released October 5, 2023

Is MrBeast for Real? Inside the Outrageous World of YouTube’s Cash-Happy Stunt King
Jimmy Donaldson built a $54 million empire on elaborate pranks and eye-popping giveaways. Next up: Becoming the most popular creator on the planet

BY EJ DICKSON

Matthias Clamer for Rolling Stone
APR 19, 2022 9:00 AM
I
N AN UNDISCLOSED location in North Carolina, Jimmy Donaldson is about to show me a million dollars in cash.

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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: “It takes up more space and looks better on camera [that way],” he explains.

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).

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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.

“Do you ever just think about how many people’s lives this amount of money could change?” I ask.

Donaldson looks at me like I’ve just asked what color the sky is. “Yeah, exactly,” he says. “That’s why we have it.”

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MrBeast photographed in Greenville, North Carolina, on March 10, 2022. PHOTOGRAPH BY MATTHIAS CLAMER FOR ROLLING STONE. FASHION DIRECTION BY ALEX BADIA. STYLING BY STEPHANIE TRICOLA. GROOMING BY AMANDA WILSON. PROP STYLING BY DOMINIQUE BARNES. T-SHIRT BY RAG & BONE. JEANS BY LEVI’S.
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.

Donaldson also offers his subscribers a chance to get in on a MrBeast windfall through sweepstakes and competitions. Alex Maloney, a 20-year-old from Canada, won $100,000 by holding his finger on a MrBeast app button for more than two days straight, fueled by Uber Eats and Monster energy drinks. Maloney, who is unemployed and mulling whether to go to college, says having that money in the bank has given him a sense of security. “It was monumental. It made me feel more stable,” he says, adding that Donaldson “changes lives unbelievably.”

In these videos, Donaldson is often flanked by an ensemble of gawky, early-twentysomething white guys, many of whom live in the same cul-de-sac as Donaldson and have carved out extensive YouTube followings of their own: the slight and handsome Chris Tyson, a frequent presence in Donaldson’s earliest videos; doe-eyed Chandler Hallow, who grew up playing baseball with Donaldson; and shaggy-haired Karl Jacobs, an upstate New York native who started out as an editor and graduated to a fixture in the group Donaldson refers to as “the boys.”

With the boys in tow, Donaldson has built a multimedia empire, raking in a reported $54 million in revenue on his main channel last year. He also has a ghost-kitchen chain, MrBeast Burger, a delivery-only restaurant with 1,600 franchises throughout the country. In January, he launched Feastables, a line of chocolate bars, with a Willy Wonka-esque “Win MrBeast’s Chocolate Factory” promo, and he earns an estimated half a million dollars per month in merch.

“If you ask anybody that knew Jimmy before, they’d be like, ‘Really? Jimmy got famous?’ He was always real quiet.”

Over the course of less than a decade, Donaldson has gone from making gaming-commentary videos in his bedroom to managing 60 full-time employees, not counting independent contractors. He has launched various high-profile philanthropic projects, such as the #TeamTrees campaign, in which he set a goal to plant 20 million trees all over the world after raising $20 million in donations; and #TeamSeas, which aims to remove 30 million pounds of trash from the ocean. He is also, it should be noted, 23 years old. “Five years ago, I had to raise my hand to go use the bathroom,” he tells me. “This is the tip of the iceberg. Give me 20 years and then see what we will accomplish.”

Donaldson’s company is in the process of building out three sprawling content and production hubs in his hometown of Greenville, North Carolina, a small city dotted by strip malls, office parks, and the campus of East Carolina University. Donaldson hopes to position Greenville as a magnet for content creators in digital media. “The biggest parallel I could draw is to Tyler Perry in Atlanta,” says MrBeast LLC president Marc Hustvedt, who splits his time between Greenville and Los Angeles. “Jimmy’s creating his own studio system here.”

In some respects, Donaldson is an unlikely frontman for a multimillion-dollar media empire. A self-described introvert, he often reiterates his discomfort with casual conversation. In our very first interaction, he ambled up to me in the driveway of his sprawling, 60,000-square-foot studio and said, by way of introduction, “So, we’re going to start talking now?”

Even those who know Donaldson well are surprised he’s opted for a life in front of the camera. “If you ask anybody that knew Jimmy before, they’d be like, ‘Really? Jimmy got famous?’” says Tyson, his longtime best friend. “He was always really quiet. But it wasn’t like he didn’t want to talk to people. Jimmy just likes to talk about what he likes to talk about” — mostly, gaming or YouTube — “and if no one’s talking about that, he doesn’t like to talk.”

But in truth, the main character of MrBeast’s channel is not actually MrBeast himself. It is cold, hard cash. Money — piles, sheaves, gobs of it — takes center stage in nearly all of his videos, proffered as a balm for all of the world’s problems to the gig-economy scrappers and hardworking single moms who star in his videos. In one, he tips a waitress at a hot-dog joint $10,000 for two glasses of water; in another, he gives more than $100,000 to people who lost their jobs in the pandemic. Much of the appeal of MrBeast is predicated on an updated version of the Horatio Alger story; the idea that with a little bit of luck, you too could one day run into MrBeast on the street and walk away thousands of dollars richer.

Of course, this type of giving is something of a Band-Aid on a brain tumor. It may get attention, but it ignores long-standing structural inequities and cyclical poverty. Over lunch at a Mexican restaurant with Donaldson and two of the boys — Jacobs and Tareq Salameh, a former aspiring comic turned cameraman who’s been promoted to the cast — I comment that their videos all seem to ride on the idea that a fat check or a wad of cash stuffed in a fist can cure all manner of ills.

“It kinda can,” says Salameh.

Donaldson nods: “If you have a trillion dollars, you don’t really have any problems.”

Donaldson models himself after his heroes, the entrepreneurs Steve Jobs and Elon Musk, portraits of whom adorn Donaldson’s otherwise nondescript office and the living room of his house (including one of Musk, procured on Amazon, dressed as Napoleon Bonaparte). “I don’t support or look up to everything he does or how he treats people,” Donaldson says of Musk, perhaps alluding to the fact that the Tesla and SpaceX founder famously tweeted and then deleted a Hitler meme the week before my arrival. “But I think it’s inspiring that he’s weaning the world off of oil and rebuilding imagination when it comes to space exploration and stuff like that.”

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Donaldson, around age one, with mom Sue. As a child, she says, he was intensely competitive: “You couldn’t throw a game with him. You had to play it all the way through.” COURTESY OF MRBEAST
Donaldson claims not to have any vivid memories of his childhood before the age of 11. He chalks this up in part to his entrepreneurial streak. “I’m very forward-thinking,” he says. “Fuck the past. It’s already happened. I’m trying to conquer the future.” Indeed, he seems to have been born without any semblance of a nostalgia gene: Though his mother has a giant warehouse where she preserves every single memento from his old videos, he’s never gone to see it.

That lack of nostalgia may also serve as a protective measure, because Donaldson’s upbringing appears to have been less than stable. He was born in Kansas, the middle child to two parents who were active duty in the military, with his mother, Sue, serving as a prison warden in Mannheim, Germany, before being stationed at Fort Leavenworth. “Jimmy thinks it’s pretty badass that his mom ran a prison,” says Sue, a soft-spoken woman with a moderately-sized bouffant of carrot-colored hair. She now works as MrBeast LLC’s chief compliance officer, overseeing the company’s expenditures and contracts while managing her son’s personal affairs, such as his banking. (She even picked out the house where he lives.)

Sue worked 12-hour days while she was on active duty, and much of the child care was outsourced to a revolving cast of au pairs. She attributes Jimmy’s introversion largely to the fact that they moved so frequently. “We lived in three different locations in the southern U.S. before he was seven,” she says. “There were no cousins, no aunts, no uncles. It was really just us.” After a tumultuous marriage, his parents split up in 2007, when Donaldson was eight, and he no longer has any contact with his father. He declined to discuss the reasons why on the record. “I just tried my hardest to keep everything moving forward as best as possible,” Sue says of the divorce. “We got through it the best that we could get through it.”

Donaldson attended a small private school, Greenville Christian Academy, where boys were given demerits for wearing their hair too long and forced to copy Bible verses as punishment. He says he used to be observant — “You have it beat into your head every day” — but long questioned the church’s stance on issues like homosexuality, and has since pivoted to identifying as agnostic. “It’s such a sensitive topic for so many people around here,” he says. “I believe there is a God, but there are so many different religions and so many people who believe passionately about these things. It’s hard to know which [religion] is right.”

Growing up, Donaldson had few friends, rarely going out with other kids on the weekends. Sue identified a deep competitive streak in him early on. “You couldn’t throw a game with him. You always had to play it all the way through,” she says. “Like with Monopoly. We wanted to throw it out after a while, because he was like, ‘Don’t even pretend to give me Boardwalk and Park.’”

The one word that those in Donaldson’s orbit use to describe him is “obsessive”; he has a tendency to fixate on one thing at the expense of all other subjects. His single-minded focus on YouTube, he says, led kids at school to refer to him as autistic. “There’s a five-year point in my life where I was just relentlessly, unhealthily obsessed with studying virality, studying the YouTube algorithm,” he says. “I woke up. I would Uber Eats food. And then I would sit on my computer all day just studying shit nonstop with [other YouTubers].” (There was also a Settlers of Catan phase that’s led to Donaldson’s assistant buying at least five copies of the strategy game a month so there are always “fresh ones” lying around. Donaldson relishes the strategy and machinations it demands, deadpanning, “I’m great at lying.”)

“There’s a five-year period in my life where I was just relentlessly, unhealthily obsessed with studying virality.”

Donaldson admits that his focus on his work has made it difficult for him to maintain personal relationships. “I’m not really good at keeping friends,” he says. “All my friends revolve around work.” He also spends little time with his family, including the older brother who lives nearby, another YouTuber Donaldson describes as being somewhat like him but “less successful.” (It doesn’t help that his brother’s channel is called “MrBro,” a decision Donaldson says his brother now regrets.)

Though Donaldson enjoyed playing baseball as a child, a diagnosis of Crohn’s disease, an autoimmune disorder characterized by intestinal distress, his sophomore year of high school caused him to drop out of sports. (He is currently on the drug Remicade to manage his symptoms, along with meals prepared by a private chef, though he often has flare-ups.) The stress of having to deal with his Crohn’s, Sue says, led Donaldson to spend more time indoors, prompting his pivot to YouTube.

