It’s clear that the philanthropic YouTuber MrBeast has achieved widespread recognition.
Known by his real name, Jimmy Donaldson, MrBeast has risen to become the most successful YouTuber, surpassing the Indian music channel T-Series with 283 million subscribers.
At 26 years old, he has reached over 341 million subscribers on his main channel, comparable to the population of the United States, which the government Census estimates at 341 million.
However, his success was not instant; his journey began at the age of 13 in 2012, when he initially focused on uploading content related to games like Minecraft and Call of Duty: Black Ops 2.
For the next five years, his channel struggled to gain traction as he experimented with various types of content to carve out a niche for himself. His breakthrough came in 2017 with the video ‘Counting to 100,000’.
In this video, he literally counted to 100,000, a feat that took over 40 hours. The video’s viral success showed him that viewers enjoyed this type of content, leading him to produce similar videos.
He followed up with videos like ‘Reading the dictionary for 24 hours’ and ‘Saying Logan Paul 100,000 Times’.
He began reinvesting the earnings from YouTube into creating more elaborate videos.
Shortly thereafter, he filmed videos of people using his card at Walmart to purchase anything they wanted, which were a massive hit. This led to a cycle of increasingly generous giveaways.
Recognizing the popularity of these giveaway videos, MrBeast started organizing competitions with significant cash prizes, as well as producing videos with unique challenges, like staying underground for 24 hours.
He clearly understands the platform and his audience.
Following the success of MrBeast’s version of Squid Game, he’s now secured a prominent deal with Prime Video for a project called the ‘largest game show in history’.
The show, Beast Games, draws from his YouTube experiences and is presented in a ‘fast-paced and high-production format’.
It features 2,000 participants vying for a $5 million prize, marking the largest single prize in TV and streaming history.
Beast Games premiered on Prime Video on December 19, initially releasing two episodes, with the remaining eight episodes being released weekly thereafter.