A 13-year-old kid in Greenville, North Carolina watches a guy named WoodysGamerTag play Call of Duty and mention he made $100,000 in a year. The kid’s parents just went bankrupt. His mom is working long hours. And this stranger on the internet is earning multiples of her salary playing video games.
That kid starts uploading videos as “MrBeast6000.” Gaming clips, estimations of other YouTubers’ wealth. Nobody watches. He does this for five years. Five years of uploading into the void to an audience that barely exists.
In 2017, he films himself counting to 100,000. The video is almost 24 hours long. It goes viral. That’s the crack in the wall.
Here’s what happened next.
He reinvested every dollar from every video into the next video. While other creators were buying houses and cars, he was spending $1 million per flagship video on production alone. His manager confirmed brands pay $2.5 to $3 million just to be mentioned in a single upload.
Today he has 467 million subscribers. The most-subscribed channel on YouTube, period. His businesses did $473 million in revenue in 2024, a 114% jump from the year before. Fortune pegged his net worth at $2.6 billion in 2026. He employs over 250 people. He signed a deal with Amazon reportedly worth $100 million for Beast Games. His snack brand Feastables hit $100 million in annual revenue.
WoodysGamerTag, the channel that started it all, has 1.2 million subscribers and gets about 186,000 views a month.
The number that inspired a bankrupt kid to start uploading was $100,000 a year. He now makes that in roughly 45 minutes.
Every creator talks about “bet on yourself.” Jimmy Donaldson actually did it, every single day for 14 years, and the compounding turned a bedroom in North Carolina into the largest individual media operation on the planet.
A young woman was trying to be “gangster” & disrespect her “dead opp” online & her mother heard about it & made her apologize 😳 “you’re not gangster say you’re sorry to that boy & his family right now!” Is this justified or a little too much? 📷👀
@Shouldaville Quitting this hacker infested fam is the best decision I ever made (before the cope+seethe+skill issue comments start coming, you can suck the pubes off my nuts, your probably one of them.)
The Ghost of Yotei developers will be deciding on their next game project soon
"Whether it's continuing Ghost or going back to Sly ... we only get to do one thing, it has to be your best idea"
I feel like i am the only person who plays #EscapefromTarkov who thinks this softcore thing sucks ass.
No way i should be fighting level 10's with MAI AP ammo I worked hard to be where im at all wipe just to fight timmys who sit in a corner with the BIS ammo.