PARTING SHOT
LIVING THROUGH THE PANDEMIC REQUIRES NECESSITIES LIKE PAYING BILLS as well as trivialities like fighting boredom. Philanthropic YouTuber Jimmy “MrBeast” Donaldson addressed both in July by posting what was billed as the world’s toughest puzzle. The winner got a $100,000 prize. Donaldson says he got the idea from the work of an online puzzle maker known only as Cicada 3301. “I got the inspiration from a Cicada riddle on YouTube. I knew we could go bigger!” Going big is what MrBeast is all about. The 22 year old with 40 million subscribers raised $22 million to plant 22 million trees with the #TeamTrees movement he co-founded last year. “I’ve always wanted to use my platform to help people, and, with the success of my channels, I’m able to do that. It started off with something as simple as giving pizzas away, and now we have been able to gift cars and homes.” Beast’s riddle was solved in just eight hours, but not before participants learned Shakespeare, scanned hundreds of QR codes and played the game Flappy Bird. Regardless, Beast says he’s “100 percent doing another one in the future.”
COURTESY OF NIGHT MEDIA