We're skeptical.
Get Wrecked
Uber-famous YouTube influencer MrBeast claims that a friend invited him to join the doomed trip down to tour the Titanic wreckage — but the way he explained it has us scratching our heads.
Over the weekend, the 25-year-old influencer whose real name is Jimmy Donaldson tweeted that he "was invited earlier this month" and "said no" when asked if he wanted to take the plunge in the Titan submersible, which was on a quest to check out the Titanic wreckage off the coast of Newfoundland when it appears to have fatally imploded.
"Kind of scary that I could have been on it," he mused.
In the post, a blue text box shows a text message that does, indeed, appear to be an invite onto OceanGate's Titan submersible vessel.
"Also, I’m going to the Titanic in a submarine late this month," the text, purportedly sent from MrBeast's unnamed friend, reads. "The team would be stoked to have you along."
I was invited earlier this month to ride the titanic submarine, I said no. Kind of scary that I could have been on it pic.twitter.com/bQUnaRiczA
— MrBeast (@MrBeast) June 25, 2023
Submersible Blues
Anyone who uses an iPhone will recognize the black background and blue text messages as trademarks of the iMessage interface on Apple's phones — and that the blue text boxes generally indicate that you, or whoever took a screenshot, are the message sender.
Were that the case, it would mean that MrBeast typed out a text to make it look like he'd been invited, took a screenshot, and then posted it as if it were real.
The eagle-eyed users of Twitter also, of course, noticed this discrepancy — and the ever-resourceful YouTuber had a response for that, too.
"My friend sent me the screenshot of when he invited me," MrBeast replied. "Didn’t think to scroll up and screenshot our old texts myself."
Beyond the incredulity of this explanation — why didn't he just take and post screenshots of his own message, thread rather than ask a friend to do so? — there are other outstanding questions as well, including who the influencer's friend could be and where one or both of them would have fit on the tiny Titan submersible, which was at capacity with the five men already on there.
Following his line of reasoning, it's possible MrBeast could have been invited to join a different OceanGate tour of the Titanic wreckage than the one that ultimately ended in disaster and death, but given the blue text box of it all, we're not sure it's worth extrapolating that deep at all.
More on the submersible tragedy: A Visibly Upset James Cameron Compares Submarine Implosion to Sinking of the Titanic
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