A YouTuber who challenged followers to see who could touch their screens for the longest time has paid off the last four remaining contestants $20k apiece.
Earlier this week Jimmy “MrBeast” Donaldson created the “Finger on the App” challenge, promising the winner a cool $25k.
All the winner had to do was press an app on their phone screen — and never let go; last person still touching took the prize.
The game kicked off at 3PM ET on Tuesday June 30th. More than one million people started.
But by Friday, after 70 hours, a winner had still not been decided; so MrBeast upped the prize to $80k and split it between the last reaming four.
“Dear the four remaining contestants with your finger still on the app, I’m ending it here. Three days is insane!,” he tweeted. “You ALL win and will ALL receive $20,0000! CONGRATULATIONS!” (he later apologized for the extra zero)
The YouTuber has spent well over $100k on the stunt; as the number of finalists dwindled, he bribed some of them into taking their fingers off for up to $10k a pop.
On his twitter account he posted screengrabs of text negotiations with people in the final ten; one person was offered $5k, came back with a counter offer or $12.5k (presumably using his free hand on a separate phone) before finally settling on $10k.
The final ten were all live streaming their progress; here is the moment the tenth-last player was bought off for five grand:
Before that, a number of furious streamers had filmed the moments they lost the game by accidentally activating Siri:
To ensure the winner didn’t “just duct tape their hand to the phone”, Donaldson programmed the app to require players to occasionally move their fingers on the screen in a certain way.
Even when he made his cash offer to the final four, one of them suspected a trap, theorizing during his live stream that if three took their fingers off, only one would be given the prize.
But MrBeast assured his followers it was a four-way tie in the end.
Proclaiming his delight that human players had won the cash rather than a bot, he revealed afterwards that some cheaters had tried to pull a fast one.
“All 4 winners have been contacted and will get their money,” he tweeted. “Lots of people time traveled messing with their settings and are acting like they won. Don’t worry, we confirmed the actual winners thru the backend and they have all been contacted.”
