{"id":445,"date":"2026-06-10T10:41:00","date_gmt":"2026-06-10T10:41:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/cityrelocationnews.com\/?p=445"},"modified":"2026-06-10T10:41:00","modified_gmt":"2026-06-10T10:41:00","slug":"kareem-rahma-and-the-tyranny-of-web-video-shows","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cityrelocationnews.com\/?p=445","title":{"rendered":"Kareem Rahma and the Tyranny of Web Video Shows"},"content":{"rendered":"
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You\u2019re reading Infinite Scroll<\/strong>, Kyle Chayka\u2019s weekly column on how technology shapes culture.<\/em><\/span><\/div>\n<\/div>\n

Everything on the internet now is a \u201cshow.\u201d No longer can we consider selfies, pithy text posts, or even monologues on front-facing cameras as a universal medium of exchange. No: the successful new standard is the video series, a set of short-form clips, shot by multiple cameras, like a traditional television show. The shows tend to follow a repetitive format, which instantly becomes shtick. \u201cTrack Star\u201d is a game show in which celebrity contestants identify the artist behind a given song to earn increasing amounts of money. \u201cBoy Room\u201d follows its host, Rachel Coster, as she investigates, mocks, and then renovates the decrepit bedrooms of twentysomething men. \u201cSidetalk\u201d is a series of chaotic person-on-the-street interviews in New York, with participants\u2019 faces filling the camera\u2019s vertical frame. \u201cA View, from a Bridge\u201d has subjects pick up a phone mounted on a bridge and share an emotional autobiographical anecdote or lesson. These series and their ilk, hosted by accounts on TikTok and Instagram, have accrued millions of followers and become the successor to cable news and late-night talk shows as mandatory stops for musicians, actors, and politicians looking to self-promote. If the show is the medium, the clip is the message: an entire video shoot reduced to its catchiest few seconds, reaping the maximum amount of attention with the minimum of content.<\/p>\n

Read more Could Switzerland Become the First Country to Cap Its Population?<\/a><\/p>\n

One of the most successful of these shows is \u201cSubway Takes,\u201d created by Andrew Kuo and the New York comedian Kareem Rahma, in 2023. In each episode, Rahma sits next to his subject, whether established celebrity or opinionated rando, on the train, and asks them for their spiciest opinion, which they deliver and then defend. (Jennifer Lopez recently appeared and caused an online firestorm with her take that one must be born in New York City to qualify as a real New Yorker.) The formula has turned Rahma into a ubiquitous new-media figure\u2014the Subway Takes Guy, a beloved TikTok talking head. Now he\u2019s pursuing a new phase of his career, as something more like a traditional TV host, though the substance of what he\u2019s making has barely changed. Before \u201cSubway Takes,\u201d he had a different TikTok show, \u201cKeep the Meter Running,\u201d which showed him jumping into New York City taxis and having the drivers take him to visit their favorite places. In May, he revived that conceit for a series of twenty-ish-minute \u201cKeep the Meter Running\u201d episodes, uploaded to YouTube every Wednesday.<\/p>\n

Judging by the first five episodes, the relaunched \u201cKeep the Meter Running\u201d sits uncomfortably between old-style cable production and online-first video. Its credits cite more than twenty people, including producers, a mixer, a casting director, and a colorist\u2014not quite the D.I.Y. YouTube operation of yore. The show is narratively ambitious; social-media commenters have been quick to compare Rahma to Anthony Bourdain, a garrulous travelogue front man. Rahma, whose late father, an Egyptian immigrant, was a cabdriver, accompanies the drivers on anthropological outings to such destinations as a Cuban dance lounge, a Russian bathhouse, and a taxi-driver clubhouse. Each episode ends with a Bourdain-esque coda in which the host delivers a brief, pat conclusion: After playing soccer with Hanny, an Egyptian driver, Rahma says, \u201cNow that I\u2019m a father, I see my dad in myself.\u201d After partying with Homero on a double date at the Cuban lounge, he says, \u201cSometimes all it takes is a couple of passion-fruit mojitos, a new pink suit, and a stranger willing to teach you the merengue at lunchtime to remember that it\u2019s O.K. to be a little spontaneous.\u201d<\/p>\n

