From fan to friendly rival, here's how MrBeast's 10-year journey to overtake PewDiePie as YouTube's biggest creator finally paid off

America's biggest YouTube creator MrBeast has this week broken internet history by becoming the most-followed individual YouTuber in the world.

The YouTuber, whose real name is Jimmy Donaldson, dethroned Swedish-British creator PewDiePie, who previously held the title of most-followed YouTuber for nine consecutive years.

PewDiePie, whose real name is Felix Kjellberg, once seemed to be in a league of his own, with no other individual creator managing to come close to his subscriber count of 54 million back in 2017 — the next most-followed channel at the time was Chilean influencer Germán Garmendia, whose channel HolaSoyGerman had 31 million.

But in 2018, when Donaldson started to go viral on YouTube with his dynamic, high-budget videos, things started to change.

Donaldson, who this year alone has gained 24 million subscribers, has become one of the fastest-growing creators on the platform, ushering in a new age and style of YouTube content: while previously top influencers on the platform typically focused on lifestyle and vlogging content, Donaldson made his name by completing elaborate challenges and donating huge amounts of money in high-production, fast-paced videos.

Donaldson and Kjellberg are the only YouTube influencers to have ever surpassed the 100-subscriber mark. Here's how an online relationship and rivalry between them has panned out over the years.

While studying at Chalmers University of Technology in his native Sweden, Kjellberg launched the YouTube channel PewDiePie, ultimately dropping out of school to focus on making videos.

His videos were commentary-based and Kjellberg would make jokes while playing video games like Minecraft. Kjellberg gathered a large fanbase that called themselves the "Bro Army," and evolved his content, branching out into travel vlogs, Q and As, and satirical music videos.

It took Kjellberg just three years to become the YouTuber with the most subscribers on the platform. He took the number one spot from Smosh, a channel known for making parody songs and comedy skits, in August 2013 and they made a collaboration video to mark the moment.

But the quick rise and bright spotlight brought with it negative attention too, and in 2014 PewDiePie made the decision to disable the comments on his videos to tackle the influx of negative comments he was receiving, ESPN reported.

This didn't appear to impact the growth of his channel, and by August 2019 it became the first of its kind to hit 100 million subscribers.

Three years after Kjellberg created his YouTube channel, Donaldson arrived on the scene. Just 13 years old at the time, his videos started out as short "Minecraft" and "Call of Duty" play-along videos, similar to Kjellberg's original content.

Donaldson had big plans to become a top YouTuber on the platform right from the start. In 2015 when he had just over 8,000 subscribers he made a video that he scheduled to go live five years later, as a message to his future self.

In it, he said, "If I don't have a million subscribers when you see this video, my entire life has been a failure."

Donaldson experimented with a wide variety of content in order to reach his audience and attract viewers, and in 2017 he began taking on elaborate challenges such as counting to 100,000 and Reading The Longest English Word (190,000 Characters), an era that marked the beginning of his rise to superstardom.

During the charity live stream, Kjellberg said in response to Donaldson's donation, "Thank you very much MrBeast. I was wondering when you would show up." Donaldson clapped and said, "Eh, we made dad happy."

Kjellberg also called Donaldson the "guardian angel" of his channel and asked, "Where would I be without MrBeast?"

At the end of the video, MrBeast donated a further $10,000 to the charity.

After producing content for nine years, Kjellberg announced in a video that he was planning on taking a break from YouTube in 2019.

The content creator had previously taken at least two breaks due to stress, and in his video, he said that he was "feeling very tired" and wanted to let his fans know that he would be posting less frequently.

Kjellberg went on to post content more occasionally on his channel over the next year, and in May 2022, after revealing that he had moved to Japan from his previous home in Brighton, England, he began sharing vlog-style updates with fans on his life in a new country.

Over the course of 2021, Donaldson's views and subscriber count continued to skyrocket. He gained roughly 33 million subscribers that year, while Kjellberg gained 2 million over the same period, according to analytics tracker SocialBlade.

In September 2021, Donaldson made a guest appearance on "Impaulsive," a podcast hosted by influencer Logan Paul, to discuss his online success.

In the episode, Paul commented that Kjellberg must be "shaking in his boots" because of how fast Donaldson was growing, but Donaldson replied by saying that it does not seem Kjellberg is striving to produce content and maintain his position.

"He's kind of just not tried super hard. I mean, I still enjoy the videos, but he's pretty checked out," he said.

Donaldson added that he appreciates how "humble" Kjellberg appears to be, despite his large following.

"Anyone else in his position would be so arrogant, and it would go to their head," he said.

In a highly anticipated turn of events, Donaldson surpassed Kjellberg's subscriber count on November 14.

Over the course of the day, Donaldson's fans began tweeting that they were keeping an eye on Donaldson's subscriber count, waiting for the moment that he would become the most-followed individual creator in the world. (There are five non-influencer channels with more subscribers than Donaldson, including the Indian music label T-series, which has 229 million.)

Kjellberg is yet to publicly respond to the news and declined to comment for this article, but multiple other influencers have congratulated Donaldson on making YouTube history on Twitter.

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