CONTRARIAN - Nature of The Beast

Why would anyone spend 50 hours buried alive just to make a YouTube video? Jimmy Donaldson-a.k.a. MrBeast-had 54 million reasons last year. The world's top-earning creator makes his mark through collaboration, not competition, and he has gotten rich by giving money away.

Jimmy Donaldson, a sweet-faced 24-year-old YouTuber, is dressed up as Willy Wonka, complete with a purple velvet topcoat, oversize gold bow tie and orange top hat. The 6-foot-4 creator known as MrBeast” is making a video to promote Feastables, the candy bar brand he launched last winter. He has lured ten fans who found golden tickets” in one of his MrBeast Bars to a warehouse in eastern North Carolina that Donaldson built. There they find a faux chocolate factory with huge gummy bears hanging off tree branches in a lollipop forest and, just like in the movie, a real chocolate river flowing into a waterfall. In a room lined with bouncy marshmallows the contestants stand on spinning peppermints. First one to fall loses. The winner takes home 500,000, a new car and a bite-size piece of Donaldson’s fame.

It’s silly, G-rated fun—and wildly profitable. That one 17-minute video has racked up 121 million views in the last six months, and MrBeast has made thousands more. He earned 54 million last year, including 32 million from ads across his dozen-plus channels and 9 million from sponsored content. He’s the most-subscribed-to YouTube personality in the world, with 112 million. His earnings, already the highest of any social media creator, are set to double in 2022 to as much as 110 million. A lot of people still see YouTubers as a subclass of influencers,” he says. They still just don’t truly understand the influence a lot of creators have.”

In the hypercompetitive, occasionally nasty world of social media, MrBeast is a collaborator. In November, to celebrate becoming the top YouTuber, he enticed 11 YouTuber friends— including LazarBeam 20.2 million subscribers), GeorgeNotFound 10.5 million) and Callux 4 million)—to compete for a 2.5 million private jet. It was an endurance contest 4 la Hands on a Hardbody: Whoever kept their hand touching