On Oct. 12, MrBeast posted a video like he does every week. But this time, something was off.
The YouTuber, whose real name is Jimmy Donaldson, took a few of his recurring YouTube friends, like iShowSpeed and Logan Paul, into a Romanian cave where they explored some tunnels, goofed around, and had a good time. While spelunking, they enjoyed ads for their food brands Lunchly, Prime, Feastables, and Donaldson’s recent collab with the restaurant chain Zaxbys.
In around 48 hours, the video accrued 46 million views, which would be a massive success for any other creator. But Donaldson’s videos consistently break viewership records, regularly pulling in hundreds of millions of views in a matter of days.
According to ViewStats, Donaldson’s analytics platform, “7 Days Exploring An Underground City” is the lowest viewed video in this time frame compared to the last ten videos he’s released. According to a chart ranking “Typical Performance,” it’s at least 10 million views from the norm.
MrBeast’s last few videos, like him exploring a cave or giving away 100 houses, performed better than his most recent video. However, they were also hundreds of millions of views less than what Donaldson saw with videos just a year ago.
The latest video is also getting a much less celebratory response on social media than MrBeast’s past videos. Donaldson posted about the video on his Twitter, and it was only the third time he’s tweeted since July.
“When views are running low, you can guarantee MrBeast to bring in Kai, Speed, and Logan,” one user commented.
There’s no clear reason why this video is underperforming, but there are a few Beast-related factors at play. There’s the obvious elephant in the room — the continued controversies around Donaldson and his brand. In late July, long-time collaborator Ava Tyson stepped down from MrBeast after claims she spoke inappropriately to a minor and had a sexual relationship with her assistant spread online.
The chaos around the Beast Games, a 2,000-contestant MrBeast reality show created for Amazon, has also been swirling. The New York Times reported that conditions on the Las Vegas set for contestants were abysmal, and Rolling Stone shared that crew members in Toronto were underfed and underpaid. On Sept. 16, five female contestants filed a class action lawsuit against the production, which included allegations of sexual harassment.
Over the past year, Donaldson has also been heavily shilling his products and brand crossovers in his videos. His chocolate bar Feastables is an ever-constant, and Lunchly, his Lunchables-style snack collaboration with Logan Paul and KSI, has joined the roster. In his latest TikTok, Donaldson rents out a movie theater to watch the “Hawk Tuah” podcast (sponsored by Prime), eat Lunchly, and listen to KSI’s new song.
Just a year ago, criticizing MrBeast would be much more difficult. But as his controversies rack up and his views are getting lower, it’s clear that something is changing with his brand.
Nobody can be on top forever, and it’s unclear if the MrBeast boat is capsizing or just facing some rocky water. His channel still has the most subscribers, and there’s no telling what audience he will attract when he drops on Amazon.
This could also just be an isolated incident of a bad video. Compared to more epic videos in MrBeast’s repertoire, this video is a bit more boring. Throwing Prime bottles from the top of the cave so Logan Paul can catch and chug them just doesn’t compare to the grandeur of trying to blow up a yacht.
