Fumi Abe

I started when I was 24.

Oh, nice.

Like 12 years.

Nice.

I was just thinking about it.

It's a third of my life, which is a big... I almost don't even count the first third.

It's like zero to 12.

Brutal, absolutely brutal.

Oh, you were in New York.

I grew up there.

It's interesting because I'm...

I'm not that old, but I'm still old enough to have done stand-up before TikTok and stuff.

We were the last class of comedians to do that.

For a good, my first, I guess, six years, we were all just like, how do you get famous?

we didn't know like there was no way to do it no path there was no path unless you were like chosen to do like a Comedy Central half hour but even then it's like you do it and then like not it's not like the world changes for you maybe you're selling more tickets at the club I don't know but I don't know what the impact of that was like when you were coming up but that was like all that was it it was night half hour right gatekeepers

Yeah, like JFL and stuff like that.

Right.

And now it's just like the other way around.

It's like I think all the writers and the creators, we have like kind of all the power if you can, you know, amass your own audience.

yeah I I go back and forth on that like I do understand the importance of like trying to amass an audience because it gives you more freedom but I still don't really know how to like like I'm at this point where like if I write a banger new joke yeah