MrBeast Becomes First Person Hit to 500 Million Subscribers on YouTube. Do You Know Any of Them?

Jimmy Donaldson, better known as MrBeast, has officially hit the 500 million subscriber mark on YouTube, making him the first person to ever achieve the milestone. If you know any of those 500 million people, please direct them to comment on this post because, genuinely, who are these people?

You probably know a MrBeast subscriber if you have a younger sibling or are a high school teacher. According to a report from TubeFilter, about 40% of MrBeast’s total audience is people between the ages of 13 and 17, and another 20% are between the ages of 18 and 24. From there, the viewership really drops off a cliff. Despite that, Donaldson, now 28 years old himself (though almost certainly an eternal evil persisting through some sort of “The Picture of Dorian Gray” type situation), does not seem like he’ll grow out of this any time soon.

MrBeast livestreamed the moment he hit the half-a-billion subscriber mark in an underwhelming retrospective on his channel’s history. Instead of a wildly over-the-top and ultimately pointless spectacle that would befit his whole schtick, Donaldson went for a more subdued approach, seated while watching some of his first videos and reliving past milestones.

Perhaps that is because, by Donaldson’s own account, he is broke. Sure, he has a reported net worth of $2.6 billion, a $100 million contract with Amazon, and more than a 50% ownership share in Beast Industries, which is currently valued at about $5 billion. But he swears he has less money in his bank account than most of his viewers (who, again, are largely children).

In an interview with the Wall Street Journal, Donaldson insisted that, “I have negative money right now.” It’s an incredibly obnoxious framing for reasons that MrBeast revealed during the conversation. “I’m borrowing money. That’s how little money I have,” he said, explaining, “Technically, everyone watching this video has more money than me in their bank account if you subtract the equity value of my company, which doesn’t buy me McDonald’s in the morning.”

Of course, that’s not how money works—especially when you’re in Donaldson’s tax bracket. The equity value of his company does count, because that’s what he’s borrowing against in the “buy, borrow, die” fashion that the ultra-wealthy love to utilize. He can borrow basically as much as he wants, for McDonald’s or for buying up an entire neighborhood for his family and employees, because the bank knows he’s good for it. That is not the case for actual poor people, who are often subject to absurd interest rates on the limited credit offered to them. Donaldson, to convey just how little money he has, told WSJ, “I’m just so busy working I don’t really think about my personal bank account.” That is not most people’s experience of poverty, man.

Anyway, congratulations to MrBeast for successfully capturing the Gilded Age levels of excess that captivate entirely too many people who simply cannot turn their heads away from a spectacle, no matter how unfulfilling it ultimately may be. It’d be an incredible commentary on late-stage capitalism if he weren’t so goddamn earnest about it.