Long before MrBeast was making money with Squid Game stunts, he was Jimmy Donaldson, a regular kid who wanted nothing more than to become a successful YouTuber.
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00:00Long before Mr. Beast was making money with Squid Game stunts, he was Jimmy Donaldson,
00:05a regular kid who wanted nothing more than to become a successful YouTuber.
00:09I better have a million subscribers when you guys see this.
00:14These days, Mr. Beast has a mind-boggling amount of subscribers on YouTube.
00:18More than 146 million people subscribe to his channel, and a video breaking 100 million
00:23views is a regular occurrence.
00:25It was on the basis of Mr. Beast's incredible following that he signed with the management
00:29company Night Media back in 2019, according to Business Wire.
00:33Things weren't always this way.
00:35Mr. Beast got his start the same way many other prominent YouTubers did.
00:38He posted his first video in 2012 when he was just 13 years old.
00:43Back then, he posted under the name MrBeast6000, and his content focused heavily on the game
00:48Minecraft, as one might expect from a kid his age.
00:51After almost a decade of tweaking his content and gaming the algorithm, Mr. Beast is now
00:56one of the best-known YouTubers on the entire platform.
00:59Even the oldest video on his channel has nearly 10 million views.
01:02Not bad for a kid showing off one of the worst Minecraft traps ever built.
01:06It might not be the commonly recommended path to success, but there are countless stories
01:10of people creating great careers for themselves after dropping out of school.
01:14Mr. Beast grew up in Greenville, North Carolina, and in 2016, he graduated from the private
01:19high school Greenville Christian Academy, according to Business North Carolina.
01:24After that, his academic career was short-lived.
01:26For me, I hate school.
01:27I hate it.
01:28I hate it.
01:29I hate it."
01:30According to Mr. Beast himself, he enrolled in college after high school, but he only
01:34attended classes for two weeks.
01:36He dropped out of school and told his mom,
01:37"...I'd rather be poor than do anything besides YouTube."
01:40His mom apparently wasn't elated by the news.
01:43In a Twitter thread, Mr. Beast explained that she forced him to move out because she, quote,
01:47"...loves me and just wanted me to be successful."
01:50Considering that when Mr. Beast decided to leave school he had under a million subscribers,
01:54it's not hard to see why his mother didn't think YouTube was a viable career option.
01:58However, as Mr. Beast once said, things change quick on YouTube, and a year after dropping
02:03out he broke a million subscribers.
02:05And now he's well on his way to becoming the most subscribed to YouTuber.
02:08He's made enough money from creating content that he was even able to give his mom $100,000.
02:14Not bad for a college dropout.
02:15"...No, Jimmy."
02:16"...Yeah, you're gonna make me cry."
02:19Mr. Beast didn't have a viral video until he'd been on YouTube for five years.
02:24His first massive video, I Counted to 100,000, was uploaded on January 8, 2017.
02:30Counting to 100,000 was Mr. Beast's first big challenge video, and creating it certainly
02:35tested his stamina, not to mention the patience of anyone trying to watch the entire video.
02:40The counting took more than 40 hours, so to be able to upload it to YouTube, Mr. Beast
02:44had to speed up certain segments to make it just 24 hours long.
02:48In the first five days that the video was on YouTube, it pulled in over 5 million views.
02:53The video finally brought Mr. Beast mainstream attention, and the views kept pouring in.
02:57Over six years later, the video is still regularly receiving new comments and has garnered over
03:0326 million views, though it's anyone's guess how many of those viewers actually sat around
03:08to watch the whole video.
03:09"...Would you be mad if she quit?
03:11For 100 grand?"
03:12"...Not at all."
03:13"...Are you serious?
03:14I'm your favorite employee."
03:15"...I would quit."
03:16It wasn't long after realizing that people loved watching bizarre stunts that Mr. Beast
03:20found his next hit niche.
03:21He began finding creative ways to give away money.
03:24Sometimes that meant giving small amounts of cash to random Twitch users, and at other
03:28times it meant giving away $10,000 to homeless people in his city.
03:32Yeah, hopefully it makes a difference.
03:34He even once gave a waitress enough money to make her quit her job.
03:37Most of the money Mr. Beast gave away came from brand deals, but by 2018 he'd donated
03:42over a million dollars and earned himself the title YouTube's Biggest Philanthropist.
03:47Mr. Beast's giveaway videos managed to do some good in the world while also massively
03:51boosting his following on YouTube.
03:52The more money Mr. Beast gave away, the more people showed up to his channel.
03:57YouTube's Biggest Philanthropist has not gotten by without his share of controversies.
04:01Just as Mr. Beast's following was growing exponentially, The Atlantic dug into his Twitter
04:06accounts and found some unsavory statements made by the influencer.
04:09Most of Mr. Beast's offensive comments used gay slurs, or made homosexuality into a punchline.
04:14He repeatedly called users gay slurs in his replies, and in 2018 his Twitter bio read,
04:20Just because I'm gay doesn't mean I'm gay.
04:22The Atlantic also called out a video titled,
04:24"...giving $10,000 to comments on this video," in which Mr. Beast wore a shirt which read,
04:29"...I'm not gay, but $20 is $20."
04:32When Mr. Beast was asked to address his comments, he appeared to dodge the issue.
04:36He said,
04:37"...I'm not offensive in the slightest bit in anything I do.
04:39I'm just going to ignore it.
04:40I don't think anyone cares about this stuff."
04:42In spite of what he told The Atlantic, Mr. Beast went on to remove all of his homophobic
04:47tweets, and he marked the video they criticized private on YouTube.
04:50From that, it seems that Mr. Beast understood how he could have offended people and has
04:54made some genuine efforts to improve his speech online.
04:58According to The New York Times, in 2021, a spokesperson for Mr. Beast pointed to the
05:02fact that he was a teenager when the offensive content was posted, and said that Mr. Beast,
05:07quote, "...has grown up and matured into someone that doesn't speak like that."
05:11In May 2021, The New York Times published a piece on Mr. Beast which broke open a new
05:16controversy surrounding his treatment of his employees.
05:19To manage his booming channel, Mr. Beast hired about 50 employees and moved his various companies
05:24into a warehouse to give everyone room to work.
05:27While plenty of people flocked to the companies for work, not everyone had a good experience
05:32being a part of the team.
05:33Matt Turner, who worked for Mr. Beast for well over a year, said that he was berated
05:37by his boss on a daily basis.
05:39In addition to the verbal abuse, Turner explained,
05:41I was not to be credited for anything I did.
05:43I'd ask for credit, it credits someone else.
05:46Nate Anderson, another Mr. Beast employee, uploaded a video to YouTube titled,
05:50My Experience Editing for Mr. Beast, Worst Week of My Life.
05:54The video garnered Anderson so many hateful comments and death threats from Mr. Beast
05:58fans that he's since removed it.
06:00It's worth noting that not all Mr. Beast employees told The Times that working with the influencer
06:04was a negative experience.
06:06Writer Josh Hyman said the team felt, quote, "...like family," adding,
06:09Not everyone employed there was a friend of a friend.