A clip of Will Smith slapping Chris Rock at the 2022 Oscars has surpassed MrBeast’s record for the most views on a YouTube video in a single day.
The entire world was stunned on March 27, 2022, when actor Will Smith walked onto the stage at the 94th Academy Awards Ceremony and slapped comedian Chris Rock across the face.
The brawl appeared to have erupted after Chris Rock made a joke about Jada Pinkett Smith’s outfit for the evening, which he compared to that of movie heroine GI Jane. After returning to his seat, uncensored audio from the incident shows Will Smith yelling at Chris Rock to keep his wife’s name out of his mouth.
The slap went viral almost immediately on social media, spawning hundreds of memes in the process. While the entire incident was completely unexpected at such a prestigious event, no one expected Smith’s viral slap to also break a major YouTube record.
Jimmy ‘MrBeast’ Donaldson, a YouTube star, set a new record for the most views on a non-music or trailer video in a 24-hour period in November 2021. The video in question was his highly anticipated rendition of Netflix’s Squid Game, which received a mind-boggling 42.6 million views in just one day.
Not only that, but it was also the fastest non-music video to reach 100 million views, achieving the feat in just four days. MrBeast also set a new record for the most subscribers gained in a single day as a result of his viral project, gaining over 1.4 million in just 24 hours.
One of MrBeast’s records, however, appears to have been effectively quashed as a result of Will Smith’s slap at the 2022 Oscars. After only 16 hours, a video of the altercation posted by The Guardian has racked up over 48 million views.
MrBeast has yet to respond to the change in the rankings, but his YouTube records are still climbing; in fact, if his current subscriber count continues to rise, he’ll overtake YouTube king Felix ‘PewDiePie‘ Kjellberg.