Colin Sheridan: Who is MrBeast? The YouTube mogul captivating, and profiting from, your kids

MrBeast dominates YouTube with over-the-top giveaways and stunts, raising questions about his influence on kids and digital culture

MrBeast speaks onstage during the 2023 Nickelodeon Kids' Choice Awards at Microsoft Theater oin Los Angeles, California. Picture: Getty Images

I'm going to say a couple of words and, depending on what stage of your life you’re at, they’ll either mean a very lot or very little: MrBeast. I know, it sounds like a supersize burger at a hip eatery in Ranelagh. Or a rapper from Detroit. Unfortunately, it’s neither. 

What it is is a young man, a Youtuber, which, for those of us who did Arts in college is something we probably never foresaw as a realistic career path (think YouTubing, DCU, 460 points). We live in strange times, however, and as of January 2025, MrBeast is the most-subscribed YouTuber on the internet, with 351m subscribers. And, as you’d expect, he’s insufferable.

He’s also very, very rich. MrBeast (real name Jimmy Donaldson) started his channel under another beast-themed moniker in 2012, when he was only 13 years old. Another one of his channels — MrBeast Gaming — lives in the YouTube Top 100 with around 42m subscribers. He also owns a burger chain, MrBeast Burger, a delivery-only restaurant with 1,600 franchises throughout the US. As if all of that wasn’t enough, he’s behind a line of chocolate bars called Feastables, which relies on a kind of Willy Wonka-style of promotion. Then there’s the merch.

Jimmy Donaldson, the popular YouTube video maker who goes by MrBeast.

All in all, CNBC estimated Donaldson was bringing in somewhere between $600m and $700m each year, and that’s before we get to his latest venture — a TV show called Beast Games, which by my reckoning, is a flagrant rip-off of Squid Games, which I’m sure is a flagrant rip-off of something else. 

MrBeast is a grifter, and while that’s nothing new, his ability to worm his way into your home through your smart TV is something you should at least be aware of.

If you’re unfamiliar with his shtick, it’s hard to describe, especially if you’ve ever had to get up in the morning and work an actual job. One where you have to provide something or create something or sell something or fix something. 

MrBeast exists in a parallel universe where the more money he seems to waste/give away/detonate and explode, the more money he makes

It’s an emotional pyramid scheme of sorts. Part Jackass, part Chuck Feeney, he straddles a line where you’re not quite sure if he is a full-on snake oil salesman, or an opportunistic disruptor who masks his money-making motives in performative philanthropy, all the while entertaining your kids.

And that’s the thing. Kids love him. In the same way they love sugar and salt and big red buttons that read DO NOT PRESS, MrBeast is loud enough and brash enough and daft enough to tap into whatever fix they seem to need when they’re crashed on the couch, exhausted from the myriad of activities they’re constantly doing. 

Beast is an internet gateway drug. First, you — the parent — ban YouTube. Then, reluctantly, you allow it, but police it vigilantly, convincing yourself you’ll never be as foolish or as lazy as the other parents at the school gate who brag that their children “never watch TV,” but instead are stuck with their heads buried in tablets watching (for all they know) Reservoir Dogs. 

Then, as exhaustion leads you by the hand to distraction, your policing devolves into an honour system where you ask from a separate room “what are you watching?” and blindly trust the type of vague answer only a child can give

It’s a slippery slope, and MrBeast is at the bottom of it, waiting for your kids with piles of money to set alight. But it’s ok, because after he sets $10,000 on fire, he will go to a restaurant and tip an unsuspecting waitress $20,000 and change her life. Like Prince Akeem in Coming to America.

His latest creation — Beast Games — is the grossest manifestation of his disruptor/copycat MO: A thousand people, separated from their families and with backstories that would make the Eastenders writers' room blush — compete against each other for $5m in a series of challenges that range from pulling monster trucks to answering trivia questions. Throughout the show various Lord of the Flies-type scenarios present themselves. Friendships are sacrificed. Duplicity rewarded. All the while, the Wizard of Oz (MrBeast) is — sadly — not behind the curtain, but out front, shouting like an ambulance careering through rush hour traffic.

What's your view on this issue?

You can tell us here

I feel like I failed as a parent that my son ever watched a minute of it but, in trying to understand the allure and sharing the experience with him, maybe I gained something. Sometimes, it’s better to have done the drugs your children will inevitably be exposed to, so you can better understand the fix.

I just hope this fad is over and we can go outside kicking ball again.