Jimmy Donaldson, better known as the YouTuber, media personality and businessman MrBeast, sits surrounded by the $5 million top prize being offered in the first season of the Amazon Prime competition show “Beast Games.”

Amazon-MGM Studios/Provided

A Bluffs native and social media influencer has survived a beast of an experience, though not with the $5 million he went into the adventure hoping to win from media personality MrBeast.

Braedon Sheppard, better known on social media sites as SheppardLOL — he has more than 216,000 followers on TikTok alone — was one of the 1,000 contestants on the first season of “Beast Games,” a competition series pitting contestants against one another each week to win a $5 million prize.

The game show series airing on Amazon Prime is produced and hosted by Jimmy Donaldson, a YouTuber, media personality and businessman who, using the pseudonym MrBeast, performs challenges and gives out money. He has 112.2 million followers on TikTok, an embattled social platform he has expressed interest in buying.

“That’s basically his whole persona, is giving out money in various ways,” said Sheppard, a 2017 graduate of Illinois College, where he majored in business.

Sheppard’s online presence falls under the category of lifestyles influencer, he said.

“I basically just share my opinion on things,” he said.

It’s a full-time job the Los Angeles-based Sheppard traces to his childhood.

“I made videos my whole life, since I was 14, starting in Bluffs,” he said.

He’s best known for his videos about the video game “League of Legends,” he said.

His TikTok page also shows videos offering his opinion on a variety of products, from cellphones to gaming keyboards to skin toner pads. It also includes a recent video, shot from the window of his home, showing the Hollywood sign in the distance to his right and one of the fires currently ravaging Los Angeles County in the distance to his left.

It wasn’t TikTok but Instagram that connected Sheppard to “Beast Games.”

“I got an Instagram ad on the final day to apply for the game,” he said, noting it was about 10:30 p.m., leaving him approximately 90 minutes until deadline. “I submitted an application — shot a short, 1-minute video — and two weeks later got a call from North Carolina, from the Beast team.”

That was only the first step.

After making the first cut, Sheppard and 1,999 other would-be contestants found themselves spending about a week inside Allegiant Stadium, home to the Las Vegas Raiders football team, competing in five challenges.

“The first challenge, we had to lift a 10,000-pound boulder and pull it up maybe 50 to 100 feet,” Sheppard said, noting the 2,000 competitors were divided into five teams of 400 people each for the challenges. “You can imagine trying to coordinate 400 people you just met into pulling a 10,000-pound boulder.”

The challenges weren’t purely physical; many — like the actual show — were psychological, Sheppard said.

“When I went in, I had no idea what was happening,” he said. “I didn’t know we were staying in Raiders stadium.”

Sleep also was hard to come by, since some challenges might happen in the middle of the night, he said.

“It’s not knowing when we should sleep or where we should sleep, or when we should eat,” he said.

Filming — because, yes, even the preliminary round was filmed — took time.

“We wouldn’t sleep until 6 or 7 a.m., and we slept on the ground in sleeping bags,” he said. “You’re with 2,000 other people from every walk of life. People are trying to establish leadership, screaming. We were pretty hungry — the meals were small.”

Contestants also were without their cellphones for the duration.

Sheppard compared it to being back in school.

“You have cliques, people taking leadership or not, sitting on the sidelines,” he said. “I had to work with these people.”

So where did Sheppard fit in among the various personalities?

“I’m more of a drifter,” he said. “With a large, large group, I kind of sat back and would wait for my moment to individually shine. I made a couple of friends at the start of the competition and we’re still really good friends now.”

Sheppard’s approach worked and he earned a spot among the 1,000 contestants moving on to the actual competition, which was filmed in Toronto.

“They were pushing us to our limits in Las Vegas,” he said. “By the end of it, you didn’t want to be there. But we were so happy we were, though, because it meant we would make it on the show.”

Sheppard, who was contestant No. 33 among 1,000, didn’t last long in Toronto. He was out on the third day of filming.

“We got that number through a competition that required us to capture a flag,” he said. “ I want to say I was a strong contestant, but the circumstances (of the game) didn’t allow me to get further into the show.”

Sheppard didn’t specify which of the early competitions led to his departure from the show. A YouTube clip of the first episode shows the first competition eliminating entire teams of 80 people for not being quick enough to convince a teammate to quit the game. Had Sheppard quit, his team might have advanced, but it would have been over for him. If no one on his team agreed to quit, the game would have ended for all of them.

That also is the style of many of the subsequent competitions on the show, which has found itself the subject of a lawsuit by some contestants claiming MrBeast and Amazon failed to pay minimum wage and overtime, failed to prevent both harassment and sexual harassment, and failed to provide uninterrupted rest and meal breaks. They are seeking class-action status for the suit.

The public relations team for “Beast Games” did not respond to a request for comment on the lawsuit.

Sheppard acknowledged the competition was challenging, but said he is taking away positives from the experience.

“I think going through it and making it as far as I did, I think it tested me to a limit I’ve not been tested to before,” he said. “I showed myself what I’m capable of outside of what I do every day.

“It probably sounds cliche, but whenever you’re taken out of your norm, it’s almost like going to war. You’re competing for something totally life-changing, whether money (or something else). It was a really odd feeling — almost dystopian. But I took away the fact that I can push myself further than I have before.

“I’ve always been a competitor. I’m confident that, whatever life throws at me, I’m ready.”