Profile
The Deadpan
That Earned a Billion Views
There's a neighborhood in Hamilton, Ontario called Goodfellow. It's not famous. It's not a landmark. It's just where a kid named Kurtis grew up after his family moved from Whitby when he was 12. Years later, when he needed a name for a world tour that would take him to Australia, New Zealand, Europe, and across North America, he named it after that neighborhood. That's the kind of move that tells you everything about how Kurtis Conner operates: specific, personal, and quietly funny.
Kurtis Matthew Kenneth Conner was born May 4, 1994, at North York General Hospital in Toronto - and yes, his parents named him after Kurt Russell. He landed on Vine in 2013 at age 19, the same year he did his first stand-up set. By the time Vine died, he had 350,000 followers and a habit of making things for an audience. He didn't panic. He just moved to YouTube.
The first few years on YouTube were part-time. Office job during the day, videos on weekends. Then one video hit 600,000 views in two days. He handed in his notice and hasn't looked back. What followed was a career built on a particular kind of deadpan - unhurried, precise, genuinely funny without ever seeming to try too hard. He took the commentary genre (then dominated by hot-take energy and manufactured outrage) and drained the heat out of it. His approach: make fun of things because they're funny, not because they're threatening. Point at the absurd. Let it breathe.
"Every week, I talk about stuff that I think is funny."- Kurtis Conner, describing his Very Really Good podcast
In 2016, before the YouTube channel was much more than a hobby, he self-released a comedy album called Cuppla Jokes. It hit #1 on the iTunes comedy charts and #6 on Billboard. He'd attended Humber College's Comedy Writing and Performance program. There's a version of this story where that credential is the anchor. In practice, the chart position is just a detail - the kind Kurtis himself would pause on during a set and say "that's crazy, right?" before moving on.
The podcast, Very Really Good, launched in 2017 and has run weekly ever since. He describes it as: "I talk about stuff I think is funny." That simplicity is the whole point. No high-concept framing. No industry guests (usually). Just the same voice you'd get if he was sitting across a table from you. Over the years it's become one of the more reliable comedy podcasts in the independent space - not because it pivots or chases trends, but because it doesn't.
By 2019 he was opening for Danny Gonzalez and Drew Gooden on their We Are Two Different People Tour. That same year, he raised $26,000 for the domestic abuse support organization loveisrespect, making his community do something tangible with its attention. These two facts coexist without irony: he's good at the internet and chooses to use it well.
The comedy specials came in quick succession. Keep Busy in 2023. Then PYTHON in 2024 - a full special posted free on YouTube, described as all the jokes that didn't make the final Goodfellow World Tour setlist. The tour itself ran across North America, Australia, New Zealand, and Europe. The word "Goodfellow," meaning the Hamilton neighborhood, suddenly carried a geography it never expected.
Also in 2024: a Crave original series called St. Bulges Day, a collaborative music track "Last Night" with Danny Gonzalez released under the duo name Fox Szn, and participation in the Creators for Palestine fundraiser. It was a dense year even by his standards.
He married Jenna Allard in Tuscany in October 2022. They have a dog named Kiwi. He's described himself as agnostic and grew up partly in Whitby, partly in Hamilton - a very Canadian biography that somehow produced one of YouTube's most recognizable comedic voices.
Lindsay Dodgson of Insider called him "one of YouTube's most popular commentators." He probably finds that description mildly embarrassing, which is more or less the point. His comedy works because the self-awareness is real, not performed. He's not playing someone who doesn't care about being liked. He just actually has better material than that requires.
"I feel like this is what talking to me is like."- Kurtis Conner, in a bit about his own stream-of-consciousness style
The achievement list is real and verifiable: a billion views, a #1 album, a world tour, a free special, and a weekly podcast that keeps running because he wants it to. What makes it unusual is that none of it seems to have changed the register of the voice. He still sounds like someone who thinks something is funny and wants to tell you about it. After more than a decade online, that's harder to maintain than any chart position.