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<\/div>\n

To follow in Bourdain\u2019s capacious footsteps is no crime (and, if it is, many people are guilty of it), but Rahma is a surprisingly downbeat, reticent passenger, particularly compared with his teasing, provocative persona on \u201cSubway Takes.\u201d The editing of the show is frenetic, the better to hold a distractible YouTube audience\u2019s attention and provide fodder for clips, and as a result much of the dialogue comes across as choppy, with Rahma inserting quick punch lines. (Instead of commercial breaks, there are ads abruptly spliced in, at least if you don\u2019t pay for a YouTube subscription.) The premise wears thin; viewers don\u2019t learn much about the locations they vicariously visit. The stars of the show are the drivers, who recite their biographies in sound bites: Norman, who takes Rahma to a bowling alley, explains that he raised his younger siblings from the time he was nine, and that he met his now wife while participating in a bowling league. He is initially a staid presence but begins to tear up while recounting his childhood as Rahma listens from the back seat; then the emotion is undercut with a goofy scene at a \u201crage room\u201d in which the pair smash china and computer monitors. There\u2019s a thwarted, in-between quality to the proceedings: the show is not long or intimate enough to go very deep, and it\u2019s not always focussed enough to be funny. Rahma strives for a cinema-verit\u00e9 aesthetic, with footage sometimes shot on vintage digital cameras, but the show\u2019s style can\u2019t overcome the limits of its format.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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How much do we want the internet to be television? In the realm of user-generated content, Rahma is a great success story; his projects, produced and distributed independently with the help of the digital impresario Adam Faze, have broken through because of their concision and verve. But a good gimmick for social-media content doesn\u2019t automatically translate to interesting TV, a medium that many of us enjoy precisely because it doesn\u2019t live or die by an algorithmic social-media feed. In 2024, Rahma noted in an interview with Gothamist<\/em> that people often asked him why he didn\u2019t make a podcast. He responded, \u201cWhat if there was no podcast, and the clips were the podcast?\u00a0.\u00a0.\u00a0. Like, they\u2019re not even clips, they\u2019re episodes. Episodes are the clips are the podcast.\u201d This precisely describes the problem: In the absence of any coherent identity beyond clip generator, a show fades from the viewer\u2019s mind the second it\u2019s over.\u00a0\u2666<\/p>\n

Read more What Jill Biden Doesn\u2019t Say in Her White House Memoir<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Kyle Chayka writes about the relaunch of \u201cKeep the Meter Running,\u201d on YouTube, and how Kareem Rahma is trying to turn TikTok-clip fodder into full-blown TV.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":444,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[41],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-445","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-infinite-scroll"],"yoast_head":"\nKareem Rahma and the Tyranny of Web Video Shows - City Relocation News<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/cityrelocationnews.com\/?p=445\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Kareem Rahma and the Tyranny of Web Video Shows - City Relocation News\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Kyle Chayka writes about the relaunch of \u201cKeep the Meter Running,\u201d on YouTube, and how Kareem Rahma is trying to turn TikTok-clip fodder into full-blown TV.\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/cityrelocationnews.com\/?p=445\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"City Relocation News\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2026-06-10T10:41:00+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"admin\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"admin\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"5 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\\\/\\\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"Article\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/cityrelocationnews.com\\\/?p=445#article\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/cityrelocationnews.com\\\/?p=445\"},\"author\":{\"name\":\"admin\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/cityrelocationnews.com\\\/#\\\/schema\\\/person\\\/3e7ce0c0c60d21e12a5ac61fb2b786d4\"},\"headline\":\"Kareem Rahma and the Tyranny of Web Video Shows\",\"datePublished\":\"2026-06-10T10:41:00+00:00\",\"mainEntityOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/cityrelocationnews.com\\\/?p=445\"},\"wordCount\":1073,\"commentCount\":0,\"image\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/cityrelocationnews.com\\\/?p=445#primaryimage\"},\"thumbnailUrl\":\"https:\\\/\\\/cityrelocationnews.com\\\/wp-content\\\/uploads\\\/2026\\\/06\\\/56534d53f88ff520776365104652f071.webp\",\"articleSection\":[\"Infinite Scroll\"],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"CommentAction\",\"name\":\"Comment\",\"target\":[\"https:\\\/\\\/cityrelocationnews.com\\\/?p=445#respond\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/cityrelocationnews.com\\\/?p=445\",\"url\":\"https:\\\/\\\/cityrelocationnews.com\\\/?p=445\",\"name\":\"Kareem Rahma and the Tyranny of Web Video Shows - 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