YouTube icon Jimmy ‘MrBeast’ Donaldson is on track to overtake T-Series as the most subscribed channel on the platform, but doesn’t want his battle with the Indian record label to become “racist.”
MrBeast is aiming to do what PewDiePie couldn’t by finally surpassing T-Series as YouTube’s most-subbed channel, with both accounts racing towards 300M subscribers.
While T-Series has gone on the offensive by urging its fans to unite and hold off MrBeast’s advances, the creator has remained quietly confident that he’ll surpass them, but doesn’t want his supporters to take things too far.
In a May 28 interview with Jon Youshaei, MrBeast explained how when he was helping PewDiePie compete with T-Series back in 2018, he didn’t like how things became nationalistic.
“It got a little ‘this country versus that country.’ I don’t think Felix took it there, but it even got a little racist in the subwar before. So, I’m very cognisant of it, which is why I’m not leaning into it too hard,” he said.
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Donaldson further added that, while he plans to make YouTube shorts discussing the subscriber race and talk about it here and there, he’s worried that viewers will turn it into an ‘India vs America’ debate.
“I just want to be the most subscribed to channel. Yes, I have a lot of people helping me, but at the end of the day, I started this channel. I live and breathe this. I am a creator,” he added. “I do think it’s nice, a bit of symbolism that a creator is the most subscribed-to channel. Not knocking on [T-Series], but they are a corporation with probably a thousand times more employees than me.”
To hit the message home, MrBeast doubled down on his comments, making it abundantly clear that he wouldn’t support any racist behavior towards T-Series or its fans.
“We gotta draw a line in the sand. I need to make it clear, I love India. I have fans in India. You guys are awesome. It has nothing to do with that. A lot of idiots will just start tweeting ‘India sucks! Go crush them, Jimmy!’ And I’m like, ‘Okay?’ That’s where a lot of my audience is, but okay.”
At the time of posting, MrBeast is on the verge of making his quest a reality. He currently sits at 262M YouTube subscribers, just four million back of T-Series with 266M. As time passes, it’s looking like MrBeast overtaking T-Series won’t be a matter of if, but a matter of when.
