Can YouTube phenom MrBeast spin his way out of sudden crisis at his nice-guy empire as troubling accusations mount?
Time to go into Beast mode.
MrBeast, who runs YouTube’s most popular account with 307 million subscribers, has recently found himself under fire.
Best known for his family-friendly videos and philanthropy, the 26-year-old MrBeast — born Jimmy Donaldson — was seen using racial and gay slurs in old clips that resurfaced over the weekend.
A disgruntled former employee also accused Donaldson and his team of faking aspects of their videos, which can garner hundreds of millions of views.
This came on the heels one of the closest members of his team, Ava Kris Tyson, who is transgender, being accused of “grooming” a 13-year-old when Tyson herself was 20. Tyson, who has now quit the show, admitted she had made “edgy inappropriate jokes” to the teen and apologized for her “past behavior and comments.”
However, this still left questions, as the two met after the teenager won one of MrBeast’s giveaways, according to Complex.
MrBeast reacted to the Tyson allegations by saying he was “disgusted and opposed to such unacceptable acts” and that he had “taken immediate action to remove Ava from the company, my channel, and any association with MrBeast.”
This firestorm is all happening as MrBeast has been filming what could be his most high-profile project to date, the Amazon Prime series “Beast Games,” in Las Vegas. A reality competition show, it will feature 1,000 contestants competing for a $5 million cash prize which, according to Amazon, is “the biggest single prize in the history of television and streaming.”
The show, too, has been hit with allegations, with the news site Vital Vegas claiming Desert Springs Hospital saw patients “coming from ‘Beast Games’ due to lack of food and water.”
An insider told The Post around five people, out of 2,000 participants in a preliminary round, were treated at the hospital during filming.
It all begs the question: Can MrBeast spin his way out of sudden crisis at his nice-guy empire?
A MrBeast spokesperson admitted that Donaldson’s past use of offensive language, which involved him reading fan comments out loud in a video and joking about it, was “inappropriate,” telling The Post: “When Jimmy was a teenager he acted like many kids and used inappropriate language while trying to be funny. As an adult he has focused on engaging with the MrBeast community to work together on making a positive impact around the world.”
Those close to Donaldson — estimated to be worth over $500 million — say he’s equipped to deal with any fallout.
“He can calculate his way out of this, but it will be tough,” a source close to Donaldson told The Post.
According to MrBeast lore, Donaldson grew up in Greensboro, NC. At 13, he uploaded his first YouTube video as “MrBeast 6000,” and early content focused on video games and drama surrounding other YouTubers.
Donaldson has said he devoted his teenage years to learning and beating the YouTube algorithm. Outrageous or silly stunts generated the most traffic: Early on, he had his pal Tyson wrap him in toilet paper and Saran wrap.
“He’s very engaged, very driven and incredibly intelligent,” according to Mark Rober, who runs a popular, science-oriented YouTube channel.
“He loves looking at data, finding weak spots and shoring them up,” Rober, a former NASA engineer, told The Post. “I think he told me he went to college for a few weeks and thought it was boring.”
Donaldson briefly attended East Carolina University but dropped out in 2016 to focus on his video channel, which had racked up 30,000 subscribers. In January 2017, he hit pay dirt — with, believe it or not — a video of himself counting from 1 to 100,000.
It scored 6.5 million views in just one week. By May of that year, MrBeast had 1 million subscribers.
He put together a crew of friends and local standup comics, and found that currency was the way to draw eyeballs. When he tipped a waitress with gold bars, it brought in 53 million views. When he scored $10,000 with his first brand deal, Donaldson gave the sum to a homeless person.
Soon, charitable giveaways — donating 100 houses to cash-strapped residents of Jamaica, giving $200,000 to Ugandans living in extreme poverty and building 100 wells in Africa — became one of his cash-cows.
“The YouTube algorithm promotes good charity work and wholesome content,” Jake Weddle, a comedian who used to work with MrBeast, told The Post. “Jimmy is very analytical. He gathers data and makes decisions based on the data that wins.”
Insiders said that Donaldson remains a statistics nerd who’s never embraced the glitz and glamour that fame can bring.
He’ll fly private, Rober said, “but only because it will save him time. He doesn’t have the bone where it’s, like, I’m going to buy a G6 and look flashy. All he buys is time, anything that can save him time.”
Donaldson has been known, a former MrBeast writer told The Post, for being generous with employees. Recalling celebrations when certain company milestones were met, the writer said, “Jimmy would pay for all the drinks and everything, but he’s going to be there a hot 30 minutes and go home.”
“Home” is a 3,000-square-foot house in Greenville, fortified with security and outfitted with a private chef.
Donaldson’s idea of relaxation is playing board games with friends — but even that is not exactly relaxed.
“You will never beat him at a strategy game,” said Rober. “We play Settlers of Catan and he’s won like 50 games in a row.”
That’s because, the writer said, Donaldson doesn’t go into any situation unprepared.
“Between us, Jimmy preps for those games,” the writer claimed, adding that Donaldson might spend as long as a week boning up before play. “He doesn’t want to lose to Rober.”
Donaldson even had a checklist for landing his girlfriend, South African model and influencer Thea Booysen.
Recalling how they met, Booysen said on the “Wide Awake Podcast” that he inundated her with questions.
“Little did I know he was actually like going off a list, because he was looking for a new girlfriend,” she told host Josh Rubin. “He’s like: She has to have a hobby, she has to have some interests, she has to do this and that.”
Donaldson is also, apparently, obsessed with work.
“He can be very driven in the same way that successful CEOs are,” Rober said, recalling Donaldson getting up at 4 a.m. to get a video right.
And it’s not just videos that have made him a success. He launched Feastables, a snack line that includes MrBeast cookies and Feastables candy bars, in 2022.
“With Feastables, he would say he bet everything on it,” Rober said.
The company sold a reported $10 million worth of chocolate bars in the first few months.
Some recent claims, insiders said, are not as big of a deal as they might appear to be.
Last Wednesday, a former employee going by the YouTube account name DogPack404, posted a video claiming the MrBeast team “rigged” videos. He alleged that in one, “I Survived 7 Days in an Abandoned City,” the “buildings are CGI” and the claim that a helicopter “is not the only way out” is bunk — adding, “You can literally get an Uber to the airport for $20.”
A MrBeast insider told The Post the claim is not entirely unfounded, saying: “They do use CGI, but, from what I know, it’s to make a background look better” — a not-uncommon practice among YouTubers.
DogPack404 also alleged that the team passed off pals as people randomly picked to be contestants in the MrBeast videos.
The insider said the MrBeast videos do sometimes feature people known to the team — “just like all reality shows are cast. A few [MrBeast videos] that I know of had members from a local improv group [mixed in with people chosen at random]. We wanted to make sure that people would be funny.”
A source close to MrBeast said of Dogpack404’s post, “Baseless speculation makes for great clickbait even if it is totally inaccurate.”
The MrBeast spokesperson would not comment on DogPack404’s allegations.
But one insider said it’s no real surprise that people are coming after Donaldson & Co.: “When you get as big as MrBeast is, it’s inevitable that you’ll become a target.”
