Jimmy Donaldson (MrBeast)

Jimmy Donaldson (born May 7, 1998), more commonly known by his online alias MrBeast, is an American YouTuber notable for his expensive stunts and philanthropy. He has been credited with pioneering a genre of YouTube videos that center on expensive stunts. He is also the co-creator of Team Trees, a fundraiser for the Arbor Day Foundation, which has raised over $22 million.

History

Donaldson began posting videos to YouTube in 2012 at age 13, under the handle "MrBeast6000"; his early content ranged from Let's Plays to "videos estimating the wealth of other YouTubers". However, his videos remained in relative obscurity — averaging around a thousand views each – until the release of his 2017 "counting to 100,000" video that earned tens of thousands of views in just a few days. As of August 2020, Donaldson has 40 million subscribers on YouTube. He is managed by the Dallas-based talent management company Night Media.

Content and style

Donaldson's videos typically feature "attention-grabbing stunts". He often makes videos on donating hundreds of thousands of dollars to Twitch streamers, many of these videos being sponsored (although he has donated without a sponsor in the past).

In January 2017, Donaldson published an almost day-long video of himself counting to 100,000. The stunt took him 40 hours, with some parts sped up to "keep it under 24 hours". A subsequent video titled "Counting to 200,000 (Road to a Mil)" was uploaded the next month, although, according to Donaldson, it too, had to be sped up because the full fifty-five hours of counting exceeded YouTube's upload limit. Additionally, Donaldson has tried to break glass using a hundred megaphones, watched paint dry for an hour, attempted to stay underwater for 24 hours (but failed because of health issues), and unsuccessfully and successfully attempted to spin a fidget spinner for a day, although the footage is gone. In March 2019, he organized and filmed a real-life battle royale competition in Los Angeles with a prize of $200,000 (2 games were played, making game earnings of $100,000 for each game) in collaboration with Apex Legends. The event and prize pool was sponsored by Apex Legends publisher Electronic Arts.

A typical video would involve giving away large sums of money, such as giving $100,000 worth of items to homeless shelters in December 2018, donating $32,000 to the Veterans Army Wounded Warrior Program, $70,000 to Saint Jude Children's Research Hospital, and $10,000 to a local animal shelter in Los Angeles. During PewDiePie vs T-Series, a competition to become the most-subscribed channel on YouTube, Donaldson bought billboards, numerous ads and radio advertisements to help PewDiePie gain more subscribers than T-Series; at the Super Bowl LIII, he bought multiple seats with occupants whose shirts spelled out, "Sub 2 PewDiePie".

On October 25, 2019 at 19:00 UTC, Donaldson and former NASA engineer and YouTuber Mark Rober organized a collaborative fundraising challenge event on YouTube called #TeamTrees. The goal of this project was to raise $20 million for the Arbor Day Foundation by January 1, 2020 and plant trees "no later than December 2022". In exchange, the organization would plant one tree for each dollar raised. Every donation goes to the Arbor Day Foundation which pledges to plant one tree for every dollar. Notable YouTubers such as Rhett & Link, Marshmello, iJustine, Marques Brownlee, The Slow Mo Guys, Ninja, Simone Giertz, Jacksepticeye, Smarter Every Day brought attention to this idea. Trees will begin to be planted in January 2020 in national parks of the United States. By the 24-hour mark of the 67-day project, nearly $4 million had been donated. On December 19 of that year, the $20,000,000 goal was surpassed. And as of May 27, 2020, the project reached over 22 million dollars. The project has also received large donations from corporate executives Jack Dorsey, Susan Wojcicki, Elon Musk, and Tobias Lütke.

Donaldson was born on May 7, 1998. He resides in Greenville, North Carolina, and graduated from the Greenville Christian Academy in 2016. According to Newsweek, Donaldson dropped out of college in order to pursue a full-time career as a YouTuber. He has an older brother named CJ Donaldson, who owns a channel named "MrBro". CJ posts very similar content compared to Jimmy. In April 2015, in a video titled "My Problems" Donaldson stated he suffers from Crohn's disease.

In June 2019, Donaldson announced that he was in a relationship.