Donaldson’s crew once went through Greenville putting money on trees. In 2020, they raced around downtown Raleigh trying to gift free vehicles to incredulous passersby. At the end of that video, MrBeast picked up an Uber customer in a yellow Lamborghini and handed him the keys.

On YouTube, the edited stunts tend to crescendo at moments when the unsuspecting participants realize their randomly gotten riches. They grasp their faces, cry, call parents and hug whoever is nearby.

As Donaldson’s profile and view counts have ascended, so has the scale of his acts. Ten grand giveaways became $50,000, $100,000, a million dollars. Fewer stunts unfold in public: On-the-street gimmicks have been swapped for high-budget experiences contained within professionally constructed, dream-like sets. In one recent video, a man spent 45 days living in a fully-stocked supermarket, earning $10,000 a day.

“For the last eight or nine years, like every dollar I made I just spent it the next month on content,” he said in 2023, during a podcast on the creator economy. “I just did that every month and it kept getting bigger and bigger.”

A few years ago, the MrBeast team had approached Greenville bookstore owner David Brown about doing a stunt where they would hide a check in one of his books and allow contestants to search. Brown declined, given the risk it posed to his inventory. Today, Donaldson could build his own bookstore.

The Sup Dogs connection

Vying for cash, cars, computers and sometimes private islands has become a somewhat common perk for Greenville’s service workers.

Devine, who won the island, was working at Sup Dogs, a popular downtown Greenville bar and restaurant, when she met a former cook who had joined MrBeast’s staff. After a virtual interview and 10 days quarantining in a Raleigh hotel, she was on her way to the Caribbean.

Her boss didn’t need much explanation. Sup Dogs owner Bret Oliverio estimates a hundred or so employees have appeared in MrBeast videos over the past seven years — with at least a dozen winning.

“A lot of (MrBeast’s) staff and casting directors are always in our restaurant,” he said. “Talking to our staff, inside and outside of work, they’re like, ‘Hey, do you know anyone who can be at this park at 2 p.m. tomorrow? We can’t really tell you what for.’ A lot of our staff are young and they say, ‘Sure.’”

...continued

©2024 The News & Observer. Visit at newsobserver.com. Distributed at Tribune Content Agency, LLC.