If you take a look at the most recent videos uploaded onto Zealous, it’s not uncommon to see them gaining more than a million views each. That’s a stark contrast from Matthew Doyon’s oldest uploads, many of which had a far lower ceiling of about 10,000 clicks or so.
What can Doyon attribute to that increase? Well, a lot of it came as a result of fellow YouTuber Jimmy Donaldson, aka MrBeast.
The multimillionaire YouTuber invited Doyon, along with three other at-the-time sub-100,000 subscriber creators, to compete on his channel. The prize? MrBeast would personally promote the winner’s channel, telling his millions of fans to subscribe to that person.
Well, it wouldn’t make sense to bring that up unless Doyon won, which he did. And in a single day, he gained more than 900,000 subscribers.
Now, years later, we see that more than four million subscribers watch as Doyon and his friends engage in a variety of fun challenges. Like, for example, attempting to stay hidden for an hour in a game from real police officers and members of the special forces. In another contest, they compete against each other to perform impressive acrobatic stunts they’ve seen in movies or video games. And sometimes, they’re just building hidden rooms inside their homes to see how long it takes for others to find them.
Doyon is clearly grateful for the opportunity he received from MrBeast. He’s thanked the creator many times for helping his channel, and he’s shown his appreciation in a variety of ways, such as when he launched a self-playing miniature piano into space while it played the MrBeast theme song.
Doyon is a Christian, and he makes references to his faith in some of his videos. And even when he doesn’t directly reference his beliefs verbally, a couple of the shirts he wears do.
Doyon was one of many YouTubers who helped promote #TeamSeas, an international fundraiser led by YouTubers MrBeast and Mark Rober to remove 30 million pounds of trash and debris from the ocean. The fundraiser ended up raising over $33 million.
Most videos showcase Doyon and his friends just having a bit of harmless fun. Occasionally, people outside the normal Zealous crew, from other YouTubers to interested strangers, are invited to join them.
And we’ll be the first to admit that his skills in acrobatics are impressive.
In one video, Doyon strips to his boxers to jump from a back deck down into a pile of snow.
People suffer minor injuries and light scrapes in some videos. In a popular sub-series on the channel, two people compete to pull off difficult acrobatic moves, and if someone fails, they’re punished with a hard slap on their exposed back.
When someone jokes that the loser of a challenge will be nailed to a board, someone yells out, “Nailed!? Like Jesus!?”
We heard one instance in an old video where the word “d-ck” was used, and we occasionally heard “crap.” Otherwise, viewers hear milder substitutes for harsh profanities, such as “frick” and “gosh dang.”
To be zealous is to be energetically inspired to accomplish something. And in the case of Doyon and his friends, Zealous is where they showcase that character trait. Sure, they’re typically just having fun and playing games, but each upload nevertheless comes with an objective and a whole lot of energy.
That being said, one old video contains a crude word, and another old upload briefly displays Doyon in his boxers. Still, with more than 200 videos and counting on the channel, it’ll be pretty easy to avoid those two.
Otherwise, I can’t imagine there’s much here that’ll cause you to flip—unless you count the many literal flips Doyon accomplishes on his channel. In that case, just make sure you’ve got a soft place to land underneath you.
Kennedy Unthank studied journalism at the University of Missouri. He knew he wanted to write for a living when he won a contest for “best fantasy story” while in the 4th grade. What he didn’t know at the time, however, was that he was the only person to submit a story. Regardless, the seed was planted. Kennedy collects and plays board games in his free time, and he loves to talk about biblical apologetics. He thinks the ending of Lost “wasn’t that bad.”
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