In truth, Donaldson had already established a presence on the platform, uploading videos of himself playing Minecraft and Call of Duty when he was 11. When he was 13, he started a new channel, adopting the handle “MrBeast6000” because “Mr. Beast” was already taken. At first, it appears that Donaldson was trying to find his voice, capitalizing on various YouTube trends to see what stuck: He tried video-game commentary, à la PewDiePie, then made videos estimating how much various YouTubers made.

Slowly, however, he started to rack up subscribers and eke out revenue, in part by engaging in increasingly extreme stunts. In one video, Tyson wraps him in 100 layers of toilet paper and Saran wrap; in another, Donaldson counts to 100,000, an idea he says he got from seeing if he could try to monetize watching multiple episodes of the anime Naruto in one sitting. In a video he published in 2015 addressed to a future him, he said, “I hope you have at least 100k subs.” In May 2017, he would hit a million subscribers.

Sue had no idea he was making YouTube videos, and was stunned when she found out through an entry in his yearbook. “I was a normal parent,” she says. “I was very concerned at what was out there.” When Donaldson made it clear to her that he was making money off his channel, however, her anxiety was reduced. Still, she was insistent that Jimmy go to college and get a degree after graduation. Donaldson acquiesced, enrolling in community college, though he says he did not attend a single class and dropped out midway through the first semester.

With that, Sue kicked her son out of the house, prompting him to move into a duplex with Tyson. It was perfect timing: Donaldson had just reached 750,000 subscribers and gotten his first brand deal. Rather than spend it, he reinvested the cash into a video where he gave a homeless person a $10,000 check.

It was not Donaldson’s first video in which he gave away cash for free, but he saw that this brand of stunt philanthropy resonated. He shifted to more giveaway-centric videos, such as “Tipping Waitresses With Real Gold Bars” (53 million views), and soon, he was earning $100,000 a month from his channel. “One day he came in with a check and was like, ‘Mom, look how much I just made,’” says Sue. “And it was my entire year’s salary.” She retired and joined the company shortly thereafter.

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Donaldson (left) was into sports until a diagnosis of Crohn’s disease led him to pivot to YouTube. COURTESY OF MRBEAST
Donaldson says he doesn’t “give a fuck about money,” and plans to give it all away before he dies. “I don’t want to live my life chasing the next shiny object to the next shiny object,” he says as we drive around in his Tesla Model X. “It’s a sad, miserable way to go about life.” His assistant, a model-handsome Utah transplant named Steele, says that prior to his hiring, and Donaldson’s ex-girlfriend redesigning his kitchen, YouTube’s biggest star had lawn chairs in his living room and mattresses on the floor. “I don’t give a shit about looks,” Donaldson says. “I just care about functionality.” Yet he also seems to be fixated on how much some shiny objects cost, pointing out that his custom-built, double-sided refrigerator — which he had made so his chef could deliver meals from outside without disturbing him — was 50 grand to install.

His reputation for being cash-rich also comes with security concerns. His apartment was broken into three or four years ago while he was filming, prompting him to move to a gated community and into a house with bulletproof windows and triple-steel-reinforced doors. A bodyguard accompanies him whenever he ventures out in public in Greenville. These concerns do not seem unfounded: During our lunch at the Mexican restaurant, two teenagers wait outside in the parking lot for hours, and tail Donaldson’s car when we leave.

Donaldson acknowledges this is a problem of his own making. “I can create whatever world I want, do whatever I want for content, and I choose this,” he says. “[In] the end, I have tons of influence. If I wanted to, I could have tons of money. Boohoo, people have expectations of me. I’ll live.”

Fundamentally, Donaldson seems to view money as a means to an end, a tool for him to accomplish his goal of dominating YouTube. “It doesn’t matter to me,” he says of the gold bars and Lamborghinis and stacks of cash in his warehouse. “But it matters to other people. And that’s what allows us to get views so I make more money and do bigger stuff.”

As Donaldson’s subscriber count has ballooned, so too has the amount of money he spends on his videos. Today, many cost approximately a million dollars each to produce, few of which are profitable. The main channel is largely subsidized by Donaldson’s “gaming” and “reacts” channels, which prominently feature the boys and are cost-efficient to produce, pulling in a great deal of revenue. “I could be doing cheaper videos,” Donaldson says. “But I just don’t want to. I want to push the boundaries to go bigger, bigger.”

In late 2021, Donaldson’s preternatural ability to hack YouTube garnered headlines across the world, when he spent nearly $4 million re-creating the Netflix series Squid Game — albeit without the extreme violence — awarding the winner a $456,000 prize following an intense game of musical chairs. The video went massively viral, racking up more than 225 million views.

“I want to be the biggest YouTube channel ever. Not even for my ego. It just gives me something to strive for, to get out of bed and grind for. But it’s also just vanity.”

But the Squid Game remake also garnered criticism from many who said it missed the point of the original series, which showed the brutal toll that free enterprise takes on middle-class people’s lives. Donaldson dismisses the criticism. “The guy who made the show literally said, ‘I like these people re-creating the show,’” he notes. (Squid Game creator Hwang Dong-Hyuk did say he approved of YouTubers re-creating the series, but did not comment on MrBeast’s video specifically.)

It was not the first time Donaldson had encountered controversy. In 2018, The Atlantic reported that he had used anti-gay slurs in tweets he posted when he was a teenager, and had used homosexuality as a punchline in a number of his videos. At the time, he did not issue an apology, instead telling the magazine, “I’m not offensive in the slightest bit in anything I do. I’m just going to ignore it. I don’t think anyone cares about this stuff.” Today, he is more contrite.

“This is literally the heart of the Bible Belt,” he says as we weave through the streets of Greenville. “I had it beat in my head every day when I was younger, like, ‘Gay people are the reason God’s going to come and burn this Earth.’” As a teenager, he said, he considered anti-gay rhetoric “normal” as a result. “As I grew up, I realized, ‘Oh, this isn’t normal. This is just a weird place I grew up in.’ So, that type of thing, I [wish I could] go back in time and be like, ‘Hey, stop.’”

Some in Donaldson’s posse have also faced scrutiny for their language on social media, including Tyson, who was called out in April 2021 for having posted transphobic and homophobic memes on Twitter. Tyson deleted the tweets and issued an apology, telling me he considered the experience “an opportunity for learning and growth” and that the tweets stemmed from his own struggles with his sexuality; he came out as bisexual in the fall of 2020.

Donaldson is less reflective about a video he posted in 2016 that resurfaced last year, in which he appears to lampoon the concept of transgenderism by saying he sexually identifies as an attack helicopter and a tank, playing off of a meme that originated on Reddit and 4chan. He states in the now-deleted clip, “Is someone just sitting there and getting paid to think of genders?” Though the meme was a fairly well-known transphobic joke at the time, Donaldson denies being familiar with its origins. “I was just playing along with the meme like everyone else,” he says, referring to the video as “a joke.”

Donaldson has managed to deflect criticism in part because he aims to be staunchly apolitical, at least publicly. “I don’t want to alienate Republicans and Democrats,” he says. “I like having it where everyone can support [my] charity. My goal is to feed hundreds of millions of people. So it would be very silly of me to alienate basically half of America.” (He recently appeared on Joe Rogan’s podcast, which has attracted criticism for platforming Covid denialism and vaccine misinformation, though the episode steered clear of such topics.)

Perhaps the greatest threat to MrBeast’s family-friendly brand was a 2021 investigation by The New York Times that quoted several former employees alleging that Donaldson had fostered a toxic work environment, screaming at workers, forcing them to work long hours, and calling them slurs. Two of the former MrBeast editors who spoke out against him, Nate Anderson and Matt Turner, deleted videos they’d posted about their experiences because of the harassment they got from MrBeast fans.

Donaldson denies the claims set forth in the Times story. “I’ve literally worked with over a thousand people. Two people thought I was pretty demanding, which was perfectly fine,” he says. “We have high standards, but it’s not a toxic work environment.” He’s said he gave Turner $10,000 and recommended him for a gig at a gaming company following the termination of his contract. (Turner, for his part, says the actual amount, his salary through the end of his contract, was smaller than that.)

Tyson frames the workplace conflicts as a function of Donaldson’s difficulties communicating. “He knows what he wants, and I think he also has a very hard time socializing,” he says. “We’ve talked about this — I think he has a hard time explaining to people what he wants and what he needs.” But for Turner, those negative encounters made a lasting impression: “You see him on camera and you’re like, ‘He’s such a cool dude.’ Knowing him, you’d be like, ‘Damn, I wish the cool Jimmy was the real Jimmy.’”

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Cash rules everything around MrBeast, on set in North Carolina. PHOTOGRAPH BY MATTHIAS CLAMER FOR ROLLING STONE. TOP AND SHORTS BY BUCK MASON
Donaldson’s brand as a budding philanthropist certainly helps render him Teflon. Over the past few years, he has pivoted away from attention-grabbing stunts on YouTube to more philanthropically minded videos. In addition to setting up MrBeast Philanthropy, where CEO Darren Margolias helms weekly food drives as well as clothing drives sourced from YouTuber merch, Donaldson went viral for launching #TeamTrees in partnership with the Arbor Day Foundation, and #TeamSeas.

While there is debate about whether planting 20 million trees will yield environmental impact, and skeptics suggest corporate donors could use such efforts as a form of greenwashing, Arbor Day Foundation CEO Dan Lambe says #TeamTrees sends an important message. “Planting 20 million trees is not going to solve the climate crisis,” he acknowledges. “Having said that, drawing attention to the need for planting trees, and the benefits, is hugely valuable.” Lambe confirms #TeamTrees has planted 14 million trees thus far, and is on track to hit its goal by the end of the year.

Donaldson did not grow up with much exposure to philanthropy. Sue says he never participated in volunteer activities or church community service, and he does not claim to have a deep emotional attachment to any of the causes he champions. Yet Margolias says Donaldson’s earliest experiences giving money from brand deals to homeless people “ignited a fire” in him, leading him to want to harness his power and influence to change the world. By championing various philanthropic causes, Margolias says, Donaldson wants to school an entirely new generation (YouTube analytics doesn’t track viewers below the age of 12, but his audience skews quite young, Donaldson says) in the benefits of unconditional giving. “So many people are conditioned to think giving money to charity is a burden or a sacrifice,” says Margolias, an earnest, stocky gentleman in his early fifties. “But when people realize helping is enjoyable and beautiful, that will change the way they think about giving.”

