New YouTube king MrBeast: amateur poster who became $54m-a-year pro

Among his biggest hits are a viral video where he recreated the sets from the Netflix series Squid Game at a cost of $3.5m (£2.9m), then invited 456 people to compete in challenges to win $456,000 in prize money. He unabashedly splashes the cash on his videos, offering a $1m prize for a game of hide and seek in another clip. He reportedly spends up to $10,000 on the design of each of his video thumbnails, the small squares designed to lure viewers in.

What earns Donaldson those riches and fame, however, separates him from the rest of the starry-eyed group of creators on YouTube. He reinvests much of his earnings into new videos, siphoning off a section of that income to charity.

In 2020, he started a philanthropic organisation that has since donated 2 million meals to needy people in North Carolina. He launched a campaign, Team Trees, in 2019, to plant 20m trees in the United States. So far, 24m have been put into the ground.