If you haven’t yet heard of Mr. Beast you’re missing out. His content is the perfect balance of entertainment and philanthropy, which will not only make you laugh but quite possibly make you cry at the same time. 

He’s known for his out-of-the-box and outrageous videos where he goes all out on the production and staging, thus creating much anticipation for new video releases. You’ve probably seen his most popular video to date, which is the re-creation of the popular Netflix show Squid Game.

In this article, we’ll be taking a look at the man behind the Mr. Beast brand, his Youtube success, and the philanthropic projects he’s founded or participated in. 

Who is Mr. Beast?

Jimmy Donaldson, was born on the 7th of May, 1998, and is more commonly known as Mr. Beast which is his online username. He’s an American Youtuber and philanthropist who rose to internet stardom thanks to a video in which he would repeat something thousands of times. 

Since then, Jimmy has gone on to create some of the most watched videos on Youtube, which include long and arduous challenges paired with millions of dollars worth of donations. 

Mr. Beast is known for giving away large sums of money to his audience by including them in his videos and allowing them to participate in challenges to win a cash prize. 

He runs his Youtube career alongside his three best friends, who are also featured on the channel’s videos, Karl Jacobs, Chandler Hallow, and Chris Tyson. Currently, Mr. Beast’s main Youtube channel is breaking internet records seeing as it’s the leading channel with the most subscribers in the “individuals” category, and the fourth most subscribed to Youtube channel in general, with over 135 million subs.

Jimmy also has secondary Youtube channels such as Beast Reacts where he posts content of his reactions, alongside those of his friends – they also review video compilations and roast internet content from time to time. 

In 2020, Jimmy launched a gaming-related channel called Mr.Beast Gaming, where he releases a couple of gaming videos per month. The channel garnered a whopping 28 million subscribers within a couple of years, which is pretty impressive. 

Next up is MrBeast Shorts, a Youtube channel that Jimmy uses to post short-form content of random things he and his friends get up to. This content is later repurposed for TikTok.

Jimmy’s brother, CJ Donaldson, decided to pursue a Youtube career after feelings inspired by Mr. Beast. His channel is called CJTheseDays. The channel was originally launched in 2018 under the name MrBro, but CJ only started creating content in 2019. His video style is similar to that of his brothers.

Mr. Beast’s Most Popular Videos 

In 2021, Jimmy took to TikTok and posted an update saying that if he received 10 million likes he’d re-create Squid Game, which at the time was an extremely popular Netflix series.

Sure enough, he received over 10 million likes, and surprisingly it didn’t even take a day – in fact, the count was achieved within a short two hours. People have speculated that the reason Jimmy wanted to re-create Squid Game was that both share similarities due to the challenge element, the main difference being that Squid Game doesn’t have elimination, only death. 

The scenes that were recreated included the Red Light – Green Light challenge, the dorm room from the introduction of episode one, alongside the sugar honeycomb, marbles, tug of war, and stepping stones challenges.

Jimmy released various sneak peeks and behind-the-scenes footage on live streams running up to the launch of the video. The Mr. Beast Squid Game video was posted on November 24, 2021, and practically broke the internet!

Since the release of Mr. Beast’s Squid Game video, the channel has gone on to break records and make Youtube history. These include:

• The video received over 150 million views in less than two weeks.
• Within a week of posting the video, the Mr. Beast channel gained over 6 million subscribers, giving Jimmy the second-highest subscriber growth in the history of Youtube.

Mr. Beast’s Most Expensive Challenges

Jimmy is known for creating expensive and outrageous challenges for his main channel, Mr. Beast. 

These challenge videos normally include a limited number of contestants competing for a cash prize in the hundreds of thousands. Oftentimes, the contestants are made up of Mr. Beast’s team members or personal friends such as Chandler, Karl, and Chris. But most of the time, the contestants in these videos are audience members that have been selected by Jimmy’s team from comment sections on past videos. 

A lot of the time, these expensive challenges are split into different videos, creating a series. A good example of this would be the Private Island series, where contestants battled it out to win ownership of a private island. This long-form challenge is split into two videos. 

Two of Mr. Beast’s most expensive challenges feature other Youtubers as contestants:

Last Youtuber To Leave Wins $100,000

In 2018, Mr. Beast released a video in which Youtubers couldn’t lay down, sit down, or leave the circle drawn on the floor for an undetermined period of time. The last Youtuber standing would win a cash price of 100 thousand dollars. 