Margolias says that much of Donaldson’s largesse occurs off camera, citing multiple examples where he spent tens of thousands of dollars on Christmas presents for children who lost family members in a hurricane, or renting a home and furnishing it for a family of nine whose parents had lost their jobs due to the pandemic. “Jimmy said to me the first night I met him, his life ambition is to improve the world. I have no shadow of a doubt that’s sincere,” he says. “Also to the people that say ‘He does it for the views,’ we have done some stunningly generous things Jimmy pays for 100 percent out of pocket that nobody knows about.”

Donaldson is sensitive to any questions about his motivations. “I know myself, and I don’t have anything to prove to anyone. I think what I’ve done speaks for itself,” he says. “I have an entire channel built around my nonprofit that I’ve invested ungodly amounts of hours into building, that I’ll never see a single penny out of.… I lose five figures and dozens of hours every month. The opportunity cost could go to projects that make millions of dollars. So I don’t care. I don’t say this stuff publicly, because that’s not why I do it.”

Donaldson says he hears from countless parents who tell him their children wanted to pick up trash at a beach or volunteer at a soup kitchen because of his videos. And many parents of MrBeast fans I spoke with said their children had pushed them to donate to #TeamSeas or #TeamTrees. Though when I suggest MrBeast videos may present a cynical concept of charity, it touches a nerve. “Your concern literally isn’t even a concern whatsoever,” Donaldson says. “There’s not millions of kids now doing good and filming it. There’s just millions of kids who are doing good.”

Like many entrepreneurs, Donaldson does not have much by way of a personal life; or at least, he does not have any interest in portraying that he has one. He recently split from lifestyle influencer Maddy Spidell, who has appeared in a handful of his videos, and those in his circle told me that Spidell had been a positive influence, forcing Donaldson to prioritize work-life balance more. Donaldson did not want to comment on the record about the breakup, citing Spidell’s privacy, yet Tyson says Donaldson’s singular focus on work was a major contributing factor. “I think that’s what he’s going to be looking for next: somebody who can match his obsession with business and money and all that kind of stuff,” he says.

Donaldson, however, is less interested in dating than he is in growing his brand: reaching 100 million subscribers, opening more MrBeast Burgers, becoming the most successful YouTuber of all time. Unlike many other creators, who crave acceptance from the mainstream entertainment establishment, he doesn’t have any interest in obtaining Netflix deals or lucrative recording contracts; his only concern is building his influence on the platform that made him famous.

“I want to be the biggest YouTube channel ever,” he says. “Not even for my ego. I don’t know. I just want it. It just gives me something to strive for, to get out of bed and grind for. But it’s also just vanity.”

Surprisingly, for someone who is singularly obsessed with YouTube, Donaldson says he doesn’t often watch YouTube videos anymore. Instead, he’s become deeply consumed by the field of self-optimization. He installed a gym in the middle of his kitchen as a motivational tool, so he can work out instead of grabbing a snack. He regularly reads biographies of highly successful men, most recently finishing one about Michael Jordan. He’s also hired a life coach, who told him that successful men peak at 40.

“At first I was like, ‘You’re fucking crazy,’” he says. “But I think I do believe it. [So] as long as you’re staying physically fit, you’re not wrinkly. And if you have money and stuff like that.” If his life coach is right, Donaldson has more than a decade left until he hits his peak, and he will tolerate no distractions on his way there. He says that when renovations to the MrBeast LLC studio are complete, he’ll have a shower installed in his office so he can keep working without having to go home. “I need to just obsess, grind, and keep going,” he says. “If you’re on an exponential growth curve, you don’t want to let it flatline.”

It’s the kind of attitude that’s led him to have the fifth most popular YouTube channel in the world. But, of course, he wants to be first. That’s what the new, bigger studio, the crazy sets, the ever-more-elaborate stunts, the live sharks, the lime-green Lambos, the million dollar bills, and tens of millions more in the bank are all for, even if none of it feels like quite enough. “This is all I do, really,” he says as we sit in the front seat of his Tesla. “I don’t party. I barely have friends. And there is a risk: I look back when I’m 50 and I’m like, ‘Damn, I literally only did that one thing and nothing else.’”

MrBeast

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From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
For other uses, see Mr. Beast (disambiguation).
MrBeast

MrBeast in 2022
Personal information
Born James Stephen Donaldson
May 7, 1998 (age 25)
Wichita, Kansas, U.S.
Origin Greenville, North Carolina, U.S.[1]
Other names Jimmy Donaldson
Occupations
YouTuberbusinessmanphilanthropist
Signature
Website mrbeast.store
YouTube information
Channel
MrBeast
Years active 2012–present
Genres
Comedyentertainmentvlogsgamingreaction
Subscribers
188 million (main channel)
312 million (combined)[a]
[2]
Total views
33.3 billion (main channel)
50 billion (combined)
[2]
Associated acts
Karl JacobsPewDiePieMarques BrownleeMark Rober
Creator Awards

Jimmy Donaldson's voice
0:27
At the 2022 Kids' Choice Awards
Recorded April 2022
Last updated: October 1, 2023
James Stephen Donaldson[b] (born May 7, 1998), known professionally as MrBeast (or Jimmy Donaldson), is an American YouTuber, entrepreneur and philanthropist. He is credited with pioneering a genre of YouTube videos that centers on expensive stunts and challenges.[12] With over 189 million subscribers[13] he is the most-subscribed individual user on the platform and the second-most-subscribed channel overall,[14][15] and has ranked on the Forbes list for the highest paid YouTube creator in 2022.[16]

Donaldson grew up in Greenville, North Carolina. He began posting videos to YouTube in early 2012, at the age of 13,[17] under the handle MrBeast6000. His early content ranged from Let's Plays to "videos estimating the wealth of other YouTubers".[18] He went viral in 2017 after his "counting to 100,000" video earned tens of thousands of views in just a few days, and he has become increasingly popular ever since, with most of his videos gaining tens of millions of views.[18] His videos, typically involving challenges and giveaways, became increasingly grand and extravagant.[19] Once his channel took off, Donaldson hired some of his childhood friends to co-run the brand. As of 2023, the MrBeast team is made up of over 250 people, including Donaldson himself.[20][21] Other than MrBeast, Donaldson runs the YouTube channels Beast Reacts, MrBeast Gaming, MrBeast 2 (formerly MrBeast Shorts),[22] and the philanthropy channel Beast Philanthropy.[23][24] He formerly ran MrBeast 3 (initially MrBeast 2), which is now inactive.[25][26] As of 2023, he is the highest paid YouTuber,[27] and has an estimated net worth of $500 million.[28]

Donaldson is the founder of MrBeast Burger and Feastables; and a co-creator of Team Trees, a fundraiser for the Arbor Day Foundation that has raised over $23 million;[29][30] and Team Seas, a fundraiser for Ocean Conservancy and The Ocean Cleanup that has raised over $30 million.[31] Donaldson won the Creator of the Year award four times at the Streamy Awards in 2020, 2021, 2022, and 2023; he also won the Favorite Male Creator award twice at the Nickelodeon Kids' Choice Awards in 2022 and 2023. In 2023, Time magazine named him as one of the world's 100 most influential people.

Early life
James Stephen Donaldson[b] was born on May 7, 1998[32] in Wichita, Kansas.[33] He was mainly raised in a middle-class household in Greenville, North Carolina with his brother CJ.[34][35][36] He moved often and was under the care of au pairs due to his parents working long hours and serving in the military. His parents divorced in 2007.[35] In 2016, Donaldson graduated from Greenville Christian Academy, a small private evangelical Christian high school in the area. He briefly attended East Carolina University before dropping out.[37][38]

YouTube career
Early viral attempts (2012–2017)
Donaldson uploaded his first YouTube video in February 2012, at the age of 13, under the name of "MrBeast6000".[39] His early content ranged from Let's Plays, mainly focused on Minecraft and Call of Duty: Black Ops II,[39] videos estimating the wealth of other YouTubers,[40] videos that offered tips to upcoming YouTube creators, and commentary on YouTube drama. Donaldson appeared infrequently in these videos.[39]

In 2015 and 2016, Donaldson began to gain popularity with his "Worst intros on YouTube" series poking fun at YouTube video introductions.[39][41][42] By mid-2016, Donaldson had around 30,000 subscribers. In fall 2016, Donaldson dropped out of East Carolina University to pursue a full-time career as a YouTuber.[18][40] His mother did not approve of this and made him move out of the family home.[37]

As his channel grew, Donaldson hired four childhood friends – Kris Tyson, Chandler Hallow, Garrett Ronalds, and Jake Franklin – to contribute to his channel.[37] They then contacted numerous YouTubers in order to obtain statistics of their successful videos and predict the platform's recommendation system.[43][clarification needed] Franklin left the crew in 2020. Afterwards, Karl Jacobs, previously a cameraman, was promoted to take his place.[44][45][46]

Rise to fame (2017–2020)

MrBeast in 2018
In January 2017, Donaldson published an almost day-long video of himself counting to 100,000, which became his breakthrough viral video.[19] The ordeal took him 40 hours, with some parts sped up to "keep it under 24 hours."[47] Donaldson gained popularity during this period with stunts, such as attempting to break glass using a hundred megaphones, watching paint dry for an hour,[38] attempting to stay underwater for 24 hours, which ended up failing due to health issues, and an unsuccessful attempt to spin a fidget spinner for a day.[48] By 2018, Donaldson had given out $1 million through his outlandish stunts, which earned him the title of "YouTube's biggest philanthropist".[37]

During the PewDiePie vs T-Series rivalry in 2018, a competition to become the most-subscribed channel on YouTube, Donaldson bought billboards and numerous television and radio advertisements to help PewDiePie gain more subscribers than T-Series.[49][50] During Super Bowl LIII, he bought multiple seats for himself and his team, whose shirts spelled out "Sub 2 PewDiePie."[51][52]

In March 2019, Donaldson organized and filmed a real-life battle royale competition in Los Angeles with a prize of $200,000 (two games were played, making game earnings of $100,000 for each game) in collaboration with Apex Legends.[53] The event and prize pool was sponsored by Apex Legends publisher Electronic Arts.[54]

Donaldson was accused of using counterfeit money in his video titled "I Opened A FREE BANK", published on November 23, 2019.[37] He later explained that he used fake money to avoid participant safety concerns and that participants received real checks after the shoot.[37]

