X appears to be juicing MrBeast’s views to woo the YouTuber to the platform, pushing video upload into users’ feeds as an unlabeled ad::undefined

  • tsonfeir@lemm.ee
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    6 months ago

    Remember, when people made content just for the fun of it

    • gradyp@awful.systems
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      6 months ago

      I do, and I miss it. What’s more I’ve never once seen a Mr beast video.

      Avoid the cruft, roll your own content and find smaller, individual communities like these tubes used to be a decade (or more) ago.

      • Snot Flickerman@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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        6 months ago

        What’s more I’ve never once seen a Mr beast video.

        And nothing of value was lost.

        Mr. Beast only offers “charity porn” that makes him richer. He’s not doing anything to change the systems in place that make the problems he “solves” any better. He’s just putting band-aids on small groups of people while doing nothing to address larger issues. Hell, he himself is an example of a larger issue. We should not have to rely on the rich to fix societies problems, that’s what fucking taxes are for, and Mr. Beast needs to be taxed until his fucking channel is gone.

        I fully await for him to completely deep throat Elon to make more money. Mr. Beast doesn’t care about pesky things like real morals or values, or he wouldn’t be online friends with the likes of Musk to begin with. All he cares about is the dollar signs.

        EDIT: I’m definitely expecting the day when some journalist does a “big reveal” on all the shady horrible shit that goes on with Mr. Beast and his companies.

        EDIT II: You know Mr. Beast doesn’t give a flying fuck about anything but money because he’s still friends with Musk after the very public reveal of one of his staff being trans. The fact that he can be friends with such a fucking bigot while “supporting” their trans staff member reveals how little he actually gives a fuck about the issue. He’s happy to be friends with people who would deny Kris the life she wishes to lead, so how much does he really care?

      • Nima@leminal.space
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        6 months ago

        I’ve had a much more enjoyable time on freetube because of this, actually. unlike youtube who feeds you content based on what makes them the most money, it tends to actually show you videos that are relevant to what you’re watching. whether it has millions of views or 100.

        it feels like the smaller communities are a little more warm and fun.

        • BossDj@lemm.ee
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          6 months ago

          Check out Brahkie on YouTube if you haven’t already

    • Snot Flickerman@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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      6 months ago

      Fuck, remember webcomics?

      Achewood, Diesel Sweeties, Cat and Girl, Penny Arcade, Cyanide & Happiness, Joe and Monkey, Questionable Content, Dresden Codak (always updated way too infrequently), Dinosaur Comics, Gone With the Blastwave, Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal, The Perry Bible Fellowship, When I Grow Up/WIGU/Overcompensating, Married to the Sea, hell, even CTRL+ALT+DEL left us with Loss. I could go on, there’s definitely more.

      …but I don’t like to talk about what happened with SinFest.

      A lot of these sites had advertising, but I don’t remember any of it being so off-putting that I felt the need for an adblocker. Honestly, at this point, I don’t even recall if adblockers were a thing yet in 2000-2005.

      So much content in those early aughts. I’m still waiting on a Complete Achewood. Damn you, Chris Onstad!

      I was always a little disappointed I never was able to get a “I’m the guy who sucks/plus I got depres-sion” shirts.

        • Snot Flickerman@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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          6 months ago

          They mostly advertised other comics and merchandise from other comics, if I recall correctly.

          Also, Adblock originally released in 2002, and Adblock Plus came out in 2006.

          I do recall one of the reasons I respected webcomics ads was they weren’t ones that were animated, blaring music, or asking me to try to play a mini-game by clicking on something that specifically can’t be caught by your mouse.

        • Snot Flickerman@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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          6 months ago

          What early 2000’s webcomics taught me is there were a lot of really great writers out there with some subpar art skills.

          When the writing is so good, you don’t give a shit that it’s all stick figures.

          EDIT: I almost forgot. With some of them, the best part was watching them go from stick figures to genuinely great art. Penny Arcade is a great example. The originals were so badly drawn, and it went from bad art to an artist literally having a style all their own.

          • Patch@feddit.uk
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            6 months ago

            Some of them were actually pretty good artists; occasionally you’d see them do other stuff and it’d be genuinely good on an artistic level.

