How Off Are YouTube Users?

An Opinion Piece by Tyler Kreiling, Article 1

What Is Going on with YouTube?

A few days ago, as I was finishing up my finals for the semester, I saw an extremely bizarre YouTube short, which left me scratching my head. No, this is not bizarre in the way that your normally see on the platform. This wasn't another NPC streamer, VR gamer, or Morning Routine Vlog, it was bizarre due to the belief that it played out. In the YouTube short, Alex Hormozi brought up how critical the commenters were on a video he saw recently. The video features an older man trying to share some financial advice with YouTube, and the comment section was tearing him apart as a fraud. The man in the video, was Ray Dalio.

Dalio has over 40 years of experience on Wall Street, if anyone has the experience to know what does and doesn't work when it comes to personal finances. However, the comment section was denouncing him a fraud. This made me stop and reflect on a few other beliefs I've seen in the last few years on YouTube, which can help us better understand the rising generations and better prepare for the future.

No Good Deed Can Go Unpunished

Last year, the ultra-popular YouTuber Jimmy Donaldson (aka. MrBeast) used revenue from his YouTube channel to pay for 1,000 cataract surgeries. If this scale of medical charity was done by Bill Gates, Joe Biden, Donald Trump, or Oprah, it would be celebrated as a year defining act. However, after making a video about it and posting it to his channel, MrBeast was heavily criticized for his apparent "charity for views." This is the only case of criticism Donaldson has received for acts of charity, and it seems more and more common for YouTube's user base to criticize creators for trying to give back.

Why are we seeing this strange trend? I think there are four underlying beliefs that are causing this:

• "If It's for charity you can't get any value from it." This belief leads to the criticism of "charity for views". Although it seems logically sound, this belief is not how the real-world works. Firms, celebrities, and public officials are all humans, and humans are charitable to help improve their own and other's futures. In short, the idea of charity requires pain is fundamentally wrong.
• "If you posted it, you're not being selfless!" Anyone who knows me personally has probably heard that I believe that harming yourself to be charitable isn't being selfless, it's being an unnecessary martyr. However, that seems to be a common augment for why it's ok to criticize charity on YouTube. At least according to some, rich influencers shouldn't be solving social issues publicly. I see this as a case of warped humility, even in a case where someone does massive acts of charity anonymously, they still reap the benefits of feeling good about themselves and enjoying a better world, which is not purely selfless.
• "That's degrading to the person being recorded!" This is the only belief out of the for that is a reasonable in my mind. I personally feel that people should have a right to reasonable privacy, and recording a homeless man being given a home could be degrading. In my experience giving to and participating in charity events, I have yet to meet a single person receiving charity who would feel that way. I am not saying it doesn't happen, but I believe that kind of response to recorded charity is rare. When is the last time you saw some object to a news reporter recording a charitable event?
• This last belief is the one I see the most, "I resent the fact that your are helping them." If I could pick any single idea that I am most concerned about in my generation and those coming up after me, it's resentment. Not only is this resentment a common response to charity, but it's also an extreme response. This is often reflected in the idea that charity isn't fair, and so it's ok to hate people who are charitable.

These four beliefs are doing everything they can to completely destroy the motivation to be charitable. Ideally, we should celebrate those who choose to give massive amounts of time and resources, and it shouldn't matter that they post about it. Instead, we resent them and find any way we can to punish them for their good deeds. This behavior leads to an overwhelming idea that humans aren't capable of being charitable and governmental bodies need to do it for us, as if those humans will be any different.

Overall, I think this belief is doing a lot to harm YouTubes future as a community platform. As I wrote this article, I realized I cared more about this topic than I thought, so to save time I will be revisiting YouTube beliefs in other articles.

So, What Can We Do About This?

I don't want to leave this article without offering a way out of this pessimistic problem. Unlike other issues, changing human beliefs is difficult. Our beliefs have a massive effect on our egos, which we will fight to protect. In my mind, the best we can do it to offer truth, whatever that truth may be. In this case, the best antidote for this problem is to educate and offer positive comments when we see this kind of content. If we do, it will motivate people like Jimmy Donaldson to continue using their immense resources to build a better world.