MrBeast Picked A Fight With the Wrong Comedian
YouTube giant and junk-food entrepreneur Jimmy “MrBeast” Donaldson objected to “The Rolling Stones” placing comedian Caleb Hearon above him on a list of 2025’s top influencers, but he quickly walked back that criticism once he ran into the she/they shooters.
Ever since social media companies began automatically curating users’ feeds, the internet has become such an amalgam of occasionally overlapping algorithms that no two TikTok users are seeing the same content pop up on a daily basis. As such, there are entire million-member communities of terminally online comedy fans who can scroll on Twitter for weeks without seeing so much as a mention of massively successful mass-appeal content creators like Donaldson — that is, until MrBeast decides to poke the bear for absolutely no good reason.
Earlier this week, Donaldson publicly called out Hearon for having fewer followers than him while complaining about Rolling Stone’s completely subjective ranking for the internet’s top content creators, tweeting of the article, “According to this list a guy with 1 million followers is more influential than me. What did I do to piss off The Rolling Stones?”
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Immediately, Hearon’s fans swarmed into the replies and taught Donaldson that 1.6 million followers is plenty when every single one of them is a mentally ill barista ready to mobilize on a moment’s notice:
As Donaldson now knows, Hearon is an actor, writer and comedian who is best known in online circles for his many viral podcast appearances and for his own show, So True with Caleb Hearon. The internet’s sixth best content creator is specifically famous for hilariously clapping back at online haters and trolls, especially those who come at him with weak shit like, “This guy looks like he broke into a bakery and ate all the pies,” or, “What did I do to piss off The Rolling Stones.”
To his credit, Donaldson took down his complaint about Hearon’s place on the Rolling Stone list and admitted his mistake in a follow-up tweet, writing, “Ngl after this I watched some of his stuff and it’s actually good. I deleted the tweet I don’t want the smoke from the shooters, spare me plz.”
Unfortunately for the social media mogul, it’s harder to calm an angry mob of terminally online, gender non-conforming, Gen-Z-to-Millennial alt-comedy fans than it is to rile up millions of Middle-American children with overpriced chocolate and moldy Lunchables.
Hearon, for his part, has called for de-escalation in the war of the fans, posting Donaldson’s follow-up tweet on his Instagram story with the caption, “i am in peace talks with Mr. Beast.”
Hopefully, Hearon and Donaldson will be able to agree on a mutually beneficial ceasefire at a summit hosted by Mick Jagger.
