YouTube Megastar Mr. Beast Explores Giza, Asks about Ancient Astronauts

​This weekend, Jimmy Donaldson, better known as Mr. Beast, posted a 21-minute YouTube video documenting the 100 hours he spent at the Giza pyramids with the permission of the Egyptian government, which closed the site for his video shoot. Donaldson toured the pyramids, the Sphinx, and the associated temples with the help of Ramy Romany from Ancient Aliens and Zahi Hawass and he repeatedly referenced the ancient astronaut theory and/or a lost civilization in discussing the pyramids.

​Donaldson’s video was about what you’d expect from a bunch of YouTubers running around an archaeological site. It contained nothing surprising to anyone who has seen a documentary on the pyramids, though that audience and the Mr. Beast audience probably have little overlap. Donaldson kept qualifying archaeological claims about the pyramids as tombs with words like “may have been,” but ultimately he admitted to seeing no evidence of aliens.
 
Romany, who has been a regular on Ancient Aliens for years, was still more adamant that no aliens were involved in the construction of Giza, shutting down Donaldson’s questions. (I’d call them jokes, but he is so monotone and personality-free that I have a hard time identifying when he is being serious.) It was an interesting choice of Romany, given his regular Ancient Aliens talking head gig.
 
Donaldson stopped several times during the video to promote a new line of Mr. Beast-branded toys. The Egyptian Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities promoted the video on social media, calling it “a must-watch historical exploration.”

As of this writing at lunchtime Monday, the video had 67 million views, which is 100 times the size of the last reported audience for Ancient Aliens on the History channel and 30 times the size of the audience for Ancient Apocalypse on Netflix. Imagine if Donaldson and his platform had simply left out the aliens and Atlantis, which, even after being dismissed, nevertheless got more exposure from Mr. Beast than every cable and streaming pseudo-documentary.

UPDATE: Zahi Hawass said that he required Donaldson to reject the ancient astronaut theory in order to secure his participation, thus accounting for the odd waffling on ancient astronauts in the video. Meanwhile, a few days Donaldson released his video, he silently changed the thumbnail from a sober image of the pyramids to a pseudoscientific illustration of discovering the mummies of a lost race of giants.