“I want to put it on record that I didn’t move to L.A. to be a TikToker,” Connor Wood declares.
Also known by his @fibulaa handle on the platform, where he boasts 800,000 followers, the UT-Austin advertising alum actually moved to Hollywood to work in marketing for the scooter company Bird. He only started posting videos to the app when he was laid off during the pandemic, “just ’cause I had nothing else to do.”
Those initial posts, mostly about unemployed, COVID-era life, took off, and Wood and a slew of other creators – like his friends and collaborators Brooke Averick and Kat Wellington – blew up for their conversational, transparent (yet still witty) videos. He’s now peers with viral sensation (and fellow Texan) Brittany “kombucha girl” Broski and friends with Cody Ko and Kelsey Kreppel, the husband-wife duo who are among the few enduring comedians of the Vine and YouTube reaction video era. Ko and his comedy partner, Noel Miller, even put out Wood and Averick’s Brooke and Connor Make a Podcast via their TMG Studios.
“This is crazy,” Wood recalls thinking when he met the internet stars. “Brittany, Cody, [and] Kelsey were all people I’d followed forever. I knew a lot about a lot of these people that I was meeting for the first time. They were meeting me for the first time; I had known them for years.”
Now the comedian levels up again, taking his comedy from the screen to the stage. Fibs and Friends, Wood’s first-ever stand-up tour, wraps Thursday with two sold-out shows at Austin’s Cap City Comedy Club. Zooming in from his parents’ house in Houston Tuesday morning, Wood offers an alternative for those without tickets willing to road-trip: That evening’s gig at the Houston Improv was rescheduled for June 11 as the venue is still without power following last week’s severe thunderstorms, and tickets to that show are still available.
Though he did some stand-up prep, like reading Judd Apatow’s comedy books and listening to compilations of observational humorists like Nate Bargatze, Annie Lederman, Liza Treyger, and Daniel Tosh, Wood says his experience coming up with bits for TikTok helped him transition into writing his own material.
“[My] videos are just 60 seconds of [jokes]. It’s just a really condensed stand-up set,” he explains. “So if you take the punchline that you’ve posted and just build out from that, you already have the end of the joke.” Repeating that process, the comedian slowly built those 60-second bits into an hour-plus set.
“It’s a really big TikTok, kind of,” he says of his routine.
Wood’s sizable internet following means the tour’s got a built-in audience, even in cities he’s never visited. “They’re welcoming me in,” the comedian says of his crowds. “I have this little community in Nashville, or Philly, whatever.” Even better, having fans of the pod in the crowd means “a lot of people know enough about me where I don’t have to set up the joke as much. I can just be like, ‘My mom,’ or ‘My dog,’ or ‘My landlord,’ and people know the backstory,” he says. “[I’m] really lucky there. I have a really unique position.”
When asked which old Austin haunts he’ll visit when he returns to town this week, the 27-year-old laments, “My life is just weddings and shows right now,” so he won’t have time to do a proper tour of his old stomping grounds before he heads to a ceremony this weekend. He was in town last weekend (yes, for another wedding), and confirms his preppy frat-boy vibe when he reveals he hit up the upscale West Second Street BBQ restaurant Lamberts and West Lake Hills-located Texas Honey Ham Company.
“I need to come back, get at least a week in, and do all my hikes, do all my swimming, do all my eating,” Wood says. “I did plenty of drinking [last time]. But I’ll get some more barbecue in.” He teases more Texas shows in the future, though, so he’ll get another shot.
“This is just the beginning,” he says.
This article appears in May 17 • 2024.