In April 2020, Donaldson created a rock, paper, scissors competition stream that featured 32 influencers and a grand prize of $250,000, which at the time became YouTube's most-watched live Original event with 662,000 concurrent viewers.[55] The event was won by Nadeshot.[56] In October 2020, Donaldson hosted another influencer tournament featuring 24 competitors with a grand prize of $300,000. The tournament was won by the D'Amelio family, which caused controversy due to claims that they cheated.[57]

Mainstream success (2021–present)

MrBeast at the Nickelodeon Kids' Choice Awards 2023
On January 1, 2021, Donaldson released the video "Youtube Rewind 2020, Thank God It's Over".[58] In Donaldson's video, he explains that he had always believed that YouTubers "should get more say in Rewind", and with this in mind, he decided to call "hundreds of YouTubers".[58] At the end of the video, Donaldson gives a shout-out to PewDiePie, citing him and his 2018 Rewind as the inspiration for Donaldson's Rewind.[58] A month later, Donaldson signed a Facebook and Snapchat content distribution deal with Jellysmack.[59][60]

In November 2021, Donaldson uploaded "$456,000 Squid Game In Real Life!", a recreation of the survival drama streaming television series Squid Game in real life. The video had 456 people compete for a $456,000 cash prize.[61] The video has more than 501 million views as of September 22, 2023,[62] making it Donaldson's most-viewed YouTube video that isn't a short and making it one of the most-watched YouTube videos of 2021.[63] A review of the video in Vice argued that it "badly misunderstood the anti-capitalist message of Squid Game".[64] Despite this, Squid Game creator Hwang Dong-hyuk has reacted positively to recreations and parodies of the series.[65]

In December 2021, Donaldson created a third influencer tournament featuring 15 competitors with a grand prize of $1,000,000.[66][67][68] In January 2022, Forbes ranked Donaldson as YouTube's highest-earning creator, earning an estimated $54 million in 2021. Forbes stated that his income in 2021 would have placed him 40th in the 2020 Forbes Celebrity 100, earning as much money as Vin Diesel and Lewis Hamilton did in 2020.[69][70]


A sign depicting the MrBeast and YouTube Shorts logos at Vidcon 2022
On July 28, 2022, Donaldson surpassed 100 million subscribers on his main channel, making him the fifth channel and the second individual YouTuber to achieve the milestone.[71][72] On November 17, 2022, Donaldson achieved the Guinness World Record of "Most Subscribers for an Individual Male on YouTube" with his MrBeast channel at 112,193,139 subscribers.[73] The previous record holder, PewDiePie, had held the record as the most subscribed YouTuber for almost ten years.[74] Donaldson achieved 1 billion video views over a period of 30 days on his main YouTube channel in November 2022.[75]

Business model
"Once you know how to make a video go viral, it's just about how to get as many out as possible, ... you can practically make unlimited money. [But] the videos take months of prep. A lot of them take four to five days of relentless filming. There's a reason other people don't do what I do."

— MrBeast on his YouTube videos[43]
Donaldson's videos leverage YouTube's recommendation algorithm in order to go viral, mainly by maximizing click-through rate and viewer retention.[76] To maximize click-through rate, he focuses on creating effective topics, titles, and thumbnails.[77] In an interview with Lex Fridman, he stated that for him to create a viral video, it needed to be "original, creative, something people really need to see, ideally never been done before".[78] His titles are designed to attract attention by promising outrageous stunts and using certain keywords like "24-hours" and "challenge".[43][77] His thumbnails are designed to be easily understandable, clearly focused, and brightly colored.[79] To maximize viewer retention, Donaldson paces the videos to have viewers engaged throughout. His videos typically span 10 to 20 minutes. He hooks viewers by explaining the premise in under half a minute at the start of the video[43] and promises a "finale" to have viewers engaged until the end of the video.[76]

Donaldson's videos are categorized into three genres: stunt videos, where Donaldson or other participants perform challenges that are interesting, challenging, or dangerous; junklord videos, where Donaldson uses a large quantity of a particular product in an unusual way or spends an extravagant amount on it; and giveaway videos, where Donaldson gives away large amounts of money or extravagant prizes to people, usually including a competitive aspect. Giveaway videos are considered to be a distinctive feature of Donaldson's content.[76]

Donaldson's fundings for these videos mainly come from sponsorships and Google's AdSense program.[80] As of 2022, Donaldson spends about one million dollars on each video. Although Donaldson's videos rarely turn a profit,[81] he is concentrated more on expanding his YouTube channel rather than earning a profit, stating in an interview with Rolling Stone, "I could be doing cheaper videos, [...] But I just don't want to. I want to push the boundaries to go bigger, bigger".[81][82] Most of his funding come from sponsorships.[80] Donaldson uses his reaction channel and gaming channel to help finance his main channel, as their videos are relatively cheap to produce and make a substantial amount of money.[81] The Verge noted his revenue is self-perpetuating: "The more viral he becomes, the more brands want to work with him, and the bigger his own AdSense earnings get. He can then entice viewers with even bigger giveaway videos. It's a never ending cycle."[80] In addition to sponsorships and AdSense, Donaldson earns passive income through merchandise, MrBeast Burger, and Feastables.[76][83]

Other ventures
Finger on the App
In June 2020, Donaldson, in collaboration with Brooklyn-based art collective MSCHF, released a one-time multiplayer mobile game titled "Finger on the App". In the game, players touch their phone screen and the last person to remove their finger from the screen wins $25,000.[84] In the end, four people ended up winning $20,000 each after keeping their finger on the app for over 70 hours.[85] The game was reportedly so successful that a sequel titled "Finger on the App 2" was planned to originally launch in December 2020. The game was postponed to February and then further delayed to March 2021 due to a flood of downloads, causing the game to crash and requiring the game's developers to upgrade their servers. This time, the game featured a grand prize of $100,000.[86] The winner kept their finger on the phone screen for around 51 hours. The second-place finisher also received a prize of $20,000.[87]

MrBeast Burger
Main article: MrBeast Burger

A MrBeast Burger restaurant in New Jersey
Will Hyde, a producer for the MrBeast channel, announced in a November 2020 article with The Wake Weekly that Donaldson would launch a virtual restaurant called MrBeast Burger in December 2020. Hyde said his team worked with Virtual Dining Concepts during the development of the restaurant concept. He said that MrBeast Burger will sell franchise rights to serve the burgers to restaurants across the U.S. and customers will be able to order the burgers via online delivery services.[88]

In August 2022, Donaldson announced that he would bring a MrBeast Burger shop to the American Dream Mall in East Rutherford, New Jersey, near New York City, to be the location of his first U.S. restaurant. The restaurant opened on September 4, 2022.[89]

On June 17, 2023, Donaldson expressed wishes to shut down MrBeast Burger due to fears that quality cannot be guaranteed, saying he regrets signing "a bad deal" with Virtual Dining Concepts, LLC, but said the company "won't let me stop even though it's terrible for my brand."[90][91][92] On July 31, 2023, Donaldson sued Virtual Dining Concepts to end their partnership, alleging that the company damaged his reputation by prioritizing the expansion of the MrBeast Burger brand over food quality. Donaldson also claimed he received no payment from the partnership.[93][94] Virtual Dining Concepts disputed the claims, stating Donaldson had grown his reputation due to the MrBeast Burger brand, and accused Donaldson of attempting a new deal for personal gain and resorting to "bullying" when rejected.[95]

Feastables
Main article: Feastables

Feastables Bar
In January 2022, Donaldson announced the creation of a new food company called Feastables, which launched with its own brand of chocolate bars called "MrBeast Bars". At launch they offered 3 flavors of bars, original, almond and quinoa crunch. The launch corresponded with a sweepstakes with over $1 million in prizes, including 10 grand prize winners who would receive a chance to compete for a chocolate factory in a future video.[96] The video was released in June 2022, which featured Gordon Ramsay as a cake judge and a $500,000 cash prize.[97][98]

The video contained a series of elimination challenges where the winner won the chocolate factory. The video contained cameos from competitive eaters Matt Stonie and Joey Chestnut.[99] On February 2, 2022, Feastables announced partnerships with Turtle Beach Corporation and Roccat to provide prizes for the sweepstakes.[100][101] Feastables reportedly made $10 million in its first few months of operation.[102]

On March 3, 2023, Donaldson asked fans on Twitter to "clean up the presentation" of Feastables displays on store shelves and suggested they obscure competing products. Feastables offered fans entry into a $5,000 raffle if they provided proof of their assistance. The tweets drew criticism and accusations that Feastables was exploiting fans for unpaid labor.[103][104]

On April 7, 2023, Donaldson revealed that Feastables collaborated with Karl Jacobs to release a line of gummy candy called "Karl Gummies".[105][106]

Initially available only at Walmart, in May 2023 Feastables became available at 7-Eleven locations, including Speedway and Stripes locations.[107]

Investments and partnerships
Donaldson is an investor in the tech startup Backbone, which produces the Backbone One, a controller that makes smartphones appear more similar to Nintendo Switch controllers, and the Backbone app, a content creation and social tools app for its users.[108][109]

In March 2021, Donaldson partnered with Creative Juice financial network to introduce Juice Funds, a $2 million investment fund for content creators.[110][111]

In April 2021, Donaldson became a long-term investor and partner of financial technology company Current.[112][113] The same month, Donaldson received backlash after fans lost large amounts of money in a cryptocurrency scheme that Donaldson had invested in and promoted.[111]

Philanthropy
Team Trees
Main article: Team Trees

Team Trees
On October 25, 2019, Donaldson and former NASA engineer and YouTuber Mark Rober announced 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." Every donation goes to the Arbor Day Foundation, which pledges to plant one tree for every dollar donated. Notable YouTubers such as Rhett & Link, Marshmello, iJustine, Marques Brownlee, The Slow Mo Guys, Ninja, Simone Giertz, Jacksepticeye, and Smarter Every Day brought attention to the project, and trees began to be planted in October 2019 in US national parks.[114][115]

On December 19 of that year, the $20,000,000 goal was surpassed.[116] The project has received large donations from corporate executives Jack Dorsey, Susan Wojcicki, Elon Musk,[117] and Tobias Lütke,[118] as well as from companies such as Discovery, Verizon and Plants vs. Zombies.[119] Tobias Lütke, founder and CEO of Shopify, holds the record for the highest donation at 1,000,001 trees planted.[120] As of February 11, 2023, the original goal of 20 million trees has been far surpassed, with over 24.3 million trees in the ground.[121]

