Perhaps the single largest mass-truancy event in Australian history took place in front of the Sydney Opera House on Wednesday, when thousands of school-aged kids gathered to see MrBeast in the flesh.

If you find that sentence incomprehensible, or fear it is the fulfilment of some prophecy from the Book of Revelations, you’re far from alone. Which is remarkable because MrBeast probably has the largest audience of anyone in the world. I’m not exaggerating.

Thousands of fans flocked to the Sydney Opera House to see Youtuber MrBeast in person. Credit: Getty Images

He is, right now, the biggest YouTuber on the planet. He has nearly 300 million subscribers: I hesitate to give a more precise figure because he adds about half a million every day, so whatever I write will be out of date before it is published. His most watched video is a real-life (though far safer) recreation of the Netflix smash Squid Game. MrBeast’s version has 624 million views: comfortably more than double what Squid Game itself could manage – and it’s the most watched show in Netflix history. MrBeast’s more standard fare videos routinely surpass 150 million views. For context, about 120 million Americans watched the Super Bowl this year, and roughly 70 million watched The Beatles perform on The Ed Sullivan Show in 1964.

And yet, every news story reporting on his Opera House event had to explain who he is because it couldn’t presume such knowledge in the audience. I’ve just devoted two paragraphs to it here.

Which leads me to ask what must surely seem like an absurd question: is MrBeast famous? And to venture an even more absurd answer: not really, no.........

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