From Zero to Millions: How MrBeast Built a YouTube Empire
MrBeast — real name Jimmy Donaldson — is the biggest YouTube star in the world. Even those who aren’t familiar with YouTube fandom know his name. He’s famous for million-dollar giveaways that, some say, have measurably improved people’s lives. But how did he achieve the mega-fame that he enjoys now? Here, we chart his rise to the top and look at his history, his successes, and his controversies. How did he become what he is today?
Beginnings
MrBeast started on YouTube the same way most everyone else does… posting content and hoping some of it will take off. And he was a mere 13 years old when he uploaded his first video in 2012.
Back in those days, he went by the name “MrBeast6000.” In later years, he’d drop the number. His first videos weren’t the sort of thing he would upload now.
The algorithm
Back in the day, MrBeast mostly uploaded Let’s Play videos and vids guessing at the wealth of popular YouTubers. “There’s a five-year point in my life where I was just relentlessly, unhealthily obsessed with studying virality, studying the YouTube algorithm,” he told Rolling Stone in 2022.
Then he started to gain popularity… by making fun of people. His “Worst Intros on YouTube” video series started in 2015 and people responded to it by liking and subscribing to his eponymous channel.
Slurs
Once MrBeast became famous some folks looked back on these videos, and on MrBeast’s general persona as a teenager, and they didn’t like what they saw. He used to use homophobic slurs a lot.
This was back in the mid-2010s: by this point, it was generally highly frowned upon to be casually homophobic. This would come back to haunt MrBeast once he became truly famous.
Quitting college
In 2016 MrBeast went to college, but he didn’t like it. All he wanted to do was make YouTube videos, and he told his mother so. But she wasn’t having it: as soon as MrBeast quit college, she threw him out of the house.
In 2019 MrBeast would mark the anniversary of this event on X, then known as Twitter, posting, “3 years ago I dropped out of college and my mom made me move out (because she loves me and just wanted me to be successful) and people thought I was crazy.”