• Hoimo@ani.social
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    1 day ago

    Yes, in fact there’s a whole genre of video essay where people explain how Mr Beast is problematic.

    But to be fair, he’s just an extension of the last 30 years of reality tv. Lure some desperate people with a large sum of cash, make them suffer in front of the camera, edit liberally, air for the entertainment of millions.

    Additionally, one of the most popular tv shows of the decade is a criticism of exactly this phenomenon. Mr Beast did a whole tv series that tried to be Squid Game unironically, completely missing the moral of the story and spawning another round of criticism. Something something Guy Debord, something Jean Baudrillard something.

    • HerbGrower@slrpnk.net
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      21 hours ago

      At least Mr Beast is giving decent payouts… Meanwhile UK has stuff like get married to a stranger and pressured into having sex or just outright raped. There is no payout, all you seem to get is the wedding, a week holiday and a few weeks in an apartment block.

      • Hoimo@ani.social
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        16 hours ago

        I never know which is which. I’ve read both The Society of the Spectacle and Simulacra and Simulation but I don’t think I understood any of it, so a vague allusion is the best I can do. I understood a lot more of the 2016 documentary HyperNormalization, which is a synthesis of both? (I understood neither, so I’m just guessing there.)