MrBeast Makes YouTube History By Surpassing 500M Subscribers

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Content creator MrBeast — real name Jimmy Donaldson — made YouTube history Friday when his channel surpassed half a billion subscribers.

Donaldson was in the midst of a livestream when he was alerted to the record-breaking number.

“Wait — we’re about to hit it?” he asked his staff. As the counter turned over, he exclaimed, “There we go! Five-hundred-million subscribers! Half-a-billion!”

“Guys, this is freaking insane!” he added. “You know, I shouldn’t be who I am right here. I shouldn’t have half-a-billion subscribers. Like, statistically, I shouldn’t.”

He continued:

I didn’t grow up with much. It’s funny, the more famous I become the more people are like, ‘Oh, he had a rich family,’ or blah blah. That’s why I give away money. Both my parents were in the military, and ended up going bankrupt back in 2008 in the financial crisis. And when I like started this channel, I couldn’t afford equipment. I would have to save up money from Adsense to buy my microphone and computer. I really shouldn’t be where I am today. Like, it doesn’t make sense that I have 500 million subscribers.

Since he began posting videos in 2012 when he was just 13 years old, Donaldson has become known for viral philanthropic and stunt-based videos.

According to Biography, “The teenager initially posted gaming videos of himself playing Minecraft, Call of Duty, and other titles, as well as clips with commentary about other YouTubers. He uploaded his first viral stunt in January 2017, a nearly 24-hour video of himself counting to 100,000 (in reality, it took him about 40 hours). Soon after the video, the 19-year-old reached more than 1 million subscribers.”

Donaldson has invested in ventures including food chain MrBeast Burger and the snack brand Feastables. He also developed a reality competition show called Beast Games that runs on Prime Video.

In 2020, he launched a spinoff channel called Beast Philanthropy, that gives away its earnings to charitable causes.

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