With his baseball cap and his rather unkempt facial hair, Jimmy Donaldson may seem like an ordinary man in real life.
But on the internet, he is one of the most famous content creators out there, and is already one of the highest-paid creators on YouTube.
The man is no other than MrBeast, the YouTube star phenomenon who is famous for giving away money to strangers.
His ambitious challenges and extravagant prizes have helped him grow his channel to a level way beyond his peers.
This time, he broke yet another record: being the first ever content creator on YouTube to have a whopping 200 million subscribers.
James Stephen Donaldson was born in May 1998, and grew up in Greenville, North Carolina.
He began posting to YouTube in early 2023, at the age of 13, under the handle MrBeast6000. His early content ranged from funny compilations of playing "Minecraft" and "Call of Duty," to "videos estimating the wealth of other YouTubers".
For the first few years, James didn't get much traction. He experimented with creating various types of videos, in order to understand what the audience really wants.
And soon, he found that people wanted to see extravagant stunts.
James delivered that, and his channel's fame skyrocketed.
In 2017, for example, he gained fame after creating the "counting to 100,000" video, which earned tens of thousands of views in just a few days.
"I just really wanted it," MrBeast later said about the challenge. "I had dropped out of college, I wasn't really making much. I knew it would go viral."
After that, things went pretty well from the young man, as his next videos quickly gained pace the way he intended.
When he later found his audience and understands how to please them, MrBeast's videos usually involves challenges and giveaways.
We hit 200,000,000 subscribers!
If you traveled back in time and showed this screenshot to me when I was 13, there is 0 shot he’d believe it’s real haha
This is just the beginning though, I still have decades left in the tank pic.twitter.com/xnITlyYJ5q— MrBeast (@MrBeast) October 15, 2023
As his channel grows bigger and more famous, so does the prizes.
As his brand becomes bigger and bigger, James hired some of his childhood friends to help him.
In total, James owns and operates a number of YouTube channels.
But his main one, is still MrBeast.
And 200 million subscribers is a milestone once considered impossible to achieve. In fact, the number of people subscribing to his channel is still going up, increasing at a rate of about one million in just one day, meaning that MrBeast is picking up new followers in a few hours than most YouTube creators will earn in their entire lifetime.
And James "still have decades left" in the tank.
In total, MrBeast has around 35 billion total views on YouTube.
It's worth noting that in about a year before this, in July 2022, MrBeast became the second YouTube creator to hit 100 million subscribers on YouTube after PewDiePie.
Another way of saying this, James's channel gained around 100 million new subscribers in just one year, a feat no individual nobody had never ever achieved in the 18-year-old YouTube.
It's worth noting that the most-subscribed channel is the Indian record label T-Series, which hosts its music videos on its channel. With over 250 million subscribers as of October 2023, the channel has held the top position since April 14, 2019.
MrBeast here, is the second most-subscribed channel overall, but the most-subscribed channel which is not 'branded'.
Further reading: YouTuber MrBeast Is 'Going Broke' After Underestimating His Massive Giveaway