Kareem Rahma Has Childish, Horrible Taste in Desserts

Thanks to the coronavirus, comedians are now trapped at home like the rest of us, so we decided that while we’re all self-isolating, we’d do something a little different from our usual “Follow Friday� column. Instead of interviewing up-and-coming comedians we love on Twitter, we’re going live on Instagram every week to check in on some of our favorite people in comedy and get a firsthand look at how they’re handling the pandemic. So welcome to our new version of the column, now titled “Follow (From a Safe Distance) Friday.�

This week, I sat down for a virtual bicoastal conversation with Kareem Rahma (We Were Promised Flying Cars, TikTok, very unprofessionally eating M&M’s during our interview) about how he’s holding up in the pandemmy. He explained the themes behind his TikTok brand, detailed his pivot from entrepreneur to comedian to writer (shout-out to Brooklyn Comedy Collective), and joined me in a heated debate over whether those uncomfortably soft sugar cookies with the Technicolor frosting and rainbow sprinkles are actually delicious or not (they are repulsive, and I will die on this hill). He also revealed the story behind how he managed to secure his incredibly straightforward Instagram handle: “I remember the first day I heard about Instagram, and I just signed up and I just got @kareem. And, actually, when I was dead broke like three years ago, I was in a pinch and I literally hit up Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and several other Kareems on Instagram, and I was like, ‘Hi. I’m Kareem. I have the username @kareem. I will sell it to you for $5,000.’ They all said no.�

You can find Rahma on Instagram at @kareem, on Twitter at @kareemy, and on TikTok at @kareemrahma.