Beast Philanthropy

Greenville received Thanksgiving meals as part of an initiative by Beast Philanthropy and Jennie-O.[122][123]
On September 17, 2020, the YouTube channel Beast Philanthropy was created.[124] On the channel's first video, Donaldson announced the charity and food bank and named Darren Margolias, who had appeared in previous videos, as executive director.[25][125] According to the channel description, 100% of its advertising revenue, brand deals, and merchandise sales are donated to charity.[19][124]

Notable initiatives by Beast Philanthropy include giving away 10,000 turkeys to his hometown Greenville,[122][123] donating 20,000 shoes to children in Africa,[126] and gifting $300,000 worth of technology to various schools.[127]

Team Seas
Main article: Team Seas

Team Seas
On October 29, 2021, Donaldson and Rober organized another collaborative challenge event on YouTube titled #TeamSeas. The goal of this project was to raise $30 million for the Ocean Conservancy and The Ocean Cleanup by January 1, 2022. The $30 million goal would fund the removal of 30 million pounds of plastic and other waste from oceans, rivers, and beaches. Donaldson and Rober enlisted thousands of content creators, including AzzyLand, DanTDM, TommyInnit, LinusTechTips, TierZoo, LEMMiNO, The Infographics Show, Hannah Stocking, Dhar Mann, and Marques Brownlee, and partnered with BEN and TubeBuddy's initiative of 8 million global creators, to promote the fundraiser.[128][129][130]

Cataract surgery
In January 2023, Donaldson paid for cataract surgery for a thousand people who had severely limited vision and had been unable to afford the procedure.[131] Responses to his video on the subject ranged from praise at its intention to spread awareness to criticism that he was creating "charity porn" motivated solely by profit.[132] Other comments criticized the American medical system for failing to provide the necessary healthcare to the patients in the video, questioning why patients had to rely on a YouTuber for the procedure.[133]

Personal life
Donaldson describes himself as an introvert. Donaldson admits to having difficulty maintaining a social life due to his obsession with YouTube and his intense work ethic. Donaldson's mother, Sue, attributes his withdrawn lifestyle to their frequent relocations and his struggles with Crohn's disease.[134]

Donaldson dated Maddy Spidell, a YouTuber, from 2019 to 2022. He has dated Thea Booysen, a gaming streamer, since 2022.[135][136]

In June 2023, Donaldson stated that he was invited to go on a tourist expedition to view the wreck of the Titanic in the OceanGate submersible Titan but declined the offer. The submersible imploded in the Atlantic Ocean, killing all five aboard.[137][138]

Personal views
In an April 2022 interview with The Daily Beast, Donaldson announced that he was no longer an evangelical Christian and identified himself as an agnostic. He also stated that he had long disagreed with the church's position on homosexuality. He states that during the time he grew up in "the heart of the Bible Belt", he had religion "beat into [his] head every day", and was taught that "gay people are the reason God's going to come and burn this Earth". Although he considered anti-LGBT rhetoric to be normal growing up, he has disavowed it since then, stating: "I realized, 'Oh, this isn't normal. This is just a weird place I grew up in.' So, that type of thing, I [wish I could] go back in time and be like, 'Hey, stop'."[134][139]

Donaldson considers himself strictly apolitical, saying that "I don't want to alienate Republicans and Democrats. ... I like having it where everyone can support charity. My goal is to feed hundreds of millions of people ... it would be very silly of me to alienate basically half of America."[134] On a podcast in September 2022, Donaldson has commented he would consider a run for president of the United States "in like 20 years", adding that the U.S. is "due for younger presidents".[140][141]

Public image

MrBeast won the Favorite Male Creator award at the 2022 and 2023 Kids' Choice Awards.
Opinion polls have shown that Donaldson is one of the most well-liked YouTubers on the platform. A 2021 SurveyMonkey poll showed that 70% of respondents have a favorable view of him, compared to 12% who had an unfavorable view.[142] In 2023, Time magazine listed him on their Time 100 list; fellow YouTuber and former NASA engineer Mark Rober wrote on his entry, "He's constantly raising the bar for creators whether it's through re-creating Squid Game in real life or paying for the eye surgeries of 1,000 blind people. He doesn't really understand small thinking or complacency. I don't know what he'll do 10 years down the road, but I know it won't be status quo."[143] In 2023, CBC News noted that MrBeast's "viral videos have stoked a wide range of reaction, from acclaim for their altruism to controversy for perceived exploitation."[144]

In October 2018, The Atlantic published an article on Donaldson's history of using homophobic slurs.[64][145][146] The article alleged that Donaldson, while still a teenager, had had a habit of referring to people as "fags" on Twitter and regularly treated being homosexual as a punchline in jokes and "gay" as an insult. He later clarified in an interview, "I'm not offensive toward anyone."[145] In 2021, a spokesperson for Donaldson stated in reference to the slurs that he had "grown up and matured into someone that doesn't speak like that".[147]

During a Clubhouse room in February 2021, Donaldson booted entrepreneur Farokh Sarmad after he allegedly said he could not pronounce his name, a move that Sarmad later said was racist. Sarmad's claims were questioned and denied by other Clubhouse users, who were present at the call who argued against Sarmad's claims, claiming that Donaldson removed him along with others to make room for women to be more inclusive.[148][149]

Some former employees alleged that Donaldson nurtured a difficult work environment. In a May 2021 New York Times article, Matt Turner, an editor for Donaldson from February 2018 to September 2019, claimed that Donaldson berated him almost daily, including calling him a "retard". Turner reported that he was regularly not credited for his work.[111] Reporting by Insider showed that Turner previously posted a video in 2018 explaining his allegations, and in October 2019 released a deleted Twitter thread which stated that he was "yelled at, bullied, called mentally retarded and replaceable by Donaldson every single day."[150] Nate Anderson, another editor, quit after working for Donaldson for a week in 2018 over what he said were unreasonable demands, and called Donaldson a perfectionist. After releasing a video describing his experience, Anderson reportedly received death threats from Donaldson's fans. Nine other employees who worked for Donaldson also stated that while he was sometimes generous, his demeanor would change when cameras were off.[111][150]

Filmography
Film
Year Title Role Notes Ref.
2023 Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem Times Square Bystander [151]
Awards and nominations
Year Ceremony Category Result Ref.
2019 9th Streamy Awards Breakout Creator Won [152]
Ensemble Cast Nominated
Creator of the Year Nominated
2020 12th Annual Shorty Awards YouTuber of the Year Won
10th Streamy Awards Creator of the Year Won [153][154]
Live Special Won
Social Good: Creator Won
Social Good: Nonprofit or NGO Won
2021 2021 Kids' Choice Awards Favorite Male Social Star Nominated [155]
11th Streamy Awards Creator of the Year Won [156]
2022 2022 Kids' Choice Awards Favorite Male Creator Won [157]
12th Streamy Awards Creator of the Year Won [158][159]
Collaboration Nominated
Social Good: Creator[c] Won
Creator Product Nominated
Editing Nominated
Brand Engagement[c] Won
Social Impact Campaign[c] Nominated
2023 2023 Kids' Choice Awards Favorite Male Creator Won [160]
13th Streamy Awards Creator of the Year Won [161]
Collaboration Won
Creator Product Nominated
Brand Engagement Nominated
World records
Name of publication, year the record was awarded, name of the record, and the name of the record holder
Publication Year World record Record holder Ref.
Guinness World Records 2021 Highest-earning YouTube contributor (current) MrBeast [162]
2022 Largest vegetarian burger [163]
Most subscribers for an individual male on YouTube Jimmy Donaldson [164]
2023 First person to reach 1 million followers on Threads MrBeast [165]
See also
List of YouTubers
List of most-subscribed YouTube channels
Night Media
Notes
Only the six main channels are included: MrBeast, MrBeast Gaming, Beast Reacts, MrBeast 2 (formerly MrBeast Shorts), Beast Philanthropy and MrBeast 3 (formerly MrBeast 2).
Sources conflict on the spelling of Donaldson's middle name. Some spell it "Steven",[5][6][7] while others spell it "Stephen".[8][9] Donaldson's business filing lists his legal name as "James Stephen Donaldson".[10] In October 2022, one of Donaldson's staff members stated Donaldson's full name was "James Stephen Donaldson".[11]
As Team Seas
References
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Chandler Hallow
39
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Chandler Hallow
Gallery
Crew
Chandler Hallow

Aliases
Chandler
Affiliation
MrBeast, Chris Tyson, Karl Jacobs, Nolan Hansen
Biographical information
Marital status
Married (with Cara Davis, since July 11, 2021[1])
Date of birth
December 3, 1998
Place of birth
Greenville, North Carolina
Pronouns
He/him
Physical description
Gender
Male
Hair color
Smokey blonde
Eye color
Brown
Chandler Hallow (born December 3, 1998 [age 24]) is a YouTube star who is a frequent collaborator on the channel MrBeast and a major affiliate of the channel, appearing in many of Jimmy's videos from 2018 and onward.

Contents
1 Biography
2 Personality
3 Family
4 Challenges he participated in
4.1 Victories
5 Quotes
6 Trivia
7 References

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Biography
He was born on December 3, 1998, in Greenville, North Carolina.

He studied and graduated from JS Rose High School and later graduated from Chowan University in Murfreesboro. In 2018, he began playing baseball for the Chowan University Hawks.

According to Jimmy in a video with Kwebbelkop, Chandler was originally his janitor.[2] After his debut in We Are Better Than Dude Perfect, he continued to appear in Jimmy's videos since 2018 due to people really liking him.

In mid-2021, he had been appearing less frequently for unknown reasons, but has later come back on a regular basis.

Personality
Chandler is the most childish person in the group. He's always hungry and is afraid of unusual things, such as pickles. He's very expressive and lacks the ability to do certain things, like cooking (for example, when he microwaved cheese onto goldfish for dinner for Mark Pate, his contestant, in Last To Take Hand Off $1,000,000 Keeps It). A running gag is jokes about his "sanity", and a previous running gag was his inability to win challenges, which changed in the video Last To Leave Revolving Door Wins $50,000, when Chandler won his 1st major challenge on the MrBeast channel. On his social media accounts, like his father, he openly shows his faith towards Christianity and he and his wife got baptized in April 2023.

