- I accidentally became a meme and this is that story.
My name is David DeVore, but you may know me
as "David After Dentist".
Is this real life?
- My name is also David DeVore
and I'm the dad who recorded the video.
- This all started in 2008.
My life was pretty normal, you know, just school,
sports, friends, seven-year-old thing.
- The reason David had to have the surgery was
because he had a condition called hyperdontia,
which is just an extra tooth.
It's more common than you think.
David's was up in this general area,
but it was headed toward his sinus cavity
and that was gonna cause big problems in his teen years.
- I was pretty nervous
because I had never had surgery before.
Growing up, I loved watching those crazy ER horror stories.
So, that probably didn't help.
- The reason I wanted to record is to be able
to show David afterwards, you know,
his anxiety before and after and how it wasn't so bad.
Are you nervous?
- Yes.
- [David] Yeah?
- Yes.
- You know, this surgery was not your
typical wisdom tooth being removed.
Just the regular laughing gas or nitrous oxide
was not gonna cut it, so they had to use ketamine.
- And I remembered them telling me to count backwards
from 10.
I remember thinking, there's no way I'm not going
to make it to one.
And then I don't remember getting past eight.
- They took me back into the procedure room
and you could just tell David was, he was out of it.
I've seen drunk people and that was pretty.
He was like, "Hey, Papi."
But he kept pointing at three people, you know?
I love you, Papi. I love you, Papi.
I love you, Papi.
- I remember being really blurry.
They were just carrying me to the car and being lifted up.
- You know, ketamine is a incredibly strong anesthetic.
- I'm okay.
- It has side effects.
- I feel funny.
- You know, double vision.
- You have four eyes.
- You know, deep existential experiences.
- Is this real life?
Why is this happening to me?
- It's okay, bud.
Stay in your seat.
(David yelling)
I think he just finally just accepted it
that this was his life right now.
- After the surgery, I basically got to go home
and watch "Star Wars" and eat ice cream.
It was a pretty good day, after that first part.
- I knew I'd captured something.
And when we all saw it, we're just dying laughing,
rolling on the floor, literally.
I didn't post the video right away.
It was actually a year later.
Posting the video was really just more out of convenience
to be able to share it more easily with family and friends.
I just wasn't thinking anybody was gonna see it,
so why not just make it public.
Posted it and on a late Friday night,
kind of forgot about it.
Played golf before the Superbowl,
and then we kind of started checking it on Sunday
and we had 10,000 views.
And we're like okay, what's going on?
By the following Wednesday, we were up to somewhere
between three and four million.
Then, it just started going crazy.
- It was a week and we were in New York
for the "Today Show" already, doing interviews, TV shows.
The word meme had like just been coined.
I just didn't think much past a lot of people thought
the video was funny and they wanted to talk to me about it.
- Back in the early YouTube days,
the ads partner program was like,
it wasn't any communication from YouTube,
it was just a little button to click on the side.
And I didn't know what that was.
Another YouTuber reached out to me and he basically said,
"Dude, you got to click that. It's a good thing."
And so I did,
but waiting a week probably cost me maybe $10,000.
- My life after was oddly pretty normal.
Kind of like disaster girl, I kind of have the double life.
Every once in a while I'm asked to be "David After Dentist"
for a few minutes.
I have not done any drugs since then.
That was definitely enough drugs for me.
Reality is hard enough.
I don't want to try and tackle
about another dimension of understanding the world.
But all in all, "David After Dentist" has been a blessing.
And I think my teeth look great.
(light upbeat music)