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 sweetfaced 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 10 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 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."