Family
Todd Hallow (father)
Tricia Hallow (mother)
Cassidy Hallow (older sister)
Zach Hallow (older brother)
Hannah Hallow (younger sister)
Mike Hallow (brother)
Jordan Hallow (brother)
Challenges he participated in
Last To Leave Circle Wins
Last To Remove Hand, Gets Lamborghini
Last To Leave Slime Pit Wins
Last To Remove Hand, Wins House
Egg Olympics
I Went Back To 1st Grade For A Day
I Spent 24 Hours Straight In Insane Asylum
Amazing Beast Race
Last To Leave The Tesla, Keeps It
World's Largest Bowl Of Cereal
Last To Stop Running Wins
Last To Leave VR Wins
Last To Leave Revolving Door Wins
Last To Leave Roller Coaster Wins
Last To Leave Pool of $20,000 Keeps It
Last To Leave Ramen Noodle Pool Wins
Last To Take Hand Off Boat, Keeps It
Last To Fall Wins $1,000,000
Extreme Hide And Seek #1
Last To Stop Swinging Wins $1,000,000
Last To Leave Toilet Wins $1,000,000
Last To Stop Biking Wins $1,000,000
Last To Take Hand Off $1,000,000
Extreme Hide And Seek #2
I Went Back To Boy Scouts For A Day
Lamborghini Race
Extreme Hide And Seek #3
I Built The World's Largest Lego Tower
I Ate The World's Largest Slice Of Pizza
Last To Leave $800,000 Island Keeps It
Push This Red Button For $100,000
Steal This $100,000 Diamond, You Keep It
I Put 1,000,000 Christmas Lights On A House (World Record)
Extreme $100,000 Game of Tag!
Victories
In I Bought Everything in the Store, he opened a cola bottle and won $100.
In Last To Leave Revolving Door Wins $50,000, at 10:28, Zach leaves the Revolving door, leaving Chandler to finally win his first challenge.
In Last To Leave Roller Coaster Wins $20,000 - Challenge, at 14:11, Chandler wins the fourth match, winning for the white team, and his second challenge win.
In Last To Leave Pool Of $20,000 Keeps It, at 16:05, Thomas decided to leave, so he is the runner-up of this challenge, and this made Mary Lisa and Chandler the winners of this challenge, where Mary Lisa has won $20,000 and Chandler has won $10,000. Mary Lisa is also the first female to win a challenge on MrBeast's channel, and not only that, but this is the first time Chandler has ever won three challenges in a row.
In Surviving 24 Hours In The Bermuda Triangle, he won in all three mini-challenges each $2000 made by MrBeast.
The first challenge was that the last person to fall off the water carpet in the sea would win $2000. Jake fell first, followed by Marcus and Chris, thus Chandler won.
The second challenge was that the person who dived into the sea from the yacht with the fullest streak would win $2000. Marcus was eliminated, followed by Chris and Jake, hence Chandler won again, having done a front flip.
The last challenge was a hide-and-seek challenge, and the last to be found would win $2000. Chris was found first, followed by Marcus and Jake, hence Chandler won yet again.
In Last To Stop Riding Bike Wins $1,000,000 (Part 4), he coached Cody and Mark. Jeremy decided to leave to take $10,000, so Mark wins the challenge and gets the chance to get $1,000,000, so that also makes Chandler a winner of this challenge.
In Last To Take Hand Off $1,000,000 Keeps It, he coached Mark. Eventually, Mark become the winner of this challenge, gaining $1,000,000, and 10% of that money goes to Chandler because he was his coach, which also makes Chandler a winner for this challenge.
In Last to Leave $800,000 Island Keeps It, after accomplishing many challenges, the last challenge is rather a vote on who should win: Chandler or Karl Jacobs. They each had 4 votes, and Jedd took a vote to decide who would win the island and it was Chandler whose name was on the paper.
Quotes
"It only exists in my head."
"My ostrich is a free man."
"Can I throw my poop?"
"I'm a free man! Time to eat some wieners!"
"I'm love yoghurt."
"McDonald's!"
"WHERE'S THE MILK?!"
"It just finds it's way into my hand."
"I'm already itching my butt sack off"
"Can I go poop?"
"I like doors"
Trivia
He is 6 ft 5 in (195 cm).[3]
In one of the videos in Videos I Could Not Upload, he made two world records.
In Surviving in a Desert for 24 Hours, he went crazy and ate most of the food.
Chandler is the only one to have consecutive wins with 3 wins in a row. One is an individual challenge, one is a team challenge, and one is a coaching challenge(coaching Mary Lisa to win).
He is very good at basketball, as shown in his debut.
Even though many people said for Chandler to be the one who loses the most, he did win several challenges (Karl Jacobs has never won a single challenge on the main channel before Push This Red Button For $100,000.)
However, Chandler has done more challenges than Karl.
In some videos that are not even a Last to Leave challenge, Chandler ends up leaving. In I Opened a Free Car Dealership, he left due to feeling sick. In Surviving 24 Hours Straight In A Rain Forest, he left due to getting bit by something poisonous (offscreen). In I Ran A Marathon In The World's Largest Shoes, he left due to the 5 lb shoes. In I Built The World's Largest Lego Tower, he left his team due to running out of energy
He tends to get hostile when he's hungry.
He formerly dated Lauren Farquhar who is the sister of Katie Farquhar, Chris' wife.
His favorite colors are black and red.
His favorite TV series are Game of Thrones and Friends.[4]
On July 11, 2021, Chandler has publicly stated in his Instagram that he is engaged with Cara Davis.[5]
He is the youngest out of the Beast Gang.
Chandler states that he cannot pee when others are looking.
Chandler has won over more than $3,000,000 pounds In challenges.
He is the only member who doesn't have a youtube channel.
References
www.instagram.com/p/CRMS7jjnsq8/
www.youtube.com/watch?v=TwDpvV24sWA&t=414s
www.reddit.com/r/MrBeast/comments/g62odx/ah_yes_chandlers_brother_is_so_tall_that_chandler/fo7bas8?context=3
www.dreshare.com/chandler-hallow/
www.instagram.com/p/CRMS7jjnsq8/

Kris Tyson
52
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Chris Tyson
Gallery
Crew

Kris Tyson
Chris Tyson
Kris Tyson

Biographical information
Marital status
Unknown
Date of birth
July 1, 1996
Place of birth
United States
Pronouns
She/Her[1]
Physical description
Gender
Transgender woman[2]
Height
Roughly 5 ft 11 inches (roughly 178 cm)
Hair color
Brown
Eye color
Blue
SOCIAL MEDIA
Twitter
Twitter
YouTube
YouTube
Twitter Account Tyson YouTube Channel
Kris Tyson (born: July 1, 1996 [age 27]), is an American YouTube celebrity mainly known for being the co-host for the MrBeast YouTube channel, having appeared in most of the videos alongside Jimmy. She has participated in many of the challenges and prank videos MrBeast makes and is apart of the cast that is consistently on the channel. She is also the main host of the channel "Beast Reacts" (formerly BeastHacks).


Contents
1 Personality
2 Biography
3 Personal Life
4 Career
5 Family
6 Challenges He participated in
6.1 Victories
7 Quotes
8 Trivia
Personality
Kris initially described herself as a "country boy" (before her transition), growing up as a Boy Scout (although, it is argued that she was also a cub scout). In the survival challenges, she was constantly the one who did the most work. She is also a big fan of cartoons, which means she is sometimes really childish. She is also the most vulgar of the group and arguably the most "useful" person during their survival challenges. Kris shares some characteristics with Karl (such as competitiveness, the like for cartoons, humor,...), which makes them really close to each other.

Biography
Kris grew up in North Carolina and still lives there today. Kris and Jimmy Donaldson (MrBeast) created their channel in 2012.

The MrBeast YouTube channel has amassed an impressive following, with over 163 million subscribers as of June 2023. Outside of YouTube, Kris maintains an active presence on Instagram, where she has accumulated a substantial following of 2.6 million users.[3]

In March 2022, Kris has shown her nails getting done on their Twitter account, which marks as some of the first evidence of them publicizing her feminine traits.[4] On 28 March 2023, Kris revealed that them and Katie have been split for just over a year.[5]

In the video "$1 vs $500,000 Plane Ticket!", fans noticed and commented on Kris' changed appearance from previous videos. Kris confirmed on a quote tweet about her appearance that she has been taking hormone replacement therapy since about two months before the video's upload. She would later clarify that she would temporarily go by any pronouns and voiced support for informed consensual HRT for gender non-conforming individuals.[6] Though, she did also state the identity label she would go for was yet to be revealed.[7]

Sometime in early June, Kris updated his snapchat where her pronouns would go be she/her[8] However, she has yet to update his pronouns on his Twitter accounts.

Career
Kris has two inactive YouTube channels: one which doesn't have videos that is called KrisO2 and the other with videos called Tysonboy34_. Kris the Meme God is known for appearing in many videos alongside Jimmy Donaldson AKA MrBeast, such as insane challenge videos, videos where they spend money, etc. She also has a twitch channel KrisO2_ where she usually stream with others.

In later April 2023, there have been rumors suggesting that she was fired from the main crew, such as the fact that she did not appear in the screenshots of three members of the Beast Gang filming in Paris[9], as of late April 2023, she appeared in the Beast Reacts video "Funniest Animals On The Internet!", suggesting that she is still part of the crew.[10] In the end, Kris responded that she wanted to spend more time with her son, debunking the rumors of her being fired.[11] She then re-appeared in the video Ages 1 - 100 Fight For $500000, for example, further proving she was not fired.

Family
Note: this list of family members only reveals the known family members.
Kris's Grandmother (maternal grandmother who appeared in Beast Reacts in a try not to laugh challenge)
Kris's Mother (mother who appeared in Beast Reacts in a try not to laugh challenge)
Kris's Dad (father)
Sarah Tyson (sister)
Tucker Tyson (son)
Trivia
Given that she is essentially best friends with Karl, and with Jake the Viking quitting the MrBeast crew, Karl went from a cameraman to an on-screen member. She loves making videos with Karl.
She is the only member out of the five main MrBeast crew members (others being Jimmy, Chandler, Karl, and Nolan) that is a parent.
Kris is the only one of the main MrBeast crew members, who is born in 1996. Jimmy, Chandler, Karl, and Nolan are all born in 1998. This makes them the oldest member of the five.
She has gained over 2.5 million followers on their "chris_thememegod" Instagram account.
She attended the 2019 Super Bowl in Atlanta, Georgia.
She is reportedly MrBeast's very first subscriber as told by Jimmy.
She owns 4 cats.
She is the only person in the 5 main MrBeast crew members to be transgender.
She owns a white Tesla model 3.[12]
For whatever reason she has a youtube channel but the username is shown as Chris but her old name is now gone, but it is unknown if she will keep that username despite that her name is Kris.
www.snapchat.com/add/tysonnosyt
www.indiatimes.com/trending/social-relevance/youtuber-kris-tyson-who-came-out-as-transgender-shares-transformation-pictures-610854.html
mrbeastburger.io/who-is-chris-tyson/
twitter.com/chris/status/1504066470971592704?lang=en
twitter.com/Kristhealtgod/status/1640577051999588352
www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-news/chris-tyson-mrbeast-sidekick-gender-journey-1234710767/
twitter.com/chris/status/1644346263985442816
www.snapchat.com/add/tysonnosyt
www.instagram.com/p/CrTigVdrTXE/?ig_rid=b9f3c6b8-8214-4b07-9c27-47b36b0014e5
www.youtube.com/watch?v=70dS-T5p07U
twitter.com/nojumper/status/1653115194921586688
www.youtube.com/watch?v=hDYFFYUzxQQ?t=62s
mrbeastburger.io/who-is-chris-tyson/
www.svg.com/1259872/chris-tyson-relationship-ex-wife-katie-tyson/
www.youtube.com/watch?v=hDYFFYUzxQQ?t=62s
MrBeast Wiki
Categories
Karl Jacobs
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Karl Jacobs
Gallery
Crew
For information about Karl outside MrBeast, visit Karl Wiki.

