general

Apr 2, 2026 ∞

Game of Likes

I was remembering that time when the MrBeast training manual was leaked and people thought it might offer some insights into how to win at YouTube. Well, it certainly gave some insights into MrBeast.

How to succeed in MrBeast Production | simonwillison.net

There was a part of the manual that made a clear argument in favour of ‘virality’:

This is what dictates what we do for videos. “I Spent 50 Hours In My Front Yard” is lame and you wouldn’t click it. But you would hypothetically click “I Spent 50 Hours In Ketchup”. Both are relatively similar in time/effort but the ketchup one is easily 100x more viral. An image of someone sitting in ketchup in a bathtub is exponentially more interesting than someone sitting in their front yard.

This is a great example of how people do things because they think they have agency but actually their environment largely conditions what they do. If you make videos for YouTube, sooner or later you’ll at least contemplate sitting in a bath of ketchup. That’s the logic of the medium controlling both what’s ‘interesting’ (50 hours in ketchup) and what’s ‘rational’ (filming it).

This little theory goes some way towards accounting for what happened to the likes of Russell Brand, the comedian turned influencer turned defendant, who seems to have pursued every attention-grabbing fashion under the sun, like a seagull checking out empty takeaway trays. It might also at least partly explain the creepy and often abusive behaviour of those ‘manosphere’ influencers in Louis Theroux’s documentary on the tendency. One of them said “I’m playing the game of life and I’m playing it very well”.

That – or the game of likes is playing him and it’s playing him very well.

Because it’s not just the medium (YouTube) that determines the message (50 hours in ketchup): there’s also the audience. ‘An image of someone sitting in ketchup in a bathtub is ingfinitely more interesting…’ …well, interesting to whom exactly? The implication of the MrBeast manual was that this question was so irrelevant as to remain beneath asking. Presumably the algorithm delivered views and the view count went up, up, up. But whose views?

When you sit in a bath of ketchup for 50 hours you’ll attract the people who enjoy this kind of thing - the spectacle, the humiliation, the low-key shock value, (though presumably not especially the ketchup).

But is this the kind of attention or the kind of people you really want to attract? They just want ketchup, not you or anything else about you.

Unless and until you sit in a bath of custard.

Mar 11, 2026 ∞

Podcast listening overtakes radio? The New Publishing Standard.

Congratulations are due to Dave Winer for an amazing achievement. Micro.blog has a great discovery tool for interesting podcasts. RSS FTW!

The name might be archaic, but at least they didn’t call it downloadable radio.

#podcasts #radio

Jan 6, 2026 ∞

The posts of 2025

I’m much better at writing new stuff than consolidating the old, but it’s time to review what’s been posted here during 2025. Short posts excluded, it’s quite a lot, considering I’m Writing Slowly.

There’s also a list of the posts of 2024 and the posts of 2023 too.

And don’t forget to check out my book, Shu Ha Ri: The Japanese Way of Learning, for Artists and Fighters.
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