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Jimmy “MrBeast” Donaldson probably doesn’t introduce himself often, but these days, it seems like “YouTuber” is the last entry on his long list of occupations — if he still uses the word at all.
Since the start of 2026, Donaldson has uploaded a handful of YouTube videos, all with heightened premises, screaming introductions, or small fortunes dangled in front of desperate ordinary people. But his first video of the year, where 30 celebrities ‘fight’ for over a million dollars, is the best encapsulation of where Mr. Beast fits in the current cultural landscape. The high-gloss video is a tone-deaf cry for legitimacy from a personality in the throes of an identity crisis. Donaldson may have started on YouTube, and his massive success may have molded the video service in his image. But ten years into his career as an influencer, Donaldson seems desperate to leave YouTube behind.
If you take Donaldson at his word, it probably doesn’t sound like this is the case. In late 2025, the perpetually grinning celebrity boasted that he had already planned his entire output on YouTube for 2026. Donaldson likes to frame himself as a YouTube obsessive who does little except scheme around his 467 million subscribers, often to his own detriment. A fixation on numbers and gaming algorithms, though, threatened to destroy Donaldson’s appeal during an online era increasingly concerned with authenticity. And so, back in 2024, Donaldson promised that his future videos would shy away from merely being #content fodder. He wanted to make lengthier videos with more depth and better storytelling, he said.
Sure enough, you’d be hard-pressed to find any Mr. Beast YouTube video in 2026 that isn’t at least 25 minutes long. The celebrity upload is a bewildering 41 minutes long, but does little to justify that runtime. The roster is full of recognizable names, which does not mean it has relevant stars. With figures like Josh Peck and Diplo among the marquee talent, Donaldson’s understanding of his primary audience has become an open question.
According to some metrics, most of Donaldson’s YouTube viewers are young teen boys. Would most of them recognize a fraction of the people in the video? And if they do, would many of these viewers like the cast? Even the stars, who have presumably been paid for their presence, can’t bother pretending that they want to be there. And why would they? Most of the people Donaldson champions in the video are already rich. They can’t truly be thrilled about winning a Tesla – some of them already own one.
Donaldson tries circumventing this dissonance by framing the $1M as a donation to a charity, or as prizes that will be granted to a celebrity’s biggest fans. But inherently, the stakes of winning some money won’t be the same for a movie star as would an average person. After losing simple games of memory and strength, some participants in Donaldson’s video almost seem relieved to be eliminated. Tiffany Hadish straight up tells the audience she is “glad” to be knocked early. Another participant eliminates themselves willingly.
Donaldson seems to be the only person interested in putting on a show. When asked to rate participants in a cooking contest, Paris Hilton rates every dish, no matter how foul, a 10. Elsewhere, Kevin Hart is tasked with contacting the most famous person he knows, only to go on and reveal himself. Near the end of the video, Ajey “CarryMinati” Nagar is knocked out of the proceedings with a shrug, only for Donaldson to butt in and forbid him from leaving: what if the Indian market stops watching?
From its bright fluorescent lights to its sterile white stage, nearly every aspect of Donaldson’s first video of 2026 comes across as artificial. And with 104 million views, it is a poorly performing video by Donaldson, whose 2024 output consistently reached anywhere between 134 to 345 million clicks within the same time frame.
Some of this disinterest is undoubtedly the result of a miscalculation by Donaldson about his audience. But if people aren’t watching like they used to, Donaldson isn’t doing much to persuade them to stay, either. Every five minutes, the video will cut to a promotion of something else Donaldson is hawking. He reminds viewers to go out and buy his beef jerky sticks, his chocolate bars, and most of all, to go watch his Amazon TV show.
The entire concept of the video, Donaldson reveals, is inspired by Beast Games, the challenge-driven spectacle where he awards $5M to victors. Actually, he reminds viewers of the Amazon show repeatedly, as if to suggest he’d prefer you watch that instead of his YouTube uploads.
“I’ve spent tens of millions of dollars, making sure this is the best content I have ever made,” Donaldson says of his Amazon show at the end of his celebrity video.
Is it unfair to flatten Donaldson to a single YouTube video? Maybe. Yet this video also clearly sets the tone for his channel in 2026. Blasé celebrities wasting food while being surrounded by stacks of cash is followed by a video where Donaldson surprises a fan who is missing an arm with a Mr. Beast-branded bionic prosthetic. In that same video, Donaldson celebrates meeting reanimated, once-extinct dire wolves by feeding the Ice Age creatures a Feastables-branded cake. Stunts like these reveal a Donaldson so mired in his own celebrity, he has lost touch with the ‘everyman’ quality that made him appealing in the first place.
The Donaldson with unruly hair who was willing to count to 100,000 while surrounded by ugly typography has been replaced with a man with a six-pack who is comfortable in a Super Bowl ad. And like half of the people who show up in a Super Bowl ad, the height of his relevancy may be well behind him. Donaldson is often presented as the face of modern social media, yet he now spends most of his time begging boomers to watch him on TV. If that weren’t enough, he’s already warning fans that his next video will probably be his worst performing upload ever.
Donaldson is unlikely to ever fully retire his YouTube account, however. Even if he’s past the peak of his fame, his most popular videos will continue to draw an enviable number of eyeballs, generating passive income for years to come. I don’t see him ever graduating to be a full-time TV personality, even if his shtick on YouTube is modeled after games from that medium. That’s partly because older audiences don’t seem to know what to do with him, and potentially because he might object to the idea he’s not a ride-or-die YouTuber.
Four months ago, Donaldson uploaded a short video of himself, from long before he was a household name. He’s still in high school. There’s a big test the next day, he says. Will he even remember what the exam was in ten years, he wonders? Eventually, he breaks into some predictions about where he’ll be in a decade. If he isn’t on YouTube with at least a million subscribers, he’ll be a failure, Donaldson says.
“”[I will] probably be doing YouTube as a job, hopefully … maybe? Maybe? Maybe?” Donaldson says as he bites his fist in uncertainty.
I can’t help but wonder what this Donaldson, teenage Donaldson, would think about his future self. Would he believe he launched a competitor to Lunchables, or opened a burger chain? Could he imagine himself with a line of chocolates? What would past Donaldson think about his recent purchase of a company with an app aiming to give teens financial advice? This throwback was clearly intended to be inspiring, but it doesn’t quite land that way.
“Hopefully you’re still doing YouTube,” Donaldson says in the video.
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