Karl Jacobs
Appearance
Channel Icon
Roblox
Appearance
Aliases
Karl
Relatives
Sean Jacobs (brother)
Corry Berland (sister)Thomas Jacobs (Father)

Affiliation
MrBeast, Kris Tyson, Chandler Hallow, Nolan Hansen (MrBeast crew)
Biographical information
Marital status
Single
Date of birth
July 19, 1998
Place of birth
North Carolina, United States
Pronouns
He/Him
Physical description
Gender
Male
Height
5 ft 11 inches (roughly 180 cm)
Hair color
Light brown (naturally)
Blonde (dyed)

Eye color
Gray
Karl Thomas Jacobs (born: July 19, 1998 [age 25]) is an American YouTube personality known for being a major affiliate of MrBeast since 2020 and has been gaining fame since then for their collaborative videos. He initially appeared on MrBro's Last To Leave Halloween Candy Wins $10,000 challenge. Karl is still part of the MrBeast crew and is not fired.[1]


Contents
1 Biography
2 Appearance
3 Personality
4 Family
5 Challenges he participated in
5.1 Victories
6 Quotes
7 Trivia
8 See also
9 References

AD

Biography
Karl was born on July 19, 1998, in North Carolina, to an American mother of French-Canadian descent and a Canadian father.[2] He graduated from Fort Dorchester High School in 2016. For 2 years, he attended Portland Community College from 2016 to 2018 and studied multimedia. He started working as a salesman at Starlite Gaming from May to August 2016. From February 2014 to June 2017, Karl remained a review writer and editor for GameTZ.[3]

Karl has an old YouTube channel called Game Patrol, thats streams Roblox. He started streaming on Twitch under the username GamerBoyKarl in 2017.

He initially appeared on MrBro's Last To Leave Halloween Candy Wins $10,000 challenge in 2019 and often served as a camera operator at that time.

After Jake The Viking's resignation, Karl was promoted to an on-screen member and has often been appearing as a major member of the MrBeast crew since 2020. Karl was likely promoted due to him and Kris being close friends.

On September 11, 2020, Karl Jacobs founded his own standalone YouTube channel. However, it was only made public when he announced that he has a new YouTube channel on his Twitter page on December 2, 2020. The next day, he uploaded his first video, I Hunted LazarBeam on Dream SMP!.

Appearance
Karl is 5'11 (or roughly 180 cm), making him approximately as short as Kris Tyson. He has thick brown hair (at some point, it was dyed blonde) and gray eyes.

Personality
Karl is childish at times, often overreact when he doesn't get his own way. He seems to be quite average but is actually very competent in Jimmy's challenges. He is known for being very competitive, especially when competing against Kris, as he often rage quits when losing a challenge. He likes to constantly reference memes. Despite that, Karl is really close to Chandler and Kris.

Another notable personality trait of his is him being somewhat less masculine than the rest of the crew (at least before Kris received hormonal replacement therapy), given that he has painted his nails once. For reasons such as these, he has often been accused for making Kris more feminine, which is a phenomenon called the Karl Effect, yet there is no evidence to support this.[4]

Family
Note: this list of family members only reveals the known family members.
Sean Jacobs (little brother)
Corry Berland (sister)
Thomas Jacobs (Father)
Karl's mother
Challenges he participated in
As Of 2021:

Extreme Hide And Seek #2
I Went Back To Boy Scouts For A Day
Extreme Hide And Seek #3
I'm Giving My Friend $1 For Ever 1,000 Views This Video Gets
I Built The World's Largest Lego Tower
I Ate The World's Largest Slice Of Pizza
Last To Leave $800,000 Island Keeps It
Push This Red Button For $100,000
Steal This $100,000 Diamond, You Keep It
I Put 1,000,000 Kristmas Lights On A House (World Record)
Extreme $100,000 Game of Tag!
Victories
There may have been very few instances where he became first place, but despite this, he has often reached second place in the challenges he participated in. However, in these instances, he has become first place:

In Push This Red Button For $100,000, at 14:35 and after more than 50 presses, Karl pressed the button and the TV told him to give to his sister, Corry, $100,000, hence making him the winner of this challenge and his sister the winner of the $100,000.
In I Put 1,000,000 Christmas Lights On A House (World Record), when Karl and Sean's house was judged, MatPat, Quackity, and MrBeast all gave it a 9, while Damaris gave it a 10, leading to the total score being 37/40, a tie with Kris' team. For the tiebreaker, MrBeast picked a fan who was watching the competition to choose whose house was the better decorated one. She chose Karl and Sean's house, hence Karl's team won, and Sean got the $300,000 house. As a consolation prize, Kris received a $30,000 car.
Quotes
"I just love war"
"I've never been hit by an egg before"
"Oh Jimmyyyyyyy…"
"This isn't a rodeo, this is building cars"
"I'm gonna cry"
"What the honk?"
"It's the one that has the most artistic integrity"
"I play games"
"YEEEEEEEHAWWWWWW!"
"Oh the humanity!"
Trivia
Karl had been attending college, and 5 weeks before he was to graduate he had been offered a job with MrBeast. This led to him dropping out of college and taking the opportunity.
He participates in the Dream SMP.
He often campaigns to be on the reality show Survivor on his TikTok account, using the hashtag #Karl4Survivor on many of his posts.
He has accumulated over 260,000 followers on his karljacobs_ Instagram account.
He has a sister named Corry and a brother named Sean, both of which have been in MrBeast videos before.
He is mildly colorblind.
On a Joe Gatto podcast, Karl stated he is of Canadian ancestry and claims his parents are of Quebecois descent.
He also stated his father was born in Vancouver.
He has gained over 1,000,000 followers on his karlojacobs TikTok account.
He was originally a cameraman for the MrBeast crew until 2020.[5] He can be seen and heard in various videos.
After Jake the Viking left, he was then promoted to on-screen member.
His favorite movie is Ratatouille.
The first expensive challenge that he won in on the main MrBeast channel was Press This Button To Win $100,000.
Karl has confirmed on his alt Twitter account that he is on the asexual spectrum.[6]
He met Bill Murray, an American comedian, actor, and writer, on October 27, 2016.
His favorite drink is Mountain Dew.
He resided in Portland, Oregon before he moved to North Carolina.[7]
See also
Karl on Wikitubia
Karl Jacobs on the Dream Team Wiki
References
www.hitc.com/en-gb/2021/12/28/mrbeast-karl-jacobs/
youtube.fandom.com/wiki/Karl
www.dreshare.com/karl-jacobs/
www.sportskeeda.com/pop-culture/news-what-the-karl-effect-chris-tyson-divorce-claims-go-viral-wake-mrbeast-s-shoes-charity-controversy
youtu.be/mGS7tkawgnM
twitter.com/honkkarl/status/1323724748845703169
www.linkedin.com/public-profile/in/karl-jacobs-566415126?challengeId=AQEkROI3a4MWDAAAAXh34U_C5xxr_Y-P36TupPuV5N15nTNh8hWACJ5s8Oq4TntLUMVsx5MQg-o7ms9Ut1kQwn2U_tst4n0w3A&submissionId=aef1b9ac-3973-7016-5961-6ccec26f331d
Nolan Hansen
16
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Crew
Nolan
Appearance
Channel Icon
Appearance
Aliases
Nolan
Nolan Imagine Dragons These Nuts on Your Face

Affiliation
MrBeast
Chandler Hallow
Kris Tyson
Karl Jacobs
Biographical information
Place of birth
Nebraska, USA
Pronouns
He/him
Physical description
Gender
Male
Hair color
Light brown
Eye color
Blue
Nolan Hansen (born: June 1, 1998 [age 25]) is an affiliate of MrBeast known for initially appearing in MrBeast6000Subs and then slowly becoming a more recurring member on the MrBeast channels. In late 2021, he is now considered as the 5th main member of the Beast Gang.


Contents
1 History
1.1 Before MrBeast
1.2 MrBeast
2 Challenges
2.1 Victories
3 Quotes
4 Trivia

AD

History
Before MrBeast
Before appearing in MrBeast, he was operating a YouTube channel on his own named TrendCrave, where he posted a wide variety of top 5 and top 10 videos. However, as of 2022, that channel is now defunct and has no videos.

Nolan was initially just another minor member of the MrBeast crew. It is possible that he got to meet up with the MrBeast crew by dating Anna, MrBeast's sister.

MrBeast
He made his first appearance in I Spent $1,000,000 on Lottery Tickets, where he would then become a contestant at Last to Leave $800,000 Island Keeps It along with several other members, including Chandler and Karl.

Ever since then, he has been slowly appearing in many MrBeast videos, starting from late 2020. In 2021, he has made more appearances than any other minor crew member and has slowly been considered as the 5th main crew member. He has been appearing even more frequently in most videos in 2022.

