FunkyFrogBait left their career as a software engineer for YouTube. It paid off.

Content creation wasn't in the plan for Kali, better known by their online handle FunkyFrogBait.

Growing up a child of YouTube, Kali looked up to creators like Jacksepticeye, dreaming of making videos themselves. But as college and the job market took priority, that dream started to feel more distant, replaced by the pressures of real-world responsibilities.

Then 2020 hit. With more time spent indoors and the rise of TikTok, Kali — affectionately known as "Funky" by their fans — decided to give content creation a shot. The gamble paid off. Today, Kali boasts millions of followers across platforms: 2.8 million on TikTok, 340K on Instagram, and 2.72 million on YouTube.

At VidCon 2025, we sat down with Kali to talk about their growth as a creator and how they pivoted to full-time once they hit it big.

When did you start creating content?

I started in 2020 'cause I was bored, and TikTok was popping off. I was in this theater group in college, and we were doing a performance of The Oregon Trail, which was super funny. In that group, there was somebody who was scrolling TikTok, and I have a distinct memory of them turning to look at me and being like, "Oh, I think you'd do great on TikTok. You should just make some videos."

And did you start on TikTok?

I started on TikTok. A lot of the stuff that was on my feed was sketch comedy, which I was like, "OK, I've done musical theater. I've done improv in college. This is kind of a convergence of a lot of my interests. This could be fun to do, and it's what I'm already watching." I feel like a lot of people, that's how they decide to make something, there's something they're already naturally gravitating toward.

I moved from random shitposting on TikTok, getting a few thousand views here and there, just using random audios, to writing some skits.

Most of them didn't do well for a while, but then one would pop off, and it was like, OK, what made this one work and not these? I kept following that formula of putting a sketch out and seeing if people liked the characters.

I did this series called "Nursing Homes in 2077." That's actually what I got the most well-known for. It was just a very simple concept: What are we gonna be like when we're in nursing homes one day? What little pieces of brain rot are gonna stay in our brains even after we've forgotten our grandchildren's names? That was the first sketch-comedy thing that I did that really popped off.

When did you migrate to YouTube?

I did that for a while, and it was really fun. Unfortunately, because of the nature of short-form content, and specifically the way that the TikTok algorithm works, it would be so unpredictable.

I would work really hard on a sketch, and it would get a few million views, and I would feel amazing about it. I would feel like this is the direction I need to go. I would do the same thing the next day and get less than 20,000 views. So it was just so up and down in a way that was so unpredictable that it started to get really discouraging. And I found myself posting less and less on there because it was just so much time spent on such a short video that would have very little payoff sometimes.

Then I was like, OK, I did this gaming channel as a little kid, I still like that type of content — let me try that. So I tried migrating my TikTok audience over to the FunkyFrogBeat YouTube channel, which was originally a gaming channel. I was posting myself; I would record myself playing a video game. It was impossible to move a TikTok audience over. TikTok has a very insulated platform.

Anytime you try to push out anything that even hints at presence on other social media, it immediately will lock it down and make sure nobody sees it. And once again, I hit a roadblock of just feeling really discouraged. I had like just this taste of like, "There is interest here, but I can't find it." I can't get this consistent community even though I'm having these little bumps of interest. I can't gather this audience into a single place and get that consistent viewership. And then over time, my personal consumption of the internet changed.

How so?

I spent most of my time watching gaming content. Then, probably around 2022, I started watching a lot of commentary creators—people who get in front of the camera and talk about weird things happening on social media.

I shifted my personal consumption of content, and I was starting to watch a lot more of that. And then one day, I'm scrolling TikTok, and this guy comes across my For You page. It's somebody who has convinced themselves and openly declared that they believe they are the reincarnation of Hitler. It's such an absurd thing that just came across my For You Page.

I'd had this idea of making commentary content for a while, but I didn't think that there was anything I specifically had to add. But then this was just one of those circumstances where it's like, "How is no one talking about this?"

People were reacting to it on TikTok, and they were getting like hundreds of thousands of views, but it hadn't migrated over to YouTube yet. I sit down at my desk, I prop my iPhone — I don't even have a tripod — and just sit and talk at my phone for a little over an hour.

I followed a similar formula to other commentary creators I'd seen, but I also was just like, I'm just talking and being weird and being myself. I'm writing dumb jokes. I'm doing little punchlines, you know? That video immediately got hundreds of thousands of views, which is like jumping from even millions on TikTok to hundreds of thousands on YouTube for a long-form video.

A lot of people who don't make content don't realize that views from different sites mean very different things. It was an immediate thing, and it was so unexpected. I actually almost didn't post the video 'cause I was almost done editing it, and I was talking to my partner at the time, and I was like, "Oh, I don't know, this is kind of stupid." And he convinced me to post it. It was such a cool moment of like, Wow, I'm so glad I did because it was an immediate yes from the universe that I'd been looking for — this is something that really works.

