MrBeast Warns Youth Not to Be Like Him

"For every person like me that makes it, thousands don’t."

Not as I Do

One of the world's most famous YouTubers is begging wannabe influencers not to follow in his footsteps.

"It’s painful to see people quit their job/drop out of school to make content full time before they’re ready," MrBeast posted on X-formerly-Twitter. "For every person like me that makes it, thousands don’t."

"Keep that in mind and be smart plz," advised the 25-year-old influencer, whose real name is Jimmy Donaldson.

This isn't the first time the philanthropically-minded social media sensation has warned youth not to be like him — though this more recent disclaimer is, at least, a bit more humble than the last.

"No one's ever gonna do what I do better than me," Donaldson said during an interview on what appears to be his own hype channel, Mentality Madness, in 2023. "It's not even humanly possible. I reinvest every penny I make, I work every hour I'm awake. No, the next me isn't gonna be because no one's gonna do what I do."

Beast Meat

While those claims seem both hyperbolic and dubious, the man makes a good point: content creators generally have to work extremely hard to get noticed, becoming semi-professional algorithm gamers, marketers, video editors and actors all at the same time. And even if a would-be influencer excels at doing all that, there's no guarantee they'll go anywhere given that a lot of social media stardom is based just as much on dumb luck as it is on talent or acumen.

Earlier this year in another MrBeast-centric article, an influencer agent told Fortune that people can't make the big bucks like Donaldson without diversifying their revenue streams — which means, in layman's terms, that they have multiple lucrative side hustles.

"If you’ve put years of effort into one platform and revenue stream it can be quite a difficult career decision to be put in," Thomas Walters, the Europe CEO and cofounder of the Billion Dollar Boys influencer agency, told the magazine. "In some cases, creators have their entire following on one platform, and those are the creators that we feel for in all of this, who need to think about diversifying away from areas where they might be potentially compromised in the future."

Indeed, MrBeast doesn't make his money off social media alone. Instead, he's parlayed his viral stardom into founding multiple businesses of his own, including a scandal-plagued burger joint and a chocolate business. He also is sponsored by multiple big boy businesses too, including, strangely, the Charlotte Hornets basketball team.

Ultimately, Donaldson's advice is spot-on — except for his follow-up tweet about betting one's net worth in a game of roulette.

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