so laser-focused on generating content on YouTube that he describes his personality as “YouTube.” He acknowledges that this brutal approach to videos, which has cratered many creators over the years, is not healthy. “People shouldn’t be like me. I don’t have a life, I don’t have a personality,” he said in a podcast recorded in 2023. Where this gets even stickier is knowing what makes any of it possible. MrBeast’s videos are so expensive, with budgets in the millions, that he can barely afford them. The main channel often operates at a loss, which is part of why his business has expanded to include food items that can be bought multiple times — and therefore have a higher profit margin. But from the very start of his career as a YouTuber, MrBeast’s funds come from sponsorship brands who are happy to drop cash for a viral video that covertly acts as advertisement. Though he’s been under scrutiny for his part in the warping of YouTube as a content ecosystem, you will never see something outwardly controversial or offensive in a MrBeast video. For a long time, Donaldson admits in a number of podcast appearances, he was afraid of putting anything complex in his videos — what if a viewer didn’t get it and stopped watching? Donaldson might very well be an advertiser’s absolute dream, the logical endpoint of an internet that’s been flattened into a samey, straightforward sludge of optimized content.

Hot fandom discourse take but framing dark content as only being acceptable if its a vehicle for exploring personal trauma is just giving ground to the puritan segments of fandom.

Simply liking dark content for its own sake is perfectly fine.

"I miss when movies weren't political-"

ALIEN is about a megacorporation coercing some salvagers into transporting a dangerous creature without telling them what it is, all because the creature could be a great bioweapon for them. When a survivor of this failed transport mission wants reparations, they screw her over to avoid a scandal.

ROBOCOP is about another mega-corporation experimenting with a cop's body and declaring him their property, trying to reduce him to an obedient killing machine who can maintain the status quo for them.

JURASSIC PARK is about a rich billionaire going all out to make a dinosaur-themed amusement park, not caring about the real-world implications of resurrecting giant lizards. He also underpays ONE guy to maintain the entire park's security systems so predictably, that one guy betrays him at a crucial moment.

The best movies weave their politics with plot & character, so you can enjoy them as entertainment but can also notice the themes. Movies without themes wind up being all spectacle and no substance, just noise and color like Michael Bay's Transformers franchise. Yeah, they make money, but they'll be forgotten in 2 generations.

About this and this: I like mocking George R R Martin's "realism" as much as the next ecology nerd/feminist who isn't thrilled about rape in fiction being written in maybe-tittilating ways/whatever, but, specifically in the context of writing about wars that are morally ambiguous and do not have straightforward good vs evil sides, yeah, that's more realistic than orcs.

Yes, there are individual people who are pretty spectacularly awful, and movements etc that are overall pretty awful, but there are not entire societies or movements or alliances or any large groups of people that are just evil and morally OK to kill down to the last person. Not how things work.

you're an angel; i'm a dog

people who let me wake up to this get a special place in heaven. firefly_fox how does it feel to hold my life in ur hands....

i don’t know about you guys but the main reason i am still on tumblr in 2024 is BECAUSE it is the most cloutless least influential social media app out there and that is the experience i am after. absolutely none of this will ever translate into significant attention or real success in my life and that is so beautiful.

“male loneliness epidemic” and “friendzoning” are similar concepts to me in that the conditions they describe are literally experienced by everyone at some point in their lives but when its men its some sort of profound injustice that needs to be rectified by checks notes giving them unfettered access to the public good that is Women