YouTuber MrBeast hit back at a comment on social media on Monday that claimed he’s virtue signaling “for profit.”
Newsweek reached out to MrBeast’s representative via email for comment.
Merriam Webster defines “virtue signaling” as “the act or practice of conspicuously displaying one’s awareness of and attentiveness to political issues, matters of social and racial justice, etc., especially instead of taking effective action.”
On Sunday, MrBeast—whose real name is James “Jimmy” Donaldson—took to X, formerly Twitter, to share his new video titled “Rescuing Child Slaves in Africa,” with his 32.4 million followers.
The video was posted to the Beast Philanthropy YouTube channel, which has 27.6 million subscribers.
In the clip, the 26-year-old spoke out about children in Ghana who have been “abandoned” and “fall victim to being captured as slaves to the fishing industry.” Donaldson posted a link underneath the video for people to donate to Ghana Make A Difference (GMAD) if they could.
“New Beast Philanthropy video we got kids out of literal slavery in West Africa and tried to shine a light on some serious stuff. All revenue from this channel goes towards the non profit ,” he wrote.
In response, X account @scotchscotchz wrote on Sunday: “How about you help Americans if you’re gonna virtue signal for profit.”
Donaldson then replied the following day and wrote: “We do routine food drives in America and give millions of meals away for free to Americans each year. If I listed out all the projects we’ve done in America this tweet would be a book. Yet everytime I help people in Africa my top reply is I don’t help my own country lol.”
At the time of publication, @scotchscotchz’s remark garnered 3 million views with 237 likes and Donaldson’s response had 3 million views and 42,000 likes.
We do routine food drives in America and give millions of meals away for free to Americans each year. If I listed out all the projects we’ve done in America this tweet would be a book. Yet everytime I help people in Africa my top reply is I don’t help my own country lol https://t.co/IKTUfqNvvo
— MrBeast (@MrBeast) April 7, 2025
This isn’t the first time the philanthropist addressed backlash on social media. Last month, Donaldson posted a photo of YouTubers who participated in the Sidemen’s charity soccer game and captioned it, “Your favorite creator is in this photo.”
X user @ReviewsPossum commented on the image and wrote, “I can’t name a single person in this photo.” However, the internet star came back at the account with a screenshot of an X post dating back to 2023 that seemingly showed @ReviewsPossum knew who MrBeast was.
Donaldson gained popularity online in 2017 after going viral for uploading a nearly 24-hour-long video of himself counting to 100,000. That video currently has 31 million views. Today, he boasts 383 million subscribers on his main YouTube channel and has made 859 videos. In addition to content creation, Donaldson is also an entrepreneur and has brands include MrBeast Burger, Lunchly and Feastables.
On Saturday, Donaldson attended the 2025 Breakthrough Prize Ceremony held Santa Monica, California, with his fiancée Thea Booysen.
The Kansas native took to his Instagram on Sunday to share a photo and video with Booysen and wrote, “Went to a red carpet event yesterday and wore a tux for the first time lol. Also look at how beautiful my fiancé is.”
In the comments section, he joking wrote: “I was told me and Thea need red carpet training because we don’t look at the same cameras lol.”
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