One figure replaces another. The American Youtuber MrBeast has dethroned his Swedish sidekick PewDiePie, becoming this week the most followed videographer on the platform, with more than 112 million subscribers counted this Wednesday, against 111 million for his predecessor.
Jimmy Donaldson, his real name, had passed the 111 million subscriber mark last week, he announced on Twitter on Saturday. “Who would have thought that I randomly open YouTube on November 11 to have 111,111,111 subscribers? he wondered. To celebrate his new subscriber record, Jimmy Donaldson also bought 1,111 lotto tickets. “Something tells me I’m going to win,” he commented.
Producing content on YouTube since 2012, the 24-year-old creator became popular for his spectacular challenge videos, after having specialized in video games for a time. Among his best-known publications, there is a reconstruction of a game inspired by the “Squid Game” series counting more than 300 million views, a video where he buries himself alive for 50 hours, or another where he pours millions of marbles in a friend’s garden.
Winnings of several hundred thousand dollars
Many of its contents promise big rewards to its participants: the winner of the reconstruction of “Squid Game”, for example, saw himself winning the modest sum of 456,000 dollars. In other popular videos, he talks about gifting 40 cars to his 40,000,000th subscriber, or filming himself donating tens of thousands of dollars to homeless people on the streets.
In August, when MrBeast passed 100 million subscribers, his colleague PewDiePie already admitted to preparing to be dethroned, believing that he “deserved” his status.
Swedish videographer, real name Felix Kjellberg, had been the platform’s No. 1 creator since 2013, with commentary and gaming videos. But his rate of publications had dropped significantly in recent years, the videographer explaining that he suffered from a burnout.
Despite being the world’s number one individual YouTuber by subscriber count, MrBeast remains overtaken by a few production channels, including India’s T-Series, which has 229 million subscribers.