Twitter owner Elon Musk is paying MrBeast $5 per month as part of a rolling social media subscription. This curiosity underlines the content creator's global fame that continues to reach new heights on a regular basis, as evidenced by MrBeast's incredible YouTube subscriber count.
Jimmy Donaldson, better known by his online moniker MrBeast, is a YouTuber of 11 years who rose to prominence with his Let's Play videos before expanding his content to an increasingly extravagant variety of undertakings. The stunts on his multiple channels range from philanthropic endeavors like building housing for the homeless to pure entertainment that is MrBeast's real-life Squid Game.
MrBeast recently decided to try Twitter's newly launched content subscriptions, subsequently reporting that his list of subscribers already includes Elon Musk. In an April 18 tweet, MrBeast jokingly suggested that the fact Musk is now paying him $5 a month raises the question about "who's really in charge." This isn't the first occasion on which the YouTuber shared such a sentiment, seeing how Musk himself previously acknowledged MrBeast's whimsical ambition to become the new Twitter CEO.
Musk's decision to become one of MrBeast's first Twitter subscribers was plausibly rooted in a desire to advertise the new feature. Originally announced on April 13, the functionality allows users to offer subscriptions to any kind of material, ranging from traditional newsletter formats to long-form videos and podcasts. Twitter subscriptions are just the latest in a long list of Musk's attempts to monetize the social media platform more aggressively since acquiring it to the tune of $44 billion in late 2022. Those efforts started with a polarizing Twitter Blue subscription offering blue account verification checkmarks—among other things—for $8 per month.
With almost 20 million followers, MrBeast is currently among the top 100 most-followed Twitter users, thus being in an ideal position to spread the word of mouth about the platform's recently launched subscriptions. While it remains to be seen whether he'll end up making frequent use of this feature, the tweet identifying Elon Musk as one of his subscribers already did a lot of promotional heavy-lifting, having been viewed over 30 million times within 24 hours of posting.
Time will tell what's next for the famous content creator, especially since both his popularity and ambitions have long started expanding beyond YouTube and Twitter. This was recently underlined by MrBeast's revelation that he's considering running for President once he turns 35, which is the earliest he's allowed to do so under the U.S. Constitution.