Published 00:27 IST, October 30th 2019
YouTuber Mr Beast accepts meme challenge of planting 20 million trees
Fan-made memes lead YouTuber Mr. Beast to plant 20 million trees. He has started an initiative #TeamTree which is supported by Elon Musk and Youtube itself.
YouTube personality Jimmy “MrBeast” Donaldson has reportedly planted a whopping 20 million trees after memes were shared tagging him on social media asking him to set a precedent. MrBeast is known for his philanthropic work on the video-sharing website. He has made a career out of posting videos on YouTube that are larger than life and equally fulfilling to watch. Jimmy has posted various videos ranging from opening a free car dealership to tipping gold bars to waitresses to starting the world's first free store to donating thousands of dollars to online streamers. Jimmy's fans first started the initiative as a meme, tagging Jimmy in thousands of posts and comments across Reddit, Twitter, YouTube, urging him to plant 20 million trees to celebrate his 20m subscriber milestone on YouTube.
Mr. Beast starts fundraiser #TeamTree to plant trees
Following this, Jimmy has now taken it up as his biggest project ever to plant 20 million trees with #TeamTree fundraiser launched whose glimpse can be seen on his youtube channel. Beast's video guarantees a tree planted for each dollar donated to the initiative.
Mr Beast plantation video goes viral
By the time of this publication, the video was viewed 25 million times since October 26. The Youtuber reportedly teamed up with former NASA engineer and current YouTuber Mark Rober who is also engaged in similar initiatives such as planting trees using drones. Yet the combined efforts were not enough for planting 20 million trees and the YouTuber and his volunteers could reach only 1,500. Yet the YouTuber did not give up and teamed up with the Arbor Day Foundation, one of the largest non-profit conservation organisations in the world - dedicated to planting and nurturing trees. #TeamTree fundraiser will contribute the money raised to Arbor Day Foundation. The fundraiser has proved to be a huge success in its initial days with thousands backing his project, including other big YouTubers such as MKBHD, The Slow Mo Guys, Jacksepticeye, Casey Neistat coming forth to carry forward his noble cause. Even Space X and Tesla CEO Elon Musk are invested in the project. YouTube too has lent its hands in the initiative with #TeamTree trending on it.
"We only have one earth and it's important we take care of it. Recently not so great things happening to forests and people just keep making fun of our generation for retweet activism and not doing something," Mr. Beast said in the video.
Updated 00:28 IST, October 30th 2019