“The idea is that he will be strapped to this,” says Kyle Bennett, pointing to a contraption that looks alarmingly like the bed in a lethal-injection chamber. “And we have a glass case that’s gonna go over the top and we have 1,000 spiders that are about the size of my palm that are going to cover him, and I’m personally testing this tomorrow …” He stops and looks around, but the producer has lost his audience.
Donaldson’s swift rise has been spurred by massive changes in the media landscape where individuals have replaced institutions as the gatekeepers of entertainment and information. He’s proved an adroit Pied Piper, figuring out how to work the YouTube algorithm to hook and keep a crowd. But he’s also disrupting the new ecosystem, showing what’s possible, even far from Hollywood, with a gigantic following.
Jimmy Donaldson, also known as MrBeast, in Greenville, N.C., on Dec. 12, 2023. “It's just uncharted territory," says Donaldson of his videos' success.Grayson Nolan, 11, watches MrBeast videos every day at his home in West Memphis, Ark. While his favorite video is the one where the Beast crew spends seven days at sea—“because they had to survive and build shelters, on a raft, and he had all of his friends and they met a little seagull”—something else draws him to the channel.
Another challenge is profitability. Even though Donaldson has given away millions of dollars to family members, strangers, charities, and other influencers, he says that, like Feastables, his production company was not profitable in 2023, nor is it expected to be in 2024. Marc Hustvedt, who moved from L.A. to run MrBeast’s YouTube business, says that given MrBeast’s gargantuan audiences, brands pay $2.5 million to $3 million to have Donaldson give them a shout-out.
It all requires an enormous amount of time and effort, especially for someone with a finely tuned need for quality control. Donaldson has 15-hour filming days 20 to 25 times a month and devotes the other days to Feastables. But he’s always been a guy willing to knuckle down if he thinks the payoff will be there. “Hopefully,” he says, “a year or two from now, we’re only promoting things we own.”Susan Parisher, it all started with Crohn’s disease.
Donaldson’s understanding of the algorithm that recommends videos is legendary among YouTubers. He figured out early that the thumbnail had to be enticing. His are usually of him with his mouth open, either smiling or grimacing. He also makes sure viewers are told what to expect in the first 10 seconds, so they hang around. Lately, however, he has leaned more on his gut than analytics. “Now it’s just like, how can we make people feel something?” says Donaldson.