Looking Ahead to 2026

I'm Not MrBeast, In Case That Wasn't Already Obvious

Happy new year!

I’m currently at my home in the Philippines. I haven’t been back here in two years so it’s been a reunion … with my stuff. Apparently at some point I thought getting a Trump bobblehead was fun. You’d press the yellow notepad and it would say, “You’re fired!” I probably got this around 2005, long before he descended that escalator, initiating the Apocalypse. Around the same time I also got a Zuckerberg action figure. Fifteen or twenty years ago this would have seemed harmless as well.

I also have an Albert Einstein action figure that was apparently so irresistible to children that its legs were destroyed when I wasn’t around. I might do a separate post on the depths of my insanity, of all of the stuff that’s filled up this giant (by Hong Kong standards) home.

I have permanent resident status in the Philippines (and I also have that privilege for Hong Kong). We love the house but we don’t love where it is. I’m just outside of Manila, which made sense when I was working here and had a daily commute. Now I’m not working here and all of my friends in this subdivision (gated community) have either moved away or died. We’re 2 kilometers from the main gate, which means that when we want to get a rideshare (Grab, there’s no Uber here), it can take an hour or longer. I’m not sure I have the patience to drive here any more either. Which means selling the house and moving away from Manila, but we haven’t seriously pursued this as an option, yet.

MrBeast WTF

David Letterman is 7 years older than me. His first late night show started when I was 27, so I was in the target audience back then. For some generations it was Carson, for some it’s Conan, for me it’s Dave. In case you don’t know it, he’s been hosting an ongoing series on NetFlix called “My Next Guest Needs No Introduction.” One of the most recent episodes is an hour with Jimmy Donaldson, aka MrBeast.

This is a guy who has built an empire via YouTube. His MrBeast YouTube channel has 458 million subscribers. Most of his videos have over 100 million views. It’s estimated that his net worth is somewhere between half a billion and a billion dollars.

He says in the Letterman piece that once he discovered that one could do YouTube for a living, he studied how to make videos that would go viral. His first viral video was just him sitting in a chair counting from 1 to 100,000.

His videos are nonsense but I suppose no less entertaining in their way than Jackass or The 3 Stooges. He’s taken a lot of the money earned from the videos (including products he sells and product placements) and done some remarkable charity work. And, as someone who has achieved immense success at a young age, he’s also had his share of controversies (none of which get mentioned during the Letterman show).

In fact, I found his attitude towards Letterman was annoying as fuck. He came across as condescending - I suspect he’s thinking to himself, “Who is this old guy? 30 years on TV and maybe 10 or 20 million people watched him? I have 100 million people watching me!” So there was some passages of him saying things like, “Have you ever heard of the purple cow effect? I don’t know why I even ask.” “Have you ever heard of the show Naruto? I knew you hadn’t.” Just disre-fucking-spectful if you ask me.

But one thing he talked about really stayed with me. He said that as a kid, all of his friends were doing things like watching South Park while he was studying ways to figure out how to make videos that would go viral. He did that, he had a knack for it, or a talent, or something, He came up with videos like, “$10,000 Every Day You Survive in a Grocery Store” (487 million views) or “I Ate the World’s Largest Slice of Pizza” (324 million views) and now he’s a billionaire. I’m kind of the opposite of that.

(I have a friend who is currently shopping for a house in Nice, France. I told him, “Well, if I hadn’t spent all my money on xxxx and CDs I’d be joining you there.”)

I Am Not MrBeast

Actually, if there’s one thing I know about me, it’s that I don’t know how to go viral. 20+ years ago, when I first started blogging, and there was no social media, and I was writing about sex in Asia, and there was no way to monetize a blog, I got what seemed like a lot of hits at the time.

I did okay for awhile I guess. Writing for BC Magazine brought me some readers. I wrote some small bits and pieces for the SCMP for awhile, too.

But when I think back on my time in Hong Kong, on and off since 1995, one of the things I’m proudest of, maybe the one single thing I’m proudest of, was my photography and the community that welcomed me as a member. Together with my “brother” Victor and some of his friends, we opened photography studio PASM Workshop in San Po Kong in 2009, and we kept it going until Victor’s untimely death in 2016. There are still a few remnants on the web here (that’s obviously me on the left in the cover photo), here, here, here, and other places too.

When COVID hit, live music performances in Hong Kong (and elsewhere) became a memory. My studio was several years gone. My income plunged. So I sold off all my camera gear.

(I’ve written a bit more about my history with photography, along with a few sample shots, at the end of this article.)

Could I Be MrBeast?

No, of course not. But the thing that struck me from the Letterman interview was how he said he studied things that went viral, and he used a variety of analytic tools so that he wasn’t just posting randomly and hoping for results - which is, sadly, pretty much the way I always operated.

I don’t think writing is my gateway to semi-fame and quasi-fortune. People tell me I’m a good writer. Sure. I understand grammar and sentence structure and all that kind of stuff. But I’m also acutely aware of what I can’t do.

But photography …. I think I stood out there in the past and I think I can do it again in the future. I also think that using AI - not for generating images but for guidelines in terms of what to post, when to post, where to post, hashtags to use, etc. - that might yield some results.

I’ve watched people I know launch and maintain successful careers as photographers. I don’t think that most of them are technically any better than I am. But where all of them beat the pants off of me is in marketing and social media mastery. I don’t compare to any of them in this important niche area.

I miss having cameras - or, more specifically, single-purpose electronic image capturing devices, as opposed to just my iPhone camera. I’ve spent a lot of time this week looking at camera reviews and checking used prices on DCFever. I’m sure that once my current vacation ends and I return to Hong Kong, I’ll be up at Sim City in Mong Kok, taking a look and getting hands-on with some of the latest gear.

Addendum

While I did okay shooting models in the studio, doing some street photography around Hong Kong, and getting hired to do some event photography, where I think I stood out was my music photography. I think that aside from my technical skills, my love for and knowledge of music led to my being able to capture moments that others might have missed. I spent a lot of time on these photographs, hopefully getting them to convey the emotions I felt when seeing these bands perform.

I shot countless local HK bands at shows presented by Underground HK, and some of those bands used my photos for posters and in their CD booklets. My work for BC Magazine got me the occasional 3-songs-no-flash pass for larger international shows - Jeff Beck, Ian Anderson, Flaming Lips, and a few others.

After I moved to the Philippines, I became friends with a guitarist who worked for Fender guitars and who had a fairly large following. I shot his band many times and they arranged passes for me to shoot several others.

But since then …. I sold off my gear and I shut down all of my various sites, all of which were costing me money and not earning their keep. I started this substack but to date I have posted about 90% less often than I expected.

I’m going to get back into it. For those who aren’t familiar with my photography, here’s a random selection of stuff I’ve shot over the years.