# How MrBeast Became the Willy Wonka of YouTube - The New York Times

<https://www.nytimes.com/2023/06/12/magazine/mrbeast-youtube.html>

- Host: [nytimes.com](https://links.thingelstad.xyz/hosts/nytimes.com/)
- Saved: June 13, 2023 (2023-06-14T04:25:25Z)
- Record: https://links.thingelstad.xyz/links/82ea956d788c/
- JSON: https://links.thingelstad.xyz/links/82ea956d788c.json

## What Jamie wrote

It seems New York Times Magazine has discovered [MrBeast](https://www.youtube.com/@MrBeast)!

> Donaldson has built a YouTube empire on this kind of quasi philanthropy, in which he crafts spectacles around surprise cash giveaways (["Giving a Random Homeless Man $10,000"](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N_GMakKf7G4)), contests with expensive prizes (["Last to Leave $800,000 Island Keeps It"](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NkE0AMGzpJY)) and other lavish, if not particularly sensible, gifts (["Tipping Waitresses With Real Gold Bars"](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rmf6T_Ewt38)). The phenomenal popularity of these videos has made him a superstar by any measure and cemented his reputation as a secular saint among the YouTube faithful, but it has also left him open to the criticism that his generosity is more calculated than heartfelt -- another audience-development strategy alongside the garish thumbnails and finely tuned video titles.

This is a decent overview of MrBeast and his continually growing YouTube "empire".

## Facts

- Kind: [Page](https://links.thingelstad.xyz/kinds/page/)

## Appears in

- [WT259: Weekly Thing #259 / Vision Pro, Tiny Awards, Mental Liquidity](https://weekly.thingelstad.com/archive/259/), Notable

## Same host

- [How the 1% Runs an Ironman - The New York Times](https://links.thingelstad.xyz/links/f15610993663/) (nytimes.com, December 8, 2022)
- [Why a Conversation With Bing’s Chatbot Left Me Deeply Unsettled - The New York Times](https://links.thingelstad.xyz/links/e7935a15c143/) (nytimes.com, February 16, 2023)
- [Takeaways From a New Elon Musk Biography: Ukraine, Trump and More - The New York Times](https://links.thingelstad.xyz/links/c7f3c4c73566/) (nytimes.com, September 11, 2023)
- [A Visit to Ghibli Park, a Miyazaki Theme Park - The New York Times](https://links.thingelstad.xyz/links/1ae578c6cd00/) (nytimes.com, October 23, 2023)
- [New York Times Sues OpenAI and Microsoft Over Use of Copyrighted Work - The New York Times](https://links.thingelstad.xyz/links/bc569f22a53d/) (nytimes.com, January 1, 2024)

## Saved the same week

- [This is valid Python syntax by Nobody has time for Python](https://links.thingelstad.xyz/links/fcf9f3a4d010/) (bitecode.dev, June 13, 2023)
- [The Three Transitions](https://links.thingelstad.xyz/links/90a362299d2e/) (vitalik.ca, June 13, 2023)
- [A Developer's View of Vision Pro - David Smith, Independent iOS Developer](https://links.thingelstad.xyz/links/73523559d498/) (david-smith.org, June 13, 2023)
- [Apple Vision Pro: A Watershed Moment for Personal Computing - MacStories](https://links.thingelstad.xyz/links/ee68eef1470f/) (macstories.net, June 13, 2023)
- [The 9 Best ChatGPT Plugins You Can Try Right Now](https://links.thingelstad.xyz/links/3ba48a2ae458/) (makeuseof.com, June 13, 2023)

## Elsewhere

- Wayback Machine: https://web.archive.org/web/*/https://www.nytimes.com/2023/06/12/magazine/mrbeast-youtube.html