How MrBeast Became the Willy Wonka of YouTube – The New York Times

Credit…Illustration by Eric YahnkerThe Great ReadJimmy Donaldson, a.k.a. MrBeast, has become a viral sensation for his absurd acts of altruism. Why do so many people think he’s evil?Credit…Illustration by Eric YahnkerJune 12, 2023Updated 12:28 p.m. ETWhen Jeremiah Howard was around 5, he was told he had a cataract — cloudiness in the clear lens of his right eye that seriously impaired his vision. “Growing up, I always had really crappy aim,” he says, and he had trouble keeping pace in school. By the end of his junior year of high school, he knew he wanted to have cataract surgery but wasn’t sure how he’d afford it. “I was 17, and I was extremely stressed about how I’d pay,” he says. His mother was not in the picture, and his father, who installs alarm systems for a living, made just enough to keep Howard and his sister in a three-bedroom mobile home in Florida. The procedure, which costs several thousand dollars out of pocket, seemed a distant possibility.Listen to This ArticleHoward emailed “a bunch of different organizations that could help,” but he never heard back. On the advice of his family’s landlord, he looked into Social Security assistance for the blind
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