- YouTuber Kurtis Conner talked to Insider about his comedy career, calling out influencers for shocking behavior, and how it felt to hit 2 million subscribers.
- He came to YouTube from Vine, where he had built a following of about 350,000.
- He now has one of the most popular channels in YouTube's commentary community — creators who inform their subscribers about what's going on in the online world with added humor.
- He says he sometimes struggles to come up with new ideas, but his subscribers often help him out.
- "I just want to keep making stuff that makes people laugh," Conner said of his future goals, which include a Netflix special one day. "That's all I've ever wanted to do. So as long as I'm doing that, then I'll be happy."
- Visit Insider's homepage for more stories.
Like many popular YouTubers, Kurtis Conner made his way to the video platform from Vine. He built up a following of about 350,000 on the 7-second video looping app, but decided to give longer, more substantial content a go on YouTube about five years ago.
"It took a long time for me to find out what actually would work for me on there and what I enjoyed doing," Conner told Insider. "But it worked out. Thank God."
Conner, who is 25 and from Toronto, recently hit the 2 million subscriber milestone, which he called "insane." When he first started out, he was just making videos for fun while holding down a full-time office job at the semi-permanent tattoo company Inkbox.
"I'd be there for eight hours a day and then come home and then film and edit until super late, for months and months," he said. "But I enjoyed it and I wanted to just really try to do it and see what happened."
After putting out videos week after week, Conner's channel started to really pick up in 2017 when one video racked up 600,000 views in two days.
"That was crazy at that time and I was freaking out," he said. "And then once that happened I was like, 'Oh, now I have to really double down.' And so I just kept making video after video."
Conner decided to start doing YouTube full time and quit his office job, despite some trepidation from his mother. It was a time he said was "surreal but exciting" and he just had a "good feeling" about it.
"It was still pretty risky, and looking back at it, that was crazy that I did that," he said. "But I mean, I'm glad I did at the time. I think I pursued it full time at the best possible time."
'It's fun to make dumb stuff that makes people laugh'
Conner is now one of the most popular channels in the commentary community on YouTube — creators who tell their subscribers about what's going on in the online world while adding their own opinion, analysis, and humor. Other creators and friends of Conner's in this group are Danny Gonzalez and Drew Gooden.
In some of Conner's latest videos, he's tackled the notorious TikTok Hype House, Justin Bieber's desperate quest to get "Yummy" to the number 1 spot, and the existence of a bizarre convention for women run by men's rights activists, all with his signature deadpan delivery.
Some of his favorite videos to make are when he discovers a really bad movie because it reminds him of being younger and watching them with his sister.
"The fact that I can talk about movies and make fun of movies as part of my job is really cool," he said. "Commentary videos are a lot of fun. Just writing I think is usually my favorite part of it. I don't know, it's fun to make dumb stuff that makes people laugh."
Conner's whole career path has grown around this goal. He was a stand-up comedian before he started on YouTube, and he's currently on tour around the US and Canada.
Conner says his audience really helps him out
YouTubers often veer into comedy, but it's usually after building up a big enough following. Conner did it the other way around. He said it was an incredibly tough job when he was performing to people who didn't particularly want to see him, so it's nice to have his YouTube audience show up.
"I don't know why I did it to myself, but it's definitely gotten a lot easier," he said. "The first set I ever did, I was so scared. My parents were there for some reason. It is a bad idea, but I was like, I just needed people there. I don't know. It was weird. But it's much better now."
Making videos helps with writing jokes for stand-up, his podcast and YouTube videos keep Conner's creativity flowing. But coming up with new ideas is the part of the job he struggles with the most.
"I feel like I'm just scrambling all the time," he said. "But luckily I'm at the point now, like Danny and Drew, where we have people who send us recommendations to make videos about, whether it's a bad movie, a TV show, or a weird community on the internet or something."
Maintaining a relationship with their fans is a struggle many YouTubers have, and it only gets more challenging as their numbers grow. But Conner is still on the right side of that balance.
"I feel like for as big a number as it is, I feel really like close with them, as cheesy as that sounds," Conner said. "It's nice that we can have that back and forth when people are messaging me for videos and stuff. It feels more collaborative in that sense, which is cool."
It's not always easy to keep people laughing
Every now and again, Conner finds making people laugh more challenging. He said he can get in his head about uploading a video every week, because if he doesn't "everyone's going to forget about me and not like me anymore."
"I think every YouTuber feels that way, just in terms of like how the job is," he said. "My resolution this year I guess is to not stress so much about videos, when I'm posting, or how often, or how well they perform."
Another reason is sometimes the online world is just a bit bleak. In one of Conner's recent videos, he called out a disturbing trend where YouTuber couples would "prank" their friends into thinking they were in abusive relationships.
Conner said he was "blown away by the sheer insanity" of the video, and that it was baffling they'd posted it at all.
One of the creators, Sebastian Bails, ended up posting an apology on Twitter and was met with hundreds of comments telling him to donate the ad revenue to a domestic abuse charity.
"It was so dumb, he was like, people who want me to donate the money, I only made $93 on it because it obviously had limited ads on the video, because of the subject matter," Conner said. "So all the responses are like, OK, but donate the $90 then."
Conner realized he was having a hard time commenting on the video because it was so dark, resorting to "making jokes about his name sounding like balls" and "tripods looking like butt plugs."
'They're not living in the same world that we are'
Conner then decided to donate the money he made from his own video. He also followed up with an update where he pledged to fundraise $10,000 to the domestic abuse charity loveisrespect, and match it with his own donation.
His main reasoning was because of how sad he was that young children were watching videos like this and thinking it was acceptable, he said.
"The theory I think I have of those YouTubers and those people who live that sort of life, it's like they're not living in the same world that we are," he said. "They don't see that their actions have actual, like, real-world consequences."
The fundraising page ended up making $16,000 overall, so Conner made a donation of over $26,000 in total. He said this at least brought some good "to a s----y situation and s----y video."
"At the very least, I'm glad that that happened," he said. "We were able to raise that money even though he didn't donate his f---ing $93 or whatever he made."
In 2020, Conner said he's going to keep going the same YouTube videos he's known for, but he has ambitions for mixing it up a bit too.
"I definitely want to try doing different types of content instead of just me sitting in my room and talking to a camera," he said. "Because I like getting outside sometimes."
His most aspirational dream one day is to have a Netflix special, so he's also working on polishing up his stand-up to be the best it can.
"I would love to write like my own series or my own movie, but that's another thing that will happen once I move away from YouTube a little bit," he said. "I just want to keep making stuff that makes people laugh. That's all I've ever wanted to do. So as long as I'm doing that, then I'll be happy."
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