Earlier this week, Jimmy “MrBeast” Donaldson, the most-followed “individual” on YouTube and, I think, the YouTuber most likely to become the platform’s first billionaire, released a video called “1,000 Blind People See For The First Time.” 

‍I struggle to find an equivalent to him in pop culture. He made his own version of Squid Game. He branded a mountain in Antarctica. And now he’s helped 1,000 people see again by paying for their cataract surgeries. I suppose he’s like if The Rock was also Bob Barker for Gen Z. But that doesn’t really capture the whole picture. He’s more algorithm than man at this point.‍

The most interesting thing about MrBeast is that there really isn’t much to say about him at all. There were reports from a few years ago that he runs a toxic workplace, but they didn’t affect his public persona much. His defining trait is that he’s sort of boring to think about. He dresses like a guy who works part-time at a paintball course. He looks generally uncomfortable on camera. And his videos feel like eight-minute trailers for a TV show that doesn’t exist. And yet, he has 130 million subscribers.

I'm far from the only person to raise an eyebrow over his new video. Streamer Hasan Piker, who later said he doesn’t have an issue with Donaldson personally, had some back and forth about how Donaldson’s video is an especially sad portrait of how bad American healthcare is (which I agree with). But if I had to summarize the negative reaction to the video, I would say that people seem to be largely uncomfortable with its vibe.

That mild discomfort—over a video that literally has a “people cured” ticker at the bottom of the screen—was enough for Donaldson to have a Twitter meltdown. First, he organized a poll about whether he should run for president. Luckily for us, Donaldson has to wait about a decade to be eligible. Moreover, I assume Silicon Valley cyber-libertarians will have successfully carved up the country into Bitcoin-powered city states by then. Then Donaldson tweeted this

My favorite take on this was from Twitter user @Spice8Rack, who wrote, “When the philanthropist complains that their philanthropy isn't getting the kind of praise he wanted, it should make you wonder what the motive behind the philanthropy was in the first place.” ‍

But before we get to the motive, let’s address Donaldson’s pledge to give away all his money, because it’s a curious way of phrasing what he’s doing. 

One of Donaldson’s talking points is that he “operates at a loss.” He has said many times that all of the money from his content—an estimated net worth of around $40 million—goes back into his content. Which is a funny way of using influencer-speak to describe how a normal business works. But let’s go over what we know about Donaldson’s finances.‍

Per a TechCrunch article from October 2022, Donaldson is spending between $4 million to $8 million a month. For instance, he spent around $3.5 million to produce his Squid Game video. According to an Axios report from the same month, Donaldson was hoping to raise $150 million at a total valuation of $1.5 billion for his content empire last year. Donaldson has already managed to raise $50 million for his snack company, Feastables. He has a charity called MrCharity, which also has a YouTube channel. It releases videos that are near-identical to Donaldson's normal content—bringing us to the question of motive.

I once spent an afternoon going through Donaldson’s content all the way from the very beginning of his channel in 2012. Many of his early videos have been made private, but if you scroll through his content, you can watch him evolve from a teenage gamer obsessed with PewDiePie to a creator who now surpasses PewDiePie. You also start to get a clear picture of what the MrBeast philosophy is, to the extent there is one.

‍Donaldson figured out that you can buy virality—not by paying for reach, but by telling your audience exactly how much you’re spending. The problem, though, is that by doing this too often, you run the risk of alienating your audience. Virality also depends on relatability. I suspect this is why we know so little about Donaldson as a human being and why his appearance—a short beard and a nondescript haircut—has not changed even slightly over the last four years. He’s an avatar. But viral content platforms, and YouTube in particular, reward a constant, almost psychologically torturous need to one-up yourself. So you have to keep creating excuses for spending more and more money. You start giving it away to random people on the street, to contestants in your own game show segments, or spending it on increasingly elaborate stunts. You then create a charity to spend even more money. Meanwhile, the algorithm keeps rewarding you with views and subscribers, and therefore ad revenue. But Donaldson now seems to be angry about people realizing that this philanthropy is not an act of charity, but an investment in his future virality.

‍I’m not knocking his methodology. There are much worse things you could do to go viral. But like every rich guy, Donaldson wants us to thank him and tell him he’s a good person. But he’s just a guy who has spent a long time figuring out how much internet traffic costs—which also happens to help people sometimes.