Yagga is a star on TikTok, but he’s just getting started: “I really have been dreaming about my television comedy debut since I was a kid.” Yagga knows what it’s like to be everyone’s very best friend. Well, not literally.
It’d be a bit of a heavy lift to maintain an intimate relationship with the 100,000 people who follow him on TikTok. But the comedian and content creator, best known for his inventive and wildly expressive point-of-view skits, does have a knack for dissecting the intricate politics of friendship.
It’s what took Yagga, 27, from a regular guy to one of the most recognizable faces on TikTok — paving a new way for comics to find success online.
Yagga’s skits are often recognizable by their premises poking fun at every kind of friend possible. They showcase Yagga out on the street, pouring his all into intensity into discussions about parties, ex-girlfriends, and arrival times. That description might seem trivial, but characters wear their hearts on their sleeves, and most importantly, Yagga wears his signature expressions — turning small interrogations about late-night dinners or house parties into tense, amusing negotiations.
Much of Yagga’s reach comes from his videos’ constant ability to leap platforms — often turning Yagga’s expressions or reactions into fast memes on social media. While Yagga knows this has helped his star power skyrocket, he believes his popularity is also thanks to his legions of queer fans, noting that they’re picking up on some of the central inspirations in his work. “I think there’s something theatrical about it. There’s such an amazing connection,” Yagga says. “It makes me think of my old days, when I didn’t put some things into practice. If you did theater as a kid and in high school, that’s where you’re going to meet the queer people. I’m campy. And the meme-ification of what I’m doing on Instagram isn’t my invention. Meme culture is the funniest because queer culture is the funniest. And a lot of what I’m doing is then, in turn, used for a lot of queer conversations online. I just love the queer community and I think there’s something to be said about a genuine connection there coming out [from the work] into the world.”
Growing up in Kampala, Uganda, Yagga remembers always wanting to be on stage, whether it was during summer camp or school performances during the year. But it was when he was allowed to have a digital camera, and then eventually a phone, that he discovered a love of editing. He made dozens of skits, posting them in spurts on TikTok. But when Yagga began putting his videos more on TikTok, sharing sketches, he hit algorithm gold. Now, five years later, Yagga is fresh off an internet-breaking ad as an advertiser for 1XBet and Coca-Cola.
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