His name is Jimmy Donaldson and he is MrBeast on YouTube. He is 21 years old and has well over 27 million followers. His Wikipedia page describes him as a YouTuber and philanthropist. His videos consist of various attention-grabbing stunts. For instance, his latest video consists of a million-dollar contest. However he really grabbed headlines when he launched a tree planting initiative this October.
There are one million one-dollar notes in a glass case. Four guys compete for the money; the last one to take their hand off the case wins.
MrBeast conducts reasonably simple but exhausting challenges that appear to be the product of fervid childish imaginings. The only difference is that while most 12 year olds may only dream of people contesting to be the ‘last to get off the cycle’, ‘spend a million in 24 hours’, ‘put 100 million Orbeez in a friend's backyard’ etc. he goes ahead and actually does this stuff.
Yes you read that right – toilet. So this is the sort of thing MrBeast does – he makes it possible for people to win millions for possessing no discernable skills (save the willingness to suffer some public humiliation).
His video I put millions of pennies in my friends (sic) backyard has almost 32 million views. The 10 million legos in a friend’s house (with no furniture because those guys just won the house) has nearly 25 million views. So clearly there is a huge audience for whatever nonsense the guy does.
Last October, MrBeast got together with Mark Rober (another popular YouTuber and former NASA engineer) to raise money for tree plantation. This happened when the internet challenged MrBeast to plant 20 million trees to commemorate his 20 million subscribers.
The aim was to get people to contribute one dollar per tree and to get up to 20 million trees planted by the end of the year. People were invited to contribute $1 per tree they wanted to be planted. This amount would go to the Arbor Day Foundation who would then plant the trees anywhere in the world where there is a high need.
About 600 influencers including the biggest individual YouTuber of all time – PewDiePie also joined in the tree plantation project (with the hilarious amount of $69,420). As of now, the #TeamTree project has acquired enough contributions for 20,408,841 trees to be planted.
Just like that – a million dollars for trees. So MrBeast may make silly videos about Last To Leave Circle Wins $10,000 – Challenge – to entertaining people, but he is getting 20 million trees planted as well.
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