Kareem Rahma Just Wants You to Have Fun
PILOT: “Kareem, what’s your hot take?”KAREEM: “Oh, you think you're so clever. You'll never get it. No one will ever get it”PILOT: “Why is that?”KAREEM: “I got a lot of them.”PILOT: “Would you ever write a book of all your takes?”KAREEM: “I think that there could be a book. I just gotta find time to work on that.” He pauses for a beat, then: “I can give you a take. Let me see here. I have a list I'll get you. You'll be the first person to have my take.”
Kareem Rahma is an Egyptian-American comedian and media entrepreneur known for creating the viral social media video series Subway Takes, which has New Yorkers ever-prepared with a hot take, just in case they get asked. During the series, Kareem punctures the often-distracted atmosphere of the subway, asking his designated guest for their controversial opinion. However, he only asks for and comments on the hot takes of others, never dishes them. That is, until today.
In addition to Subway Takes, which has also just launched as a podcast, Kareem is well known for his series Keep the Meter Running, where he jumps in the back of taxi cabs and goes to the drivers’ favorite food spot—all while the taxi meter is still going.
Subway and taxi rides are naturally in-between moments—transitory, chaotic, often weightless stretches of untetheredness. But instead of getting swept up in the drift, Kareem, as he describes it, “locks in,” which he shamelessly credits to his “ADD.” For many, a subway ride in New York City is sensory overload; for Kareem, it’s a zen state. Paradoxically, Kareem transforms these liminal spaces into places worth spending time – or at least places worth holding your attention on your screen.
“It's not even that I find everyone interesting. It's just that I like talking, and I also like a challenge.”One challenge being cracking people open a tad deeper. The other challenge, dealing with his proclivity to car sickness in a job where he has to be very hungry and then very full in the back of a taxi.
At his core, Kareem is an entertainer. “I'm trying to keep things fun for me, selfishly,” he admits. As a kid, he was the class clown, always in trouble for talking too much. Now, at 38, his hobby is four-hour-long dinners spent in spirited debate among friends. Kareem finds center in the back-and-forth of conversation— stillness found in motion.
Don’t be mistaken though, although he’s a master-yapper, he isn’t always the extroverted, life-of-the-party. He describes himself as a wallflower in most large settings.
“If my wife would describe it, she would say I'm 50/50 [introvert, extrovert]. I have to be out, but I also have to be home. I do these little sprints where I'll go out, like four times in a row, but then I have to be home for two or three nights, and I'm just completely not up to seeing anyone or talking or being around people.”
Kareem moves fluidly between opposites—grounding himself in liminality, balancing his extroversion and introversion, and knowing when to dial it up or down. Take his quintessential oversized suit and sunglasses in Subway Takes; it may read like a costume, but he doesn’t attempt to play a character at all. He adds about "20% sauce," he says, to his usual self — extra facial expressions, amplified body language—to bring a little drama for the camera. Without contradiction, Kareem is simultaneously his authentic self and a performer, occupying the space in between.
He admits he'll say things he doesn't totally buy to stir the pot or make the take more interesting. And his now-signature "100% agree” or “100% disagree" response to every take is provocative by design — but not because he believes in absolutes. The format started accidentally. When filming the first episode, he instinctively blurted out "100% disagree," it sparked a great conversation, and it stuck. Kareem doesn’t actually believe in the scale he’s using; he thinks no one can ever fully agree or disagree with anything. But maybe that’s the point. By leaning into this binary, he spotlights how arbitrary certainty can be. The bit forces how his guests locate, or have to relocate, themselves and their opinion in real time.
Kareem is certain about one thing though: “I 0% consider myself a journalist,” he says. (He really has a thing for percentages!). “I mean, I love when people call me it, but I'm like you're so misguided because none of this is meant to be anything other than what it is. At the end of the day, it is what it is, and it's a guy having fun, which is me.”
Interpretations of Kareem's work as social commentary or reflections on humanity are just that – interpretations. Kareem isn't trying to convey any specific message to anyone about anything. Perhaps audiences’ urge to find deeper meaning in Kareem’s work stems from the guilt of screen time—justifying consumption by layering it with depth.
“I don't want my show to matter,” he says. “I actually want my show to be the opposite of matter. I want it to be completely stupid, and I want everyone watching it to also be in on the fun and the joke of it all.” He wants to be a dopamine hit, feeding into the attention economy rather than forcing a perspective. But in asking us to take his content at face value, Kareem is really just pushing us to live in the present. Escapism is clarity. Comedy is presence in disguise.
Life undoubtedly has changed a lot for Kareem since his online stardom skyrocketed. “I think the best way to cope with rapid change is to surround yourself and ground yourself with the people that have known you for a long time and that you still love,” he says. “When everything else feels like it's moving so fast, I kind of like to look inward, but not inward to myself, more like inward to the group of people that have been with me for a really long time.” Sometimes, finding your footing isn’t about where you are or what you do, it’s about looking to the human connections around you for guidance and comfort.
Beyond his close circle, one constant keeps showing up in Kareem’s life: New York City. While the city plays the third character in his work, he’s always toyed with the idea of living somewhere else, if only to try it out. It’s not a dream or a firm plan, just a thought he lets exist.
He imagines a year-long sabbatical in Paris or London. Maybe he’s “retired from Subway Takes,” he says, and he’s working in the movie industry, just hanging out abroad. “I don't know if that's actually what it's like when you're a famous actor, but Lena Dunham and Aziz Ansari are in London right now. What the hell are they doing there?”
But realistically, retiring from Subway Takes to jet-set off doesn't seem in Kareem's near future. For 14 years, he's been saying he'll move out of the city, but still, he stays. He loves New York.
Another thing Kareem loves: when his waiter at a restaurant writes down his order.
And there you have it, Kareem’s very first publicly shared hot take: a waiter must write down your order. “If I go to a restaurant and the server doesn't write the order down it really bothers me, because I'm looking out for them. They're doing so much extra work for no reason, like, memorizing is a lot of work. It's not going to affect the tip. You know what I mean? You don't need to be an overachiever.”
I challenged him back: “You know a good portion of waiters in New York City are aspiring actors, which means they likely do have a really good memory, because you know, they memorize lines.”
He didn’t love being on the other side, having his take challenged, but he was 100% right: can you ever be 100% on a hot take. They aren’t actually about certainty. They’re about tension, contradiction, and the messy middle where we all actually live.
Photography by Trevor Munch