            The whole stick man, lumpy face, primitivist thing was just an “in” aesthetic (while also being conveniently really quick to produce).

            • root_beer@midwest.social
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              6 months ago

              There are a few webcomics out there that have some excellent artwork. Lackadaisy is the first to come to mind, though updates have always been verrrry sporadic—especially now that she’s working on an animated version—and there was one called The Abominable Charles Christopher that was fucking phenomenal, but it just sorta… stopped. I’m still subscribed to the RSS because I’m holding out hope, but I know it’s over.

              • Snot Flickerman@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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                6 months ago

                Oh Jeeze thanks for the reminder of Abominable Charles Christopher. I was always so disappointed when it just sort of stopped. I always assumed he got a professional gig through the work he was doing.

            • Snot Flickerman@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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              6 months ago

              Some of them were actually pretty good artists; occasionally you’d see them do other stuff and it’d be genuinely good on an artistic level.

              Right, but some of them also blossomed beautifully!

              I remember Dresden Codak being good art from the get-go, and it only got better over the years. Same with Perry Bible Fellowship, that guys got some fucking artistic chops.

              The whole stick man, lumpy face, primitivist thing was just an “in” aesthetic (while also being conveniently really quick to produce).

              I’d say this went for things like Cyanide and Happiness, which if I recall correctly, had a series of artists, it wasn’t all just one person.

              Stuff like Sluggy Freelance? Yeah, the art and writing really never got that much better.

              Then you have Dinosaur Comics, whose entire shtick was (and is) just re-using the exact same panels for every comic.

              Once again… We don’t talk about SinFest.

      • Passerby6497@lemmy.world
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        6 months ago

        I’m happy to see that Something Positive is still going strong. Dude is a great person and it’s fun to see his parenting come out through the comic as I catch up and now relate to some of that more than I did before.

      • Seleni@lemmy.world
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        6 months ago

        Freefall is still going strong, 3 panels a week. Since like 1998 or something. Never loses the humor either, unlike some comics that ditch humor once they develop dramatic plot.

    • Flying Squid@lemmy.world
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      6 months ago

      Yes. In fact, it got me a lot of attention. I got into a bunch of newspapers, interviewed on NPR, etc. Then my audience started drifting away and on to the next thing… and then YouTube decided to monetize. My account was monetized for a while. I made a grand total of $100 before it was demonetized again.

        • Flying Squid@lemmy.world
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          6 months ago

          My big hit was “The Skeletor Show.” It’s still on YouTube. But I did many other things on the account before deciding I didn’t feel like making comedy videos anymore a few years ago. Occasionally people post asking me to please come back, but I don’t know that I ever will.

          I will say that it did get me some jobs when I needed work, which was the original goal of the show anyway.

    • runjun@lemmy.world
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      6 months ago

      There’s still plenty of people doing that. But their uploads will be inconsistent when they upload and quality. The views will also be low so YouTube’s algorithm won’t recommend it unless they pay to advertise.

      • Guest_User@lemmy.world
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        6 months ago

        My YouTube recommendation page is full of channels with sub 100 subscribers. Because I actually watch them since I find those videos engaging for different reasons. If you actually watch small YouTube channels YouTube is more than happy to serve those channels to you.

        • runjun@lemmy.world
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          6 months ago

          I do get sub 1000 view recommendations from YouTube but I don’t know if I would assume those creators haven’t paid any money. You can pay to push your videos to a small, very targeted, audience for fairly cheap.

          • Guest_User@lemmy.world
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            6 months ago

            That’s a fair point, however with a good bit of the videos recommend to me I highly doubt they are paying for exposure. Many don’t have the absolute basic skills when it comes to cinematography. Personally I enjoy watching random non professionals show their interests. But I don’t think they are paying to show their videos to people like me.

          • Snot Flickerman@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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            6 months ago

            I’m definitely not okay with plenty of things I have no choices in the matters thereof.

            It’s a bit like telling slaves who don’t like being enslaved “well, you don’t have a choice in the matter” like that somehow impacts how they feel about it?