MrBeast can’t shake his controversies — and it’s costing him his fans

Scandals are piling up. Reputations are being torched. Views are tanking. MrBeast’s last couple of uploads are still reaching around 100 million eyeballs, yes, but compare that to view counts from 2023 that often reached well above 250 million. What seemed like the steady continuation of a world takeover that could, according to Donaldson himself, culminate in an eventual presidential bid is now shifting to an existential crisis that has left fans of the YouTube titan’s videos doubting their loyalties.

Nowhere is this more apparent than in the comments on Donaldson’s YouTube posts — the part of his channel where he can speak to his fans directly, without posting new footage. Unlike the replies to his actual videos, these comments appear to be unmoderated — and they’re not pretty. Many of the top comments voice complaints by fusing multiple words together, like “Jimmyisjustdoingeverythingexceptaddresstheallegations” and “AdressTheAllegationsJimmyWeAreTired.” Some fans engage with the content of these posts, one of which sees Donaldson celebrating a subscriber milestone two months ago — but even these replies are ominous. “What Goes Up Gotta Come Down,” says one top-voted comment. “The last milestone mrbeast will reach,” another quips.

The wave of fan dissatisfaction began taking root this summer. First, there was an onslaught of allegations and concerns surrounding Donaldson’s longtime collaborator and friend Ava Tyson, who was accused of sending inappropriate messages to a fan, who was a minor, eight years ago. Tyson departed from MrBeast’s company with an apology — but the incident lit a fuse. Internet sleuths then unearthed more questionable ties to Donaldson and the MrBeast brand — including a sex offender being employed by the company and accusations of sexual assault within the company, brought to light by YouTuber Dogpack404, who used to work for Donaldson. Dogpack404 has since been threatened with legal action by Donaldson’s lawyers.

While Donaldson broadcasts a highly PG aura now, his debut on YouTube back in 2012 was marked by a period of edgelord humor characteristic of teen boys who grow up on the internet. As such, recent accusations that Donaldson maintains a “boys’ club” that could, in theory, make misconduct permissible has become believable to people online. It doesn’t help that some of Donaldson’s associations are far from public darlings. He seems to be a fan of controversial billionaire Peter Thiel, at one point recommending a book written by the tech mogul that has been described by a Thiel biographer to “border on fascism.” Thiel also reportedly funded a startup that then received millions of dollars as part of a charity campaign held by Donaldson in 2022.

Donaldson’s more outwardly controversial professional association is Logan Paul, another numbers-driven YouTube personality that is no stranger to scandal. Paul’s friendship with Donaldson has been front and center for some time now, as evidenced by the blond boxer’s appearance in MrBeast videos and Donaldson’s participation in Paul’s podcast. Now, the two are teaming up to sell Lunchly, a Lunchables competitor that comes packaged with Prime, Paul’s line of energy drinks, and Feastables, Donaldson’s line of chocolate bars. The September announcement has been received poorly by people online, especially as the two personalities have repeatedly tried to position Lunchly as a healthier lunch option. But Paul’s energy drink, which is marketed toward children, is contentious enough that a senator has called for an investigation of its high caffeine levels.

In the past, Donaldson has claimed that the videos on his main channel are so costly to produce, he needs side ventures to help fund them. The videos themselves make money from advertisers and YouTube, but their profit potential is limited compared to items you can purchase multiple times, like Feastables and Lunchly. Despite being one of the highest-paid personalities on the platform, Donaldson has, up until now, managed to avoid a greedy reputation. Donaldson has made a concerted effort to highlight his generosity with his earnings, often reminding people that he invests nearly everything he makes right back into his videos. Three years ago, Donaldson revealed he spent $48 million a year on his productions, a number that’s likely gone up as his videos have gotten progressively more ambitious in scope. Donaldson has gone from uploading videos of himself counting to a high number to funding productions where he blows up houses and makes trains crash into giant pits. “I made money, I spend money,” Donaldson says in a video breaking down how he invests his profits. The pitch of Lunchly as a healthier alternative to Lunchables — which have come under scrutiny recently for containing harmful chemicals — seems right in line with Donaldson’s pitch as a noble do-gooder. If Lunchly is indeed healthier, it could also see the company land a government contract in the future.

As lawsuits focused on working conditions, dangerous situations, and sexual harassment during the making of his upcoming Amazon game show continue to mount, Donaldson’s ability to present his work as being for a greater good may be weakening. Donaldson’s last two uploads have accrued 83 million and 113 million views as of this writing, which may sound impressive until you consider this is less than half of what he was reaching a few years ago. Aside from the occasional fluke, Donaldson’s viewership hasn’t stooped this low in four years. Moreover, the controversies are prompting fans to reconsider what Donaldson stands for and how those values may have led to this point.

In the past, the YouTuber has spoken at length about his incessant drive to make impressive videos, regardless of cost or time. For the most part, his ambition has been received as a positive reflection of Donaldson’s edge. The grind becomes virtue. But Donaldson’s drive has started to take on a more ominous air. Did Amazon’s Beast Games turn out the way it did because of its unrealistic ambition? Donaldson’s willingness to do anything for the sake of views seems less admirable when it becomes apparent that he expects everyone around him to do the same.

