Arab influencers are making it big on Instagram, YouTube and other social media platforms. With TikTok, Arab voices are also making it big especially in the comedy scene. From an Egyptian mother and daughter duo whose interactions garnered millions of views to a Syrian Ex-Marketeer who likes to take on hilarious female characters, watching these Arab Tik Tokers will definitely make your day just a little bit better.
@maisvault
From going through 4 years of medical school to working as a patent lawyer in NYC to starting her own jewelry business, Mai had a very long career journey before coming to the realization that blogging is her true passion.
Making her debut in YouTube, her videos gained popular demand because of the hilarious dynamic relationship she has with her mother. Dubbed “Mama Wafaa”, Mai’s mother exemplifies a traditional Egyptian mum in every sense from her excellent culinary skills in the kitchen to her mastery at throwing flip flops, better known as “shib shib” in Egypt, in order to reprimand her daughter. Mai, on the other hand, is quite the opposite. She’s known to be dramatic, loud and sassy as she constantly manages to get on Mama Wafaa’s nerves whether she’s gushing about her crush, Massimo from 365 days, or annoying her mum in the kitchen.
Overtime, the duo became an internet sensation which allowed Mai to branch out especially once she entered the TikTok sphere, reaching 1.