Jimmy Donaldson, aka Mr. Beast, is a man who got famous playing video games on the internet and has since leveraged that into a business empire built on charity stunts, YouTube videos and merch. He is now also a man who, in the wake of the Titan disaster, says had been invited to make a dive on the ill-fated submersible.
Only a few days after the Titan was confirmed to have imploded at the bottom of the ocean, instantly vaporising all five passengers, Mr. Beast tweeted:
“I was invited earlier this month to ride the titanic submarine, I said no”, he claims. “Kind of scary that I could have been on it”. He then shares a screenshot of what appears to be an iMessage he received, which is cropped but which clearly says “Also, I’m going to the Titanic in a submarine late this month. The team would be stoked to have you along”, with a further line of text appearing to say “I’m sure you’re also welcome to join”.
He doesn’t actually reveal who he was talking to in the messages, or whether the trip he was being invited to go on was the specific one that ended in disaster last week. Though which particular voyage he went on may not have mattered, since the sub had been so plagued with errors, mishaps and fundamental design flaws that experts had been warning about something like this happening for years.
Despite his claims, some folks are sceptical about the authenticity of the message. As anyone who uses iMessage regularly would know, a message that Mr. Beast received on his own phone shouldn’t be blue. This discrepancy has been pointed out by folks including The Verge’s Tom Warren, who tweeted “how did you manage to receive a blue message on iMessage?🤨”, while user @JUNlPER made a more blatant accusation—”why are you making this up”, to which Mr. Beast replied “My friend sent me the screenshot of when he invited me. Didn’t think to scroll up and screenshot our old texts myself”.