In a leaked memo verified by Business Insider, Donaldson repeatedly tells staffers that they should never take “no” for an answer when it comes to filming a video, regardless of the reason. If a worker at a big-box store tells a MrBeast employee they can’t film there, for example, the document suggests finding someone else who will give the green light instead. Whether or not finding a workaround to potential production issues might land someone in trouble is immaterial, the document suggests. In fact, workers themselves should think twice before telling Donaldson that something isn’t possible. Anyone who thinks otherwise, the document says, may not be cut out to work with Donaldson. Meanwhile, Beast Industries, the larger company that oversees Donaldson’s various business ventures, hired a chief operating officer this summer who has been cited in a Bloomberg report that claims his previous company held a “culture of recklessness” that was full of “macho belligerence.”

As Donaldson pushes forward with new announcements and videos, the allegations have already impacted the YouTuber’s business. A six-figure Feastables sponsorship deal with a Twitch streamer was dropped in light of the scandals. Internally, Donaldson seems to be conducting triage via internal restructuring. In a leaked email verified by AP, Donaldson says that he is hiring a firm to investigate existing allegations, starting workplace training for employees, and creating a means for workers to report their concerns to the company. These are mechanisms and structures adopted by many companies, but they also mark a departure from Donaldson’s looser approach to running a business. Up until August, per a report by Time, Donaldson’s mother was considered the entire HR department.

But it may be too late to contain the turmoil within the fandom, which is critical to Donaldson’s entire business model. Comments on the videos posted since these scandals became public appear stilted: In one recent upload, despite having nearly 100,000 comments, not a single one of these comments appears to have a reply from other commenters. Most of the top replies repeat the same thing, “Ronaldo is coming,” in reference to the soccer star’s growing YouTube channel. It goes beyond the videos themselves. On Reddit, MrBeast’s forum, with 1.5 million members, asks people to request permission to post anything. “Why not just private the subreddit if you’re going to keep it locked down,” reads the top reply to a post on a recent video. “This is what happens when a company runs their own sub,” declares a comment further down the thread.

The overarching vibe on the subreddit is dissatisfaction, judging from the replies to a thread pegged to the recent MrBeast video “Men Vs Women Survive The Wilderness For $500,000.” All the top comments bemoan a shift in Donaldson’s output, which fans position as too buttoned-up to be entertaining. “Now the videos are so over edited that even if they wanted to include personality in the videos, that editing style simply does not allow for it,” one commenter says. “Yeah in an effort to maximize engagement [they are] destroying [their] videos,” another says. “It feels they are so soulless because there are never dips in action.”

According to angelfacepeanut, a fan who has been watching since the inception of Donaldson’s channel, the recent scandals have soured the experience of watching MrBeast videos, especially after watching Dogpack404’s viral videos on the allegations.

“As someone who has personally been screwed over by a popular company in the creator space, [Dogpack’s] video really made me rethink all the small red flags he had set off in my head prior to this (whether that be the Creator League promotion or the original Rosanna Pansino controversy) and, especially as more and more info continues to come out, it really puts a bad feeling in my head,” angelfacepeanut told Polygon over X. “It would take a miracle of a response to save his reputation after everything.”

A downfall of this magnitude was, perhaps, inevitable. In an interview with Polygon, former Donaldson employee Trey Yates says the average MrBeast viewer is likely a child — which makes it easier to avoid scrutiny. The move to Amazon is, in Yates’ view, a play to gain an older and potentially more skeptical audience.

Instead, the public is seeing Donaldson’s silence — and fans aren’t taking it well. “People realized that he hasn’t said anything, and they’re probably getting fed up,” YouTuber TheAsherShow says in a video recapping Donaldson’s situation.

“For years, Jimmy felt like he was invincible,” Yates told Polygon over Discord. Before being fired in 2021 for not being a cultural fit at the company, Yates recalls a conversation with Donaldson where the YouTuber purportedly said that lacking corporate ownership meant that the company could do whatever it wanted.

“What we’re seeing now is the repercussions of him thinking that way,” Yates posited. “In his YouTube bubble, he could get away with that as his target audience was children… If he wants to continue to scale up, he can’t just say and do ‘whatever the fuck we want’ anymore,” he adds.

Yates left the company, he tells Polygon, in part because he was the rare employee that pushed back against Donaldson’s apparently unreasonable video production requests. For a time, Yates recalls working nonstop to meet Donaldson’s demands, even if it meant missing birthdays and holidays. But after missing the birth of a relative, he says, Yates reached a breaking point. Not long after telling Donaldson he wouldn’t work even longer hours, Yates says that he was fired from his editing position.

Stories like Yates’ are encouraging others to step forward and share their experiences, which is part of why Donaldson seems to suddenly be drowning in allegations. It may be tempting to see it all as a revelation, but the Donaldson described in these stories falls squarely in line with the exacting and ceaseless Donaldson the internet has been celebrating all along. “I’m great at lying,” Donaldson told Rolling Stone in 2022.

The myth, as Donaldson has molded it, is the ascent of a plucky everyman who was bold enough to give away $10,000 to a homeless man in his first viral video. What is typically left out of this narrative is its provenance: The money was provided by a company peddling what are essentially NFTs.

“I used to be a huge MrBeast supporter,” angelfacepeanut said, “but after everything that’s come out, it just sucks to see someone with such an unfathomably large platform fail to have any moral backbone while boasting himself as a hardcore philanthropist.”