So I'm curious: What is your strategy now?

When I started out in commentary, it was more of a drama-focused angle because that was like a lot of commentary at that time. You're the underdog coming in, you're punching in all directions. You're making fun of people who are way more well-known in the space than you. And you're punching up at them.

But then my platform exploded so quickly that I realized that the dynamic had shifted. I was now, "Oh, here's this asshole with a million subscribers being mean to this person." That was a weird thing for me because in my head, I was still doing the same thing I was before. I had to recognize my position in this space had changed, where I have to be so much more cognizant of the fact that I am a lot more zoomed out now, not putting a magnifying glass on one specific person. Maybe there's a trend that I think is annoying or harmful, and I show you 20 different examples of people doing it rather than one person.

I had a hard time processing that for a while. I was like, "This is unfair. I'm the same person, and I want to be able to approach things the same way that I always have." But it's a two-way street, where it's not just who you are; it's what the platform feeds back into you.

And if the platform says, no, this is where you're at now. You have this level of responsibility, you have this level of influence, and you don't get to say I don't care. You have to recognize the reality of your situation. And personally, I've just felt mentally a lot better with that change. It's been good to be able to have a broader outlook and to feel a lot more proud of the things that I put out, because I do have to now put up things that I've spent a lot more time thinking through and researching, because of that extra responsibility.

Do I miss the days where I could just like punch in all directions and be an asshole? Of course. Because that's fun. That's really fun to do. But, also, I feel like the impact that I get to have now is so much greater, and the amount of good I'm able to do is so much greater. It's ultimately a good trade-off.

You have this great perspective that really gives you empathy when you approach the topic.

It's great to hear. That's what I try to do. I try to have a perspective of tough love. Even if I do have to show a specific example of somebody doing something that they should not be doing, I still try to come from the angle that I have nothing personally against this person.

I try to dig into the reasoning of why they're doing it and add extra context of like, here are the reasons why I think that this has a negative impact. Or maybe this individual person doesn't have that much of an impact, but they're a part of a larger trend that is kind of a problem. I don't wanna talk about somebody just doing something stupid. I wanna talk about a whole movement that I see online that is really concerning. It's a lot harder, but it's more rewarding.

Are you all self-taught on editing?

I've never taken any kind of cinematography or editing class. Everything that I do in that realm is self-taught or involves me begging a friend to say, "Hey, can you explain this to me?" Previously, I edited everything on my own, but this past year and a half, I have had an editor to help.

But my vision for my videos is very specific. Basically, how it works is I will write out my full video and write in the edits exactly how I need them to be. So even if I'm not physically editing, if you see a thing pop up on screen, a gag, or a cutaway, it's probably because I told the editor to do so.

So, I still have a lot of creative control over the editing. And sometimes, I still go back and edit because sometimes my vision is so specific, and for a particular topic, it's impossible to communicate it effectively to another person. I really felt for a long time that incorporating an editor would take away my agency and ownership of the content. But it was just a matter of finding somebody who understood my vision.

Has there been a moment when you realized this was your full-time career now?

That happened shockingly fast after the first commentary video. I had no sense of ad revenue or anything like that. There are a lot of assumptions when you're watching YouTube that every YouTuber is rich. I didn't know what views translated to when it came to income. The analytics take a couple of days to catch up to what you're actually gonna get paid out.

I was starting to do calculations, and I was like, "This is matching my current income at a job that, let's be honest, is significantly harder." If I keep getting this amount of viewership on each of these days, I'm going to start making more than what I'm doing at this job that I went to school for four years to do. I remember looking at the analytics tab and showing my partner, dumbfounded. I had to show another person, because I was like, "Am I crazy?" I've done the math, and this is actually doable.

I was a YouTube kid. I grew up watching all of these YouTubers come into their own, and I idolized that lifestyle so much, but I'd put it aside for college. I'd put it aside for more realistic avenues. In fact, I'd honestly shut off a lot of my creative passions completely to pursue this particular career path. I'd completely deadened myself in many ways to the things that really made me feel like myself, and to be able to look at the raw numbers and realize I could do content creation was amazing.

I worked as a software engineer for a telecommunications company. I got my boss in a meeting, and I was like, "They're gonna hate me. They're gonna be so mad at me." And they were actually so chill with it. They were so encouraging. They were like, "That's amazing, and if it doesn't work out for you, you can always come back and work here again. We love you. We really want this to work out for you." It was another yes from the universe — this is the direction, this is the path.

I feel so creatively fulfilled, and I've had so many amazing opportunities. It's been so good to know that this was the right path to take, even if it didn't feel like it at the time. It's a wonderful thing that I'm privileged to be able to do.

Mashable will be live at the Anaheim Convention Center this week, covering VidCon 2025. Check back in the days ahead at Mashable.com, where we’ll be talking to your favorite creators, covering the latest trends, and sharing how creators are growing their followings, their influence, and making a living online.