Challenges
In Last to Leave $800,000 Island Keeps It, at 17:27, Nolan officially lost, after the three rounds for each person in bowling. He knocked down 4 pins initially (then 0 pins), Chandler got a strike, and Karl got 4 pins (tying with Nolan in the first round), then 9 pins.
Nolan reappears as a challenger in Press This Button To Win $100,000 where he lost again.
He then reappears in Steal This $100,000 Diamond, You Keep It, where he was considered as the winner of this challenge. However, Chandler should've won this challenge because Nolan touched a laser at stage 6, but the crew forgot to mark this life loss. If this life loss counted, Nolan would've been eliminated by stage 9, unless if he didn't immediately go through the lasers nor touch them at all. Moreover, if this life loss was counted, Nolan could've lost a total of a million dollars worth from the challenges he did before December 2020.
He appears once again in that video as a challenger. At 11:04, Chris tagged Nolan, which marked him in 5th place.
In Hit The Target, Win $300,000 video, Nolan appears once again as challenger, trying to bowl a strike to knock out 100 bowling pins for $110,000. However, the result is the same as the bowling challenge in the Last to Leave $800,000 Island Keeps It video. At that time, he has lost $990,000 and MrBeast (Jimmy) asks him to knock over a pin using another pin and if he succeed, he'll win $10,000. But it seems like the bowling god really hates Nolan as he failed to do it and he officially lost a $1,000,000 to bowling.
Victories
So far, Nolan has only one other challenge victory on the MrBeast channel, which was First To Rob Bank Wins $100,000, where he was competing with Chris, Chandler, and Karl. Since he has won the final challenge in this video, his father became the winner of the $100,000.

Quotes
"It’s a crib!"
"I'm unstoppable!"
"My home's in Nebraska!"
"I might escape..." (After his parents demanded he behave in I Survived 50 Hours in a Maximum Security Prison)
"I missed all the pins!"
"If I win, I'm gonna sell this island. I don't want it." (In Last to Leave $800,000 Island Keeps It; ironically, Chandler won the island and sold it to avoid paying taxes for it)
"Nothing is stopping me from selling this island the second I win it!"
"My last name? Imagine Dragons. Imagine Dragon DEEZ NUTS IN YOUR FACE!"
Trivia
He has a sister named Natalie.
According to Press This Button to Win $100,000, Nolan lives in the state of Nebraska.
He lost over $1M from MrBeast, surprisingly most from losing at bowling.
He has been buried alive twice in videos.
He is the only crew on the Beast Gang that his last name does not have a "o".
Nolan is the show punching bag of MrBeast since Jimmy and the crew are commonly rude to him as a joke.
MrBeast Wiki
Karl Jacobs

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Karl Jacobs

Jacobs in 2022
Personal information
Born Karl Thomas Jacobs
July 19, 1998 (age 25)
Organization Dream SMP
Twitch information
Also known as GamerBoyKarl
Channel
karljacobs
Years active 2017–present
Followers 3.7 million
Associated acts
MrBeastDream
YouTube information
Channel
Karl
Years active 2020–present
Subscribers 4.25 million[1]
Total views 192 million[1]
Last updated: September 18, 2023
Karl Thomas Jacobs (born July 19, 1998), formerly known as GamerBoyKarl, is an American Twitch streamer and YouTuber. He rose to prominence as a member of MrBeast's on-screen cast.[2] He would later develop his own videos, primarily Minecraft content. Jacobs is the creator of the anthology series Tales from the SMP set in the Dream SMP, which will be adapted into a series of comic books published by Dark Horse Comics. He is also a co-host of the Banter podcast with fellow YouTubers Sapnap and GeorgeNotFound.

Early life
Karl Thomas Jacobs[3] was born on July 19, 1998.[4][5][6]

Career
Jacobs began streaming on Twitch in 2017, playing Roblox under the name GamerBoyKarl.[7][8] In 2019, he was hired as a video editor for YouTuber MrBro. Jacobs then became a cameraman for MrBro's brother, YouTuber MrBeast,[when?] before transitioning into a member of MrBeast's on-screen cast.[when?][7][9][10] During a video for MrBeast Gaming, Jacobs met Minecraft YouTuber Dream, and was later invited to join his server, the Dream SMP.[9][10][11]

Jacobs created[when?] the online anthology series Tales from the SMP, which explores the story of characters in the Dream SMP by following Jacobs' time-travelling character to various times and locations throughout the server.[8][12] The series has featured internet personalities such as Lil Nas X, Dream, and Corpse Husband.[13] The season two pilot, titled "The Maze," premiered on February 11, 2022.[14] In August 2022, Jacobs announced that stories from his series Tales from the SMP would be adapted as a series of comic books titled Time Traveler Tales for Dark Horse Comics. The comic books will be written by Dave Scheidt and illustrated by Kelly and Nichole Matthews.[13][15][16]

In September 2021, Jacobs started a podcast with fellow Minecraft YouTuber Sapnap titled Banter. Following the release of the first episode, which featured MrBeast, Banter briefly overtook The Joe Rogan Experience as the number one podcast on Spotify.[17][18] On August 6, 2022, GeorgeNotFound publicly debuted as the third host on the podcast.[19][20]

In March 2022, Jacobs was announced to be the creative ambassador for shoe retailer Journeys.[21] On November 9, the game Once Upon a Jester was launched on Steam, with Jacobs voicing several characters.[22] On November 14, 2022, Jacobs released his first animated short titled Beside Myself.[23][24] The short featured Jacobs as writer and producer, Elenor Kopka as animator and director, and Richie Woods as music composer.[25][26][24]

Awards and nominations
Year Ceremony Category Result Ref.
2021 11th Streamy Awards Breakout Creator Nominated [27]
2022 The Game Awards 2022 Content Creator of the Year Nominated [28]
References
"About Karl". YouTube.
"Has MrBeast's Close Aide Karl Jacobs Joined His Team as a Conspiracy to Make the Channel More 'Family-Friendly'? Minecraft Streamer Finally Puts an End to All Theories". EssentiallySports. December 31, 2022. Retrieved February 10, 2023.
Donaldson, James Stephen (March 13, 2020). $70,000 Extreme Hide And Seek - Challenge (Video). Retrieved June 13, 2023 – via YouTube. My middle name is Thomas.
Khan, Iram Sharifah (April 12, 2021). "TikTok: Is Karl Jacobs' phone number revealed in latest video?". HITC. Retrieved February 25, 2023.
Mutsoli, Alvin (July 12, 2022). "Who is Karl Jacobs? Relationship, kids, MrBeast, and net worth". Tuko.co.ke - Kenya news. Retrieved May 19, 2023.
Fay, Kacee (September 21, 2022). "Who is Karl Jacobs? Everything to know about the dynamic Minecraft, MrBeast star". Dot Esports. Retrieved May 19, 2023.
Lee, Alexander (March 7, 2022). "'More organic': YouTuber Karl Jacobs on why creators should prioritize working with like-minded sponsors". Digiday. Archived from the original on April 12, 2022. Retrieved April 15, 2022.
Basbas, Franchesca Judine (August 20, 2021). "10 streamers you need to watch: Valkyrae, Disguised Toast, TommyInnit, Kyedae, and more". Bandwagon. Asia. Archived from the original on April 16, 2022. Retrieved April 15, 2022.
Asarch, Steven (March 29, 2022). "Karl Jacobs reveals how a Mr. Beast fluke made him a Minecraft icon". Inverse. Archived from the original on April 16, 2022. Retrieved April 15, 2022.
Fay, Kacee (September 21, 2022). "Who is Karl Jacobs? Everything to know about the dynamic Minecraft, MrBeast star". Dot Esports. Retrieved September 22, 2022.
Asarch, Steven (May 3, 2021). "One of YouTube's top Minecraft streamers apologized for past support of a creator known for his "toxic" history". Insider. Archived from the original on July 6, 2022. Retrieved April 15, 2022.
Fay, Kacee (February 11, 2022). "How to watch Tales From the SMP: The Maze". Dot Esports. Archived from the original on April 16, 2022. Retrieved April 15, 2022.
Destito, Deanna (August 2, 2022). "Karl Jacobs and Dark Horse team up for TIME TRAVELER TALES". Comics Beat. Retrieved August 18, 2022.
Fay, Kacee (February 11, 2022). "All streamers participating in Tales From the SMP: The Maze". Dot Esports. Archived from the original on April 16, 2022. Retrieved April 15, 2022.
Michael, Cale (August 1, 2022). "Karl Jacobs partners with Dark Horse to publish new comic series". Dot Esports. Retrieved August 11, 2022.
Hale, James (August 2, 2022). "Karl Jacobs is turning his Dream SMP adventures into a Dark Horse comic series". Tubefilter. Retrieved August 11, 2022.
Hale, James (October 4, 2021). "Karl Jacobs And Sapnap's New Podcast Knocked "The Joe Rogan Experience" Out Of First Place On Spotify". Tubefilter. Archived from the original on November 26, 2021. Retrieved April 16, 2022.
Nolan, Emma (September 30, 2021). "Joe Rogan Loses Top Spot on Spotify Podcast Charts". Newsweek. Retrieved October 31, 2022.
Karl Jacobs; Sapnap; GeorgeNotFound (August 6, 2022). "GeorgeNotFound Joins BANTER". BANTER (Podcast).
Fay, Kacee (October 11, 2022). "Who is GeorgeNotFound? History, earnings, age, setup". Dot Esports. Archived from the original on August 13, 2022. Retrieved October 23, 2022. In August 2022, GeorgeNotFound joined Karl Jacobs and Sapnap as the third co-host of the Banter podcast.
McMaster, Jason (March 31, 2022). "Journeys announces Karl Jacobs as Creative Ambassador". VentureBeat. Archived from the original on April 19, 2022. Retrieved April 16, 2022.
Starkey, Adam (November 15, 2022). "Once Upon A Jester review - improv indie gaming". Metro. Retrieved February 10, 2023.
@KarlJacobs_ (November 14th, 2022). "Beside Myself...An Animated Short!" (Tweet) -- via Twitter.
Pandya, Kairavi (December 13, 2022). "Who is Karl Jacobs and why is he famous?". Spiel Times. Retrieved February 10, 2023.
@elenorkopka (November 15th, 2022. "I animated & directed a short written by @KarlJacobs_..." (Tweet) – via Twitter.
@richiewoods55 (November 14th, 2022). "i made the music/sfx for this amazing animated short!! written by karl and animated by the epic @elenorkopka..." (Tweet) – via Twitter.
Spangler, Todd (October 20, 2021). "YouTube Streamy Awards 2021 Nominations Announced, MrBeast Leads With Seven Nods". Variety. Archived from the original on October 20, 2021. Retrieved April 16, 2022.
Dinsdale, Ryan (November 14, 2022). "The Game Awards 2022 Nominations Sees God of War: Ragnarok Leading With 10 Awards Nods". IGN. Retrieved November 14, 2022.