Meet MrBeast, the controversial YouTuber with millions of followers

Content creator Jimmy Donaldson, 27, known as MrBeast, is one of the most controversial, viral, and successful YouTubers. He has the highest number of subscribers on the platform: 395 million.

On May 10, Donaldson — who mainly produces videos of people competing for absurdly large sums of money — uploaded a video to his channel featuring a tour of the archaeological zones of Calakmul, Chichén Itzá, and Balamcanché in southern Mexico. He climbed to the top of the pyramids, entered the substructure of one, and flew a drone around the Temple of Kukulcán — three actions prohibited by Mexican authorities, who, after the ensuing controversy, issued contradictory statements. At first, they claimed to have authorized the permits, and later announced legal action against Donaldson.

But how did this twenty-something become the most-followed YouTuber in the world? Donaldson describes himself as obsessive. He says that in 2006, at just eight years old, he uploaded his first YouTube video about cheat codes in the video game Battle Pirates, which received 20,000 views. The experience got him hooked. “My childhood memories begin with YouTube,” he said on the interview show Diary of a CEO in 2024.

Donaldson is the second of three children born to Sue Parisher, a retired U.S. Navy lieutenant colonel and author of Rock Bottom and Faithless: Defeating the Lies of Domestic Abuse with God’s Truth, a book in which she recounts the abuse she suffered at the hands of her husband, who was also in the military. Although Parisher speaks openly about the subject, Donaldson rarely mentions it.

Obsession, absurdity and going viral

In addition to YouTube, young Jimmy Donaldson was obsessed with baseball. However, at age 15, he was diagnosed with Crohn’s disease, a chronic condition that causes inflammation in the digestive tract. Sports took a back seat, and all his focus shifted to video production.

In an interview with former athlete and podcast host Joe Rogan, he explained that he was so determined to become a YouTuber that he spent all day analyzing why some videos went viral and others didn’t. He counted how many cuts were in successful content and how long each shot lasted. He studied the relationship between thumbnails, titles, and view counts.

“I didn’t have any friends because it was the only thing I talked about,” he said. At the same time, he was creating content in secret from his mother using whatever resources he had — his brother’s old computer camera, which he also used for editing.

In 2014, he had his first viral hit, with over 800,000 views: How much money does PewDiePie make?, an analysis of the earnings of Swedish YouTuber Felix Kjellberg, who at the time had the most subscribers on the platform. Donaldson narrated how he calculated the revenue, while a clip of him playing the war-themed video game Call of Duty played in the background. This format is now common on platforms like Instagram and TikTok.

During that time, Donaldson finished high school and confessed to his mother his dream of becoming a YouTuber. Parisher agreed — on the condition that he move out and support himself financially; otherwise, he would have to enroll in college. MrBeast’s content was already monetized, but it wasn’t enough. So he accepted his mother’s terms. But two weeks later, secretly, he gave up.

He started pretending to go to college, but what he was really doing was writing, filming, and editing. He took a chance on the absurd: reading the entire Bee Movie script, reading the whole dictionary, counting from one to 100,000, putting a microwave inside another microwave. The absurd worked. He became financially independent. Four months later, he reached one million subscribers, and four years after that, a video in which he gave $10,000 to a homeless person became the most viewed on his channel — and like an epiphany, it set the direction for his future productions.

MrBeast isn’t just about YouTube channels (gaming, philanthropy, competitions). He founded the company Feastables, which produces chocolate bars. The business was born after Donaldson discovered that at least half of the children living in cocoa-producing communities in Ghana and Ivory Coast are involved in child labor. On the Feastables website, it says that its goal is to “ensure farmers have access to skilled and mechanized labor to successfully operate their farms, without child labor.”

During the COIVD-19 pandemic, he launched a burger business — MrBeast Burgers — which has a single physical restaurant in North Carolina. However, the burgers are sold across the United States through ghost kitchens. He explains that any food business can sign a contract and receive the instructions and all the products needed for preparation. He also has his own merchandise line. Between June 2022 and June 2023, Forbes estimated that he earned $82 million, according to the magazine’s report last October.

Caught in controversy

But the successful YouTuber has not escaped criticism. In 2024, a clip surfaced of Donaldson saying the most he would pay for a Black person is $300 (around €267), in response to a comment made by a user. Another video that sparked backlash shows him asking one of his collaborators if he would have sex with rapper Bhad Bhabie, who was 14 years old at the time. A representative for the YouTuber said that, when Donaldson was a teenager, he behaved like many his age and used inappropriate language in an attempt to be funny, and that over the years, he has apologized several times, according to The New York Times.

That same year, one of his collaborators and childhood friends, Ava Tyson, was accused of grooming a 13-year-old boy when she was 20. In response, Donaldson fired Tyson and hired the law firm Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan to investigate the case. In November, the firm said it found no evidence to support the accusations.

Even so, what he has been most criticized for is the perceived insincerity of his altruism. The cycle of finding someone in need, using them in a video, giving them money, and then generating more money by monetizing the content doesn’t sit well with everyone.

The latest controversy involving MrBeast happened in southern Mexico. On May 10, he published a video in which he descends the Edificio II pyramid at Calakmul, explores the Balamcanché cave, and flies a drone over the Kukulcán temple in Chichén Itzá. Climbing or accessing these ruins is prohibited.

Mexico’s National Institute of Anthropology and History (INAH) released a statement on the night of Tuesday, May 13, clarifying that Donaldson had requested the necessary permits in advance and that the INAH, along with the Ministry of Tourism, had granted them. However, the Minister of Culture, Claudia Curiel de Icaza, said they would investigate the matter, claiming they did not agree with the authorization and that there would be sanctions. On Thursday, May 15, INAH backtracked and hinted at a possible lawsuit for unauthorized commercial use — specifically, the promotion of his chocolate bars in the middle of the video.

But so far, this controversy doesn’t seem to have taken a toll on him. Just recently, his reality series Beast Games — in which 1,000 players compete in physical, mental, and social challenges to win a $10 million cash prize — was renewed for a second and third season on Prime Video. In the near future, he also has a wedding ahead: this past Christmas, he got engaged to fellow content creator Thea Booysen, one of his companions during the adventure through the Mayan ruins.

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