Donaldson, a.k.a. MrBeast, is the biggest YouTuber in the country and possibly, by the time this story is published, the world. Rangy at six feet two and clad in a gray Nike sweatsuit, Donaldson has been walking me through his company’s warehouse, showing off the detritus of various videos made under the MrBeast banner, a melange of stunts, pranks, and eye-popping cash giveaways. In one area, there are piles of GameStop merchandise from a video where he promised to buy everything a contestant could fit into a circumscribed triangle (“He just wanted cash instead,” Donaldson says); in another, crates stuffed with inflatable dinosaur costumes for a video titled “Walking Into Random Stores With 100 Dinosaurs.” In the back, there are 1 billion Orbeez, tiny gel-filled pellets that Donaldson used to fill his best friend’s backyard for a video back in 2018.
Then, we come to the money. “If you wanted to rob us, here’s where you’d rob us,” Donaldson says.
The cash is guarded by an affable man named Tracy, a former physical therapist with bright blue eyes and an eastern Carolina twang; he is an operations manager at MrBeast YouTube LLC, and the stepfather of its founder. Piles of bills lie in a steel-plated closet in filing cabinets, stacked neatly in rows, all in ones. Usually, it’s a full million, but today there’s $100,000 missing, for an upcoming trip to Florida, where Donaldson and his crew will shoot a “Would You Rather” video — as in, would you rather swim with sharks for that money or walk a bridge of alligators. Some of the bills are crumpled on the floor at Donaldson’s Adidas sneakers:
A funny thing happens when you see a lot of money in one place. As the smell hits my nostrils, crisp and pungent, like a pile of autumn leaves or a Xerox machine on the fritz, I start to think about the ways it could change my life, or the lives of those around me — the medical bills that need to be paid, school tuition, child care; all of the GoFundMe’s and charities it could help. I feel almost lightheaded, as if I’ve taken a right hook from a Paul brother square in the jaw (a recent Beast stunt that came with a $20,000 prize).
The effect does not go unnoticed by Parisher and Donaldson.
“Most of the people around here, they’re immune to it,” says Parisher.
“Yeah, we’re numb,” Donaldson says.
“They’ll sit here and count it for me and won’t even blink an eye nowadays,” Parisher says.
Donaldson looks at me like I’ve just asked what color the sky is. “Yeah, exactly,” he says. “That’s why we have it
On his YouTube channel, MrBeast, Donaldson is the main character, luring his 93.9 million subscribers to lavish, high-production-value videos with brightly hued thumbnails that cost $10,000 each to produce paired with titles optimized for YouTube’s algorithm, such as “Extreme $1,000,000 Hide-and-Seek” and “World’s Most Dangerous Escape Room!” Often, the stunts have the feel of video games: That escape room is actually 10 rooms, each built around a theme, from a Kubrickian “hotel” hallway to a pastoral scene with live goats to an Indiana Jones-style moving wall loaded with spikes that closes in on contestants. A Lamborghini “race” sends three of the Italian sports cars zigzagging around town, their drivers on a hunt for clues
Many of the stunts verge on clickbait. In “I Ate the World’s Largest Slice of Pizza,” Donaldson attempts to consume a nine-pound, six-foot-long slice. In “Spending 24 Hours Straight Underwater,” he survives being submerged for 12-plus hours in a backyard pool, his head inside a chamber rigged with an oxygen pump. Others are do-gooder content in the vein of the 1950s game show Queen for a Day, giving homeless people houses or donating $100,000 to random streamers on Twitch. In late 2020, Donaldson started the MrBeast Philanthropy channel, which contributes 100 percent of its revenue to a warehouse that operates mobile food donations throughout eastern North Carolina and reportedly delivered 1,000,563 meals by the end of 2021
Then, we come to the money. “If you wanted to rob us, here’s where you’d rob us,” Donaldson says.
The cash is guarded by an affable man named Tracy, a former physical therapist with bright blue eyes and an eastern Carolina twang; he is an operations manager at MrBeast YouTube LLC, and the stepfather of its founder. Piles of bills lie in a steel-plated closet in filing cabinets, stacked neatly in rows, all in ones. Usually, it’s a full million, but today there’s $100,000 missing, for an upcoming trip to Florida, where Donaldson and his crew will shoot a “Would You Rather” video — as in, would you rather swim with sharks for that money or walk a bridge of alligators. Some of the bills are crumpled on the floor at Donaldson’s Adidas sneakers:
A funny thing happens when you see a lot of money in one place. As the smell hits my nostrils, crisp and pungent, like a pile of autumn leaves or a Xerox machine on the fritz, I start to think about the ways it could change my life, or the lives of those around me — the medical bills that need to be paid, school tuition, child care; all of the GoFundMe’s and charities it could help. I feel almost lightheaded, as if I’ve taken a right hook from a Paul brother square in the jaw (a recent Beast stunt that came with a $20,000 prize).
The effect does not go unnoticed by Parisher and Donaldson.
“Most of the people around here, they’re immune to it,” says Parisher.
“Yeah, we’re numb,” Donaldson says.
“They’ll sit here and count it for me and won’t even blink an eye nowadays,” Parisher says.
Donaldson looks at me like I’ve just asked what color the sky is. “Yeah, exactly,” he says. “That’s why we have it
On his YouTube channel, MrBeast, Donaldson is the main character, luring his 93.9 million subscribers to lavish, high-production-value videos with brightly hued thumbnails that cost $10,000 each to produce paired with titles optimized for YouTube’s algorithm, such as “Extreme $1,000,000 Hide-and-Seek” and “World’s Most Dangerous Escape Room!” Often, the stunts have the feel of video games: That escape room is actually 10 rooms, each built around a theme, from a Kubrickian “hotel” hallway to a pastoral scene with live goats to an Indiana Jones-style moving wall loaded with spikes that closes in on contestants. A Lamborghini “race” sends three of the Italian sports cars zigzagging around town, their drivers on a hunt for clues
Many of the stunts verge on clickbait. In “I Ate the World’s Largest Slice of Pizza,” Donaldson attempts to consume a nine-pound, six-foot-long slice. In “Spending 24 Hours Straight Underwater,” he survives being submerged for 12-plus hours in a backyard pool, his head inside a chamber rigged with an oxygen pump. Others are do-gooder content in the vein of the 1950s game show Queen for a Day, giving homeless people houses or donating $100,000 to random streamers on Twitch. In late 2020, Donaldson started the MrBeast Philanthropy channel, which contributes 100 percent of its revenue to a warehouse that operates mobile food donations throughout eastern North Carolina and reportedly delivered 1,000,563 meals by the end of 2021
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