Twelve popular Youtubers decided to join the challenge. 

$200,000 Youtuber Battle Royale

The follow-up for the Youtuber challenge was released in 2019 and coined the Youtuber Battle Royale. This time, competing teams would be formed for the chance to win 100 thousand dollars. 

This video featured Youtubers such as Typical Gamer, Jaiden Animations, Odd1sOut, Anthony Padilla, Unspeakable, and Preston. 

Mr. Beast’s Philanthropic Projects

Jimmy loves to give back to his community in the form of donations, gifts, and prizes. But, aside from that he’s also worked and founded impressive philanthropic projects. Let’s take a look at some of the most notable ones:

TeamTrees: Planting 20 Million Trees

In October 2019, Jimmy began a collaboration with NASA engineer and Youtuber Mark Rober. The collaboration’s mission was to plant 20 million trees by January 1, 2020. 

This idea originated once Mr. Beast hit 20 million subscribers on Youtube, and his audience asked him to do a milestone challenge, planting 20 million trees to commemorate but at the same time help with recent tree loss due to forest fires. 

The campaign was achieved in partnership with Arbor Day Foundation, with the message being spread far and wide thanks to the hashtag #teamtrees, which prompted viewers to donate a dollar that would be matched by the planting of a tree. 

Loads of famous Youtubers joined Jimmy’s effort, donating and also promoting the campaign on their channels. Some of the creators included PewDiePie, Jeffree Sart, DanTDM, Alan Walker, Ninja, Jacksepticeye, and others. 

On the 29th of October, a few weeks after the campaign launch, Elon Musk donated 1 million to the cause, followed by fellow philanthropist Tobi Lutke who donated $1,000,001 the next day.

TeamSeas: Removing 30 Million Pounds of Trash

After the success of TeamTrees, Jimmy decided to co-create another project with Mark Rober, this time focused specifically on removing plastic waste from oceans and waterways. 

Jimmy posted the announcement to his main Mr. Beast channel in October of 2021, on the anniversary of his announcement of TeamTrees. 

His fans consider TeamSeas a Mr. Beast’s 30 million subscriber special, the only difference being that this time the project’s focus is geared toward removing plastic pollutants instead of planting trees. The goal was to raise 30 million dollars, with each dollar donated matching the removal of a pound of plastics from rivers, beaches, and oceans. 

Other Honorable Mentions of Philanthropy

Jimmy also supports and donates to other Youtuber’s charitable projects. For example, he donated 50 thousand dollars to Fortnite streamer Ninja, who had a campaign running at the time to help the St. Judes Cancer Research Charity. 

He also donated 30 thousand dollars on a separate occasion to the Suicide Prevention Center, another cause that was spearheaded by Ninja. 

Aside from his donations to charitable foundations and non-profits, Jimmy has been known to go straight to the source and gift thousands of dollars to homeless people across the country, including buying them year-long leases to help get them back on their feet. 

You can find videos of Jimmy helping homeless people on his Mr. Beast Youtube channel. 

1,000 Blind People See for the First Time

The latest philanthropic video posted by Mr. Beast “1,000 Blind People See for the First Time”  sparked waves of controversy on Twitter. With Twitter users calling him a demonic entity or antichrist, others said he was evil while making internet memes about the video. 

Other Twitter users used the video controversy to raise topics such as capitalism and the problem with U.S. healthcare. 

Jimmy took to Twitter and responded to the backlash by stating:

Twitter – Rich people should help others with their money

Me – Okay, I’ll use my money to help people and I promise to give away all my money before I die. Every single penny.

Twitter – MrBeast bad

Ultimately, the video consists of Jimmy paying for 1,000 people who suffer from partial blindness to receive treatment in the form of surgery that enabled them to see again. 

It’s pretty crazy to see the internet respond with such negativity, especially considering how life-changing this event is for the participants who received the treatment. 

Conclusion

So there you have it! 

Jimmy’s content is unbeatable, and definitely worth checking out if you aren’t already subscribed to his channel. 

The fact that Mr. Beast uses his Youtube success as a springboard to do good in the world is admirable, and we’re excited to see what projects he’ll be working on next.