section_path: Early life and education
section_name: Early life and education
paragraph_text: Early life and education
  
  James Stephen Donaldson was born in Wichita, Kansas, on May 7, 1998. He was mainly raised in Greenville, North Carolina. He moved houses often and was under the care of au pairs because his parents worked long hours and served in the military. His parents divorced in 2007. In 2016, Donaldson graduated from Greenville Christian Academy, a private evangelical Christian high school in the area. He briefly attended East Carolina University before dropping out. While at Greenville Christian, Donaldson played baseball as an outfielder for several years. After dropping out of college, Donaldson and his friends attempted to analyze and understand YouTube's recommendation algorithm to create viral videos. Donaldson recalled regarding this period, "There's a five-year point in my life where I was just relentlessly, unhealthily obsessed with studying virality, studying the YouTube algorithm. I woke up. I would order Uber Eats food. And then I would just sit on my computer all day just studying shit nonstop with."
  
  James Stephen Donaldson was born in Wichita, Kansas, on May 7, 1998. He was mainly raised in Greenville, North Carolina. He moved houses often and was under the care of au pairs because his parents worked long hours and served in the military. His parents divorced in 2007. In 2016, Donaldson graduated from Greenville Christian Academy, a private evangelical Christian high school in the area. He briefly attended East Carolina University before dropping out. While at Greenville Christian, Donaldson played baseball as an outfielder for several years. After dropping out of college, Donaldson and his friends attempted to analyze and understand YouTube's recommendation algorithm to create viral videos. Donaldson recalled regarding this period, "There's a five-year point in my life where I was just relentlessly, unhealthily obsessed with studying virality, studying the YouTube algorithm. I woke up. I would order Uber Eats food. And then I would just sit on my computer all day just studying shit nonstop with."