The Real Person of The Year

The Real Person of The Year

Nick LaForge, Writer

In 2019, Time’s Person of the year was 16-year-old Greta Thunberg. She earned this title by working on climate change and being an outspoken environmental activist in Sweden. She is known for her public speaking on the climate crisis and she even organized a school strike on this issue. Although what she did was remarkable, she, in my opinion, would not be my Time Person of the Year. 

A man by the name of Jimmy Donaldson, also known as Mr. Beast on social media, is much more deserving of this honor. Mr. Beast raised up to $20 million dollars to plant trees, donated a Dominos delivery guy a house that was fully furnished, bought everything from a grocery store and gave it to a food bank, and even opened up his own car dealership and gave away multiple cars to people  in need- for free. As well as this, Mr. Beast often goes to restaurants and tips waitresses thousands of dollars and has also given homeless people thousands of dollars to help them along their tough journey.  

Due to his massive following on social media, Mr. Beast is able to reach out and spread awareness to millions of people across the world and inspire others to hopefully join him on having an impact on the world who may have an impact on the world someday. He once tweeted out to his fans to meet at the Springfield Station in Oregon at 7 a.m. and the next day, hundreds of teenagers showed up to help plant trees. Most people would struggle getting even remotely close to this amount of people, but Mr. Beast did it no problem. Him and a hundred fans took a bus to an empty field and spent the whole day digging and planting trees. He posted a video of this and racked up 32 million views, which eventually led to other influencers donating to the cause

When people are asked about who Mr. Beast is, they often say he is a YouTuber; however, he is much more than that. Perhaps what is best about Mr. Beast is that his seemingly singular acts of kindness speak to larger issues in the world: the environment, homelessness, and humanity. He puts an insane amount of effort into his videos to help make the world a better place.  Mr. Beast truly deserves to be named the 2019 Time Person of The Year because of all the achievements he has earned this year and many more to come.