The , an estimated net worth of $500 million. Time named him as one of the world’s 100 most influential people in 2023. Insider wrote that Donaldson’s ascension has changed the site, shifting away from a traditional vlogging style to more high-concept, high-production experiences that seek to one-up film and TV. At over 309 million, nobody has ever had as many YouTube subscribers as him—if MrBeast were an autonomous nation, that number would make it the third most populous nation on the planet, behind India.
On a platform where 15.7 percent of users are under the age of 24, it’s this one behemoth of the brand that has wholly redefined what it means to be a YouTuber. It’s MrBeast’s site and we’re just watching it.
With that kind of personality making bank on their site, YouTube executives were happy to embrace Donaldson. Former CEO Susan Wojcicki cozied up to him at events like Brandcast. Current CEO Neal Mohan congratulated him when he reached 300m subscribers. To many, he is the face of YouTube, a symbol of how the platform can be both a democratized way for anyone to become famous outside of the traditional entertainment system, but also how it can be used for the betterment of others.
The myth of Donaldson is that of a scrappy Gen Z-er who lucked his way to the top and decided to share in his good fortunes, but that was never true. He has been open about how he spent his youth finding ways to game YouTube’s algorithm to discover what goes viral and why so he could replicate it for his own success. It worked. He has so ruthlessly dominated the algorithmic mania that his videos are considered disgusting failures if they do less than 10m views in a week (his latest video, “Survive 100 Days in a Nuclear Bunker, Win $500,000,” is currently at 134m.)
He’s described spending countless hours obsessing over every detail of his content, right down to the brightness of his own face in a YouTube thumbnail for maximum clicks. Every video is made with the explicit aim of intense virality, and with it the profits to match. He’s even admitted that “personality” in his work would be bad for growth when all that matters is views.
What viral content means in the MrBeast mold is a combination of carnival games, poverty porn, and abject humiliation. His philanthropy-for-clicks work has long drawn criticism that he’s engaging in poverty porn and exploitation of underprivileged people. It’s easy to be made queasy when a seeming act of altruism is edited into a video with ads and a thumbnail that’s photoshopped tears onto a cataract patient’s face.
Such “generosity” is frequently coupled with Donaldson’s endless cries for people to like and subscribe, or straight-up bribery of his fans to augment his numbers up, offering gifts and cash prizes for those who sign up (stunts that his former employee claimed were fixed).
It became easy for fans to defend Donaldson against criticism by pointing to his charitable causes. Surely, it doesn’t matter how it’s done if it’s done at all, right? Sure, there’s a case for that, but helping the less fortunate with the caveat that they allow themselves to sob for the camera and make Donaldson richer is, to put it mildly, ethically questionable. And that’s before you remember that, by Donaldson’s own admission, his audience is largely kids and young people.
You look at Donaldson’s myriad problems and realize how many of them are also those of YouTube, an almighty monopolistic force in online video sharing that has never been able to shake off its problematic elements. Experts have spent years calling out YouTube’s role in the algorithmic radicalization of young people, something they were first publicly warned of in 2018. The white supremacist gunman who killed 51 people in Christchurch, New Zealand, was radicalized through online hate groups, including via YouTube. While reports suggest that YouTube’s crackdown on this issue is making an impact, it’s tough to overlook the damage that was caused and how long it took them to respond in the first place.
And then there’s the issue of child exploitation on the site. We’ve been besieged with stories over the past decade of family vloggers whose picture-perfect YouTube lives concealed abhorrent abuse and manipulation of kids. There are no legal or industry protections for children who are forced to have their lives broadcast to the world for profit. They don’t have to adhere to SAG-AFTRA rules in terms of pay or working hours. YouTube wanted to disrupt the entertainment world and open it up to everyone, but all it ended up doing is allowing the same cycle of exploitation as traditional media but without the cushioning of union safeties.
Donaldson may not employ kids, but his business tactics are built on their naïve interactions with his brand and getting them to parasocially commit to his channel. If you were six years old and the guy who owns his own chocolate company told you to go buy a few bars and you could get rich in the process, wouldn’t you do it?
Irish YouTuber Seán “Jacksepticeye” McLoughlin faced backlash last year when, while hooked up to a lie detector, he admitted that he thought MrBeast had ruined YouTube because “it became more about views, money, and popularity than having fun.”
Fans attend the launch of the first physical MrBeast Burger Restaurant at American Dream on September 4, 2022
Dave Kotinsky/Getty Images for MrBeast Burger)”
That might be somewhat of a romanticizing of YouTube’s earlier days, given that it’s always been a place for business, but it does hit at the misery-laden ceaseless grind of Donaldson’s work that has signaled a vibe shift on the platform.
A single person can still feasibly become a star on the site, but it’s far harder in the current ecosystem, where the algorithm prioritizes works like Donaldson’s, which are costly to produce, or Hollywood studios premiering their latest trailers. During a 2023 podcast appearance, Donaldson said, “People shouldn’t be like me. I don’t have a life, I don’t have a personality.”
To bastardize a quote from Network, Donaldson is YouTube incarnate: Indifferent to suffering; insensitive to joy. The daily business of life is a comedy of content. It’s all for the video, all for the clicks. If you have to bribe, lie, hurt, or sink into oblivion to do it then go on. YouTube will reward you handsomely, if you’re willing to dive into that rabbit hole. They want more MrBeasts on their site, not less. After all of this terrible news these past few weeks, MrBeast’s videos are still front and center on the site’s Trending page.
