Maybe we should be taking MrBeast for president seriously – depressing, I know

How long will the Democratic Party persevere with Joe Biden? With public faith in the 81-year-old president’s cognitive abilities nosediving, fears of a Trump victory in the forthcoming election grow ever louder. The American public seems to be crying out for a younger, more dynamic candidate; a popular and conscientious politician to unite a divided country. Enter: MrBeast. On Saturday, MrBeast – the professional sobriquet of YouTuber and 26-year-old North Carolina native Jimmy Donaldson – wrote on X/Twitter: “If we lower the age to run for president I’ll jump in the race.” At least 568,000 people seemed to approve of the idea (via “likes”). How many more would approve in a voting booth?

To be clear, Donaldson isn’t just any run-of-the-mill YouTuber. He is, with 299 million subscribers, the biggest YouTube star in the world. His videos largely spotlight elaborate and expensive stunts or challenges (“I Spent 50 Hours In Solitary Confinement”, or “I Paid a Hitman to Hunt Me Down”), as well as acts of flashy generosity – handing out thousands, or even hundreds of thousands, of dollars to ordinary members of the public. Donaldson’s most watched video ever saw him stage a real-life version of Squid Game, minus the murder and viscera. Even his less successful videos now pull in audiences two or more times the size of the Super Bowl viewership. If you were born too early, don’t have kids, or simply aren’t online enough, it’s possible the name MrBeast means nothing to you. But to people of a certain generation, this strange, goateed content savant is more famous than Tom Hanks.

If you leave aside the practicalities of US presidential age requirements – the rules require hopefuls to hit 35 before running – the idea of a MrBeast