Jimmy Donaldson, better known as MrBeast, has officially hit the 500 million subscriber mark on YouTube, making him the first person to ever achieve the milestone. If you know any of those 500 million people, please direct them to comment on this post because, genuinely, who are these people?
You probably know a MrBeast subscriber if you have a younger sibling or are a high school teacher. According to a report from TubeFilter, about 40% of MrBeast’s total audience is people between the ages of 13 and 17, and another 20% are between the ages of 18 and 24. From there, the viewership really drops off a cliff. Despite that, Donaldson, now 28 years old himself (though almost certainly an eternal evil persisting through some sort of “The Picture of Dorian Gray” type situation), does not seem like he’ll grow out of this any time soon. MrBeast livestreamed the moment he hit the half-a-billion subscriber mark in an underwhelming retrospective on his channel’s history. Instead of a wildly over-the-top and ultimately pointless spectacle that would befit his whole schtick, Donaldson went for a more subdued approach, seated while watching some of his first videos and reliving past milestones.
Perhaps that is because, by Donaldson’s own account, he is broke. Sure, he has a reported net worth of $2.6 billion, a $100 million contract with Amazon, and more than a 50% ownership share in Beast Industries, which is currently valued at about $5 billion. But he swears he has less money in his bank account than most of his viewers (who, again, are largely children).
