Career<\/span><\/h2>\n\n\n\nDonaldson uploaded his first-ever YouTube video in February 2012, at the age of 13, under the handle “MrBeast6000”; During this early period of his channel, Donaldson himself made few appearances in his videos. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
In 2015 and 2016, Donaldson began to gain popularity on the platform due to his “worst intros” series of videos, which rounded up and poked fun at YouTuber introductions he discovered on the site and had around 30,000 subscribers. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Donaldson later dropped out of university to focus mainly on YouTube and he along with his friends contacted numerous YouTubers to obtain statistics on their successful videos and the platform’s recommendation system.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In January 2017, Donaldson published an almost day-long video of himself counting to 100,000 which took him 40 hours, with some parts sped up to keep it under 24 hours.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
A subsequent video titled “Counting to 200,000 (Road to a Mil)” was uploaded in February, although, according to Donaldson, it too, had to be sped up because the full fifty-five hours of counting exceeded YouTube’s upload limit.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
These stunts and other similar stunts such as attempting to break glass using a hundred megaphones, watching paint dry for an hour, attempting to stay underwater for 24 hours (which ended up failing due to health issues), and an unsuccessful attempt to spin a fidget spinner for a day made him gain quick popularity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In March 2019, Donaldson organized and filmed a real-life battle royale competition in Los Angeles with a prize of $200,000 (2 games were played, making game earnings of $100,000 for each game) in collaboration with Apex Legends.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In April 2020, Donaldson created a rock, paper, scissors competition stream that featured 32 influencers and a grand prize of $250,000. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
The video became YouTube’s most-watched live Original event with 662,000 concurrent viewers and the event was ultimately won by Nadeshot.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
While in October 2020, Donaldson created another influencer tournament featuring 24 competitors with a grand prize of $300,000. The tournament was ultimately won by the D’Amelio family, which caused controversy due to claims that they cheated.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In November 2021, Donaldson uploaded a recreation of the survival drama streaming television series Squid Game in real life, in which 456 people competed for a $456,000 cash prize without the violence in the show and the video drew more than 161 million views as of December 10, 2021, becoming Donaldson\u2019s most-viewed YouTube video and also making it one of the most-watched YouTube videos of 2021.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In December 2021, Donaldson created a third influencer tournament featuring 15 competitors with a grand prize of $1,000,000, wherein the tournament took place in person at the SoFi Stadium in Inglewood, California.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The challenge consisted of two rounds where the first round of the tournament featured 10 different challenges between 15 competitors, and the second round featured 10 winners from the first round competing in a hide-and-seek competition and the tournament was ultimately won by Zach King.<\/p>\n\n\n\n