MESA, Ariz. – An up-and-coming YouTube star goes on scavenger hunts in Arizona waters looking for treasures.
“I think I’ll be doing YouTube for a long time,” said Dallas, also known as Man + River.
Dallas has 76,000 subscribers and, every week, posts videos of him scouring sites like the Salt River and Saguaro Lake.
“There’s a lot of things that you find a lot like phones and sunglasses,” he said, “but every once in a while you find something you never even considered the possibility of finding it.”
What started as a hobby with his friends and family quickly turned into an online sensation.
He’s found everything from GoPros, cell phones, sunglasses and keys. There are also the occasional “shock finds” like a military bag containing a gun.
“It was just in a bag,” he said, “and so I’m going through the bag and the last thing that I pull out is the gun and I just freaked out. It was kind of embarrassing on the video.”
What’s neat about the digital diver is he always tries to find the original owners like in the video where he met with a MCSO deputy or the ones where he gives back a lost iPhone.
“It’s cool because not only do you find stuff for yourself that you can’t find the owner too and you get a good portion of what you find,” Dallas said, “but then when you find the person that originally owned the phone, that even makes for a better story.”
His fans love following his quests. Every once in a while there is the occasional hater.
“People just assume that I’m faking it,” he said, “and if you go on my channel you’ll see comment after comment after comment of people saying, ‘He went and bought these smart phones and bought these sunglasses and bought these guns,’ or whatever and placed them in the river and then took a video and now I’m trying to make money on YouTube.
The adventures are his passion. He has a full-time job, is married and is a father.
When asked if he’d ever make the plunge and do this full time, he said, “I don’t know if I’ll ever do it as a profession… but then again a lot of YouTubers say that at this stage and then a year later, they’ve got three million subscribers and they have no choice but to just jump on board.”
To watch his videos and follow his journey, visit his Man + River YouTube channel.