Comment by hartator
5 days ago
> and I confess that I feel vindicated by the analytic approach in the book
I feel the opposite, everything seems reasonable, business-centric, and marketing-aware strategies.
5 days ago
> and I confess that I feel vindicated by the analytic approach in the book
I feel the opposite, everything seems reasonable, business-centric, and marketing-aware strategies.
Isn't that the point? By purely focussing on business-centric strategies, the videos no longer have meaning.
This presumes that MrBeast intended to create "videos with meaning" in the first place.
In his defense (!?), most of what's churned out by the streaming platforms, hollywood, and the music industry, is also not very bothered by lack of meaning.
This seems an insufficient analysis. The meaning expressed by contemporary music, film media, or streaming television isn't very profound, but they at least still make a passing effort to "signify" something. The highest grossing movie of 2024 - Inside Out 2 - is not a deep text, but it does have a thesis.
The "Pixar apparatus" is definitely increasingly consumed by audience demand, but they're at a minimum in a transitional phase: something like Seeing Red would never get workshopped out of committees.
Youtube and other social media (emphasis on media) is ground zero for the decay of meaning into intensity; the ultimate incestuous product of auto-simulacra.
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There's no such assumption being made. If anything, the linked article is about how MrBeast is intentionally making vapid slop.
Yeah, what major piece of film of the last 20 years isn’t a carefully crafted business plan?
I think YouTube was so exciting initially because it was so authentic, and now it’s back to big studios.
Megalopolis. I didn't love everything about the movie, but it did come across to me as completely divorced from art created to benefit commerce. I loved that about it...
You could argue the movie being made outside of the traditional studio system is case and point of this phenomenon.