Today we’d like to introduce you to Devan Costa.
So, before we jump into specific questions, why don’t you give us some details about you and your story.
I grew up loving comedy my entire life and became obsessed with the late, great Patrice O’Neal during my high school years. I’ve never had a clue what I’m supposed to do with my life other than something in the comedic realm so a few years after high school, I started making comedy videos to avoid having to do stand up. My first video was a parody of “The Joe Rogan Experience” podcast which I would listen to as a young loser working a sign holding job (literally just stood on a corner holding a sign) I made the video on a whim expecting absolutely nothing but woke up the next day to find out Joe Rogan himself had commented on it and retweeted it. That gave me a big boost of confidence to simply know I had a few people watching my YouTube and could create more videos and see what people thought of them. I’m very passionate about people I love and the early days of my channel reflect that. I made a fan video about Kendrick Lamar and his record label and Kendrick actually retweeted it along with the rest of TDE which was another incredible boost of confidence.
From then on, I started making tons of sketches and original video ideas and garnered a small but enthusiastic following on YouTube. Then around 2014, I started doing stand-up and ruined my life. YouTube slowly started changing algorithms around and making it difficult for subscribers to even see new content. I loved stand up for the first few years and made a lot of friends but the longer it went on, I realized it was an exhausting, mostly thankless pursuit and that each day of my life, I was choosing to surround myself with a mentally ill community. I actually feel like I summoned the pandemic because before it happened, I was constantly going to comedy shows or open mics and thinking to myself “someone should make this illegal.” And then it really happened!
I think Covid is the best thing to ever happen to stand up comedy. I’m not even trying to sound bitter. I think during the comedy boom, a lot of normal people with a thirst for attention started doing it and felt generally threatened and uncomfortable with authentically funny people so they gaslit the industry and public into changing the definition of comedy to fit the parameters of their own mediocrity. A hard reset is what stand up needed and I’m excited to see what it looks like in 5-6 years. I continue to make comedy videos on YouTube and have gravitated towards Twitter more recently because it seems it’s the only place people are (as reductive of a platform as it is), I run a podcast called “Hate That Podcast” and am supposed to be in a movie next year but knowing my luck I will be drafted into WW3 the day before filming begins.
We’re always bombarded by how great it is to pursue your passion, etc – but we’ve spoken with enough people to know that it’s not always easy. Overall, would you say things have been easy for you?
I would say it’s been a chaotic road that’s made me question many times whether or not we truly live in a simulation.
We’d love to hear more about your work and what you are currently focused on. What else should we know?
I am most proud of my comedy sketches and writing. They seem to be the connecting tissue for like-minded people I am proud to be friends with. I think I specialize in depicting accurate representations of good and bad things with a generally silly point of view and I am most proud of the knowledge that certain people I greatly respect in comedy seem to appreciate me and that’s all I’ve been able to hang my hat on during some of my most depressed comedy days.
What were you like growing up?
I was the funny, vicious, fat kid. My entire personality throughout my childhood was that I believed Kobe Bryant to be a god and would fight anyone and everyone that had anything negative to say about him. I was literally known as the “Kobe Kid” I wrote essays about him and passed them around my school, I’d debate people at lunch about him and I’d fail classes for writing papers about him when he wasn’t the topic. I realized I was funny through discussing Kobe and the Lakers. People couldn’t believe how passionate I was about it and would eventually start laughing and I’d play into that.
Contact Info:
- Website: YouTube.com/KingBatProductions
- Email: [email protected]
- Instagram: Devantrillcosta
- Twitter: @DevanCosta
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