Who is MrBeast?

MrBeast was born Jimmy Donaldson on May 7, 1998
Jimmy Donaldson, also known as MrBeast, is 24 years old and one of the most watched and highest-paid creators on YouTube.
His first viral videos featured challenging feats like reading every word in the dictionary or counting from zero to 100,000 for 40 hours.


He has recently become known for his charitable displays; giving away money or doing favors and filming them for content. Recently, Donaldson uploaded a video of "curing" the blindness of 1,000 people by paying for eye surgeries.
His ambitious challenges and monetary giveaways helped grow his channel to nearly 131 million subscribers, the highest in YouTube history.

He's also an entrepreneur, launching virtual restaurant brand MrBeast Burger in 2020 and a supposedly better-for-you chocolate business called Feastables in 2022.

But last week, Donaldson sued Virtual Dining Concepts, the restaurant firm behind the burger brand, accusing it of making burgers of "terrible quality". This week, VDC hit back at MrBeast with a “breach of contract” lawsuit.

Armed with his celebrity and millions of followers, Donaldson belittled the brand and the plaintiffs with numerous damaging social media posts, which quickly spread across numerous media outlets, just as he intended," the brand's value was "in the nine-figure range."


The YouTube star and his brother CJ grew up in Greenville, eastern North Carolina. He graduated from Greenville Christian Academy, a private high school in the area, in 2016.

Young started his YouTube career by posting videos under the username "MrBeast6000". For the first few years, Donaldson tried and failed to master the YouTube algorithm by creating content he thought would appeal to the largest audience.


As MrBeast tries to game YouTube's algorithm, the aspiring YouTuber has gone through the phases of trending on his channel: Hilarious compilations of playing "Minecraft" and "Call of Duty," predicting YouTubers' fortunes, offering tips and tricks to aspiring creators, and commenting on these YouTubers' the drama of MrBeast featured very little in his videos in the early days.

MrBeast began gaining followers in 2015 and 2016 thanks to his "worst intros" video series, which collected and entertaining YouTuber intros he discovered on the platform. By mid-2016, MrBeast reached 30,000 subscribers.

In late 2016, MrBeast enrolled in college. The YouTuber said he only lasted two weeks before dropping out of school, telling his mother: "I'd rather be poor than do anything other than YouTube." MrBeast later said that he asked his mother to move him from his childhood home of North Carolina when he was 18 because "she loved me and just wanted me to be successful."


MrBeast first went viral in January 2017, when he uploaded a video showing himself counting to 100,000; He later explained that it took 44 hours. "I really wanted this," MrBeast later said of the challenge. "I had dropped out of college, wasn't making much of anything. I knew this would go viral."

After the first video went viral, MrBeast figured out what the YouTube algorithm liked. He quickly garnered more views with similar stunts, such as spinning a fidget spinner for 24 hours and watching Jake Paul's "It's Everyday Bro" music video for 10 hours. As of November 2017, MrBeast reached 1 million subscribers.

He still keeps up the grueling, hour-long stunts for which he's been referred to as "junk YouTube," as well as his latest persona-abandonment battles for which he's paid thousands of dollars. Titles of these videos range from "Driving the Same Car 1000 Times" to "Last One to Raise Their Hand Gets the Lamborghini Challenge."


MrBeast also makes remarkable donations and displays of philanthropy.

He once opened a car dealership where he gave away cars for free, and has been known to personally give away thousands of dollars to waiters and Uber drivers, as well as to small streamers on Twitch and YouTube.

As Donaldson grew his channel, he was able to recruit four childhood friends (Chris, Chandler, Garret, and Jake) to work for him and his YouTube channel.


The group frequently makes cameos in MrBeast's wildest last-person-abandon challenges, and each has become an iconic name in the MrBeast empire.

As of December 2018, MrBeast has given away $1 million with his outlandish stunts, earning him the title of "YouTube's biggest philanthropist."

In 2018, The Atlantic uncovered a series of old, since-deleted tweets from MrBeast in which he used homophobic slurs and the idea of being gay as the punchline to jokes. At the time of writing, his Twitter bio read: "Just because I'm gay doesn't mean I'm gay." MrBeast defended himself as "not the slightest bit offensive in anything I did."

MrBeast was also accused of distributing counterfeit currency after critics determined that the bills used in a video posted in November 2019 were not legal tender.

MrBeast later said he distributed fake bills to reduce the risk of an influx of dangerous people clamoring for free money, and claimed he later replaced the fake bills with real checks for the people in the video.

The 22-year-old actress shared that she has Crohn's disease, a chronic inflammatory bowel disease. In June 2019, MrBeast shared on Instagram that he was dating Maddy Spidell for the first time. "I don't want Mr. Monster for his money, I just want a boyfriend who has taste in anime and can make me laugh," Spidell wrote on Twitter a month ago.


In late 2019, MrBeast launched and successfully completed a fundraising campaign called #TeamTrees to plant 20 million trees by the end of the year.

The campaign has garnered support from more than 600 influencers and received donations from tech executives like Elon Musk and Jack Dorsey, and YouTube stars like Jeffree Star and PewDiePie.

In January 2022, he launched a chocolate business called Feastables, which produces plant-based, gluten-free chocolates.

It was stated that the brand sold more than 1 million bars of chocolate in the first 72 hours after its launch and had already achieved sales of over $10 million as of May.
Today, there's a whole new class of 'celebrities' who are digital creators," Nik Sharma, CEO of Sharma Brands and Feastables' angel investor, previously told Insider.

But last week, MrBeast sued Virtual Dining Partners for producing "terrible quality" burgers under his name.


The lawsuit follows a number of negative reviews online from customers complaining about the taste and quality of the burgers.

A Reddit post cited in Donaldson's complaint against VDC claimed the MrBeast burger was "raw meat."

An Insider reporter went to the brand's first physical location at the American Dream mega-mall in New Jersey and found the food to be a "shocking disappointment.
Donaldson said VDC was initially pursuing other celebrities to replicate the success it had with MrBeast, according to Beast Investments LLC.

The situation became complicated. In conclusion, I must say that I remember this kid's excitement when he reached 1500 subscribers. Never say you can't