By Gabriela Baron
Famous American YouTuber and philanthropist “MrBeast” or Jimmy Donaldson was among Time Magazine’s most influential people, along with actress Drew Barrymore, Oscar-winning artist Ke Huy Quan, and football great Lionel Messi.
Donaldson, 24, is credited with pioneering a genre of YouTube videos that centers on expensive stunts.
“The path to making his videos go viral and dominating social platforms—including YouTube, where he has 140 million subscribers—is clear and obvious to him,” Mark Rober wrote for Time’s Magazine.
“He’s constantly raising the bar for creators whether it’s through re-creating Squid Game in real life or paying for the eye surgeries of 1,000 blind people. He doesn’t really understand small thinking or complacency. I don’t know what he’ll do 10 years down the road, but I know it won’t be status quo,” Rober added.
With over 145 million subscribers as of writing, Donaldson’s main YouTube channel ranks as the fourth most-subscribed on the platform, with some considering him to be the most-subscribed channel whose owner is an individual.
He began posting videos to YouTube in early 2012 when he was just 13 years old, his early content ranged from “Let’s Plays,” a video documenting a play through of a video game to “videos estimating the wealth of other YouTubers.”
Over time, Donaldson’s style of content diversified to include challenge and donation videos that reward thousands of dollars, as of writing, “MrBeast” team is composed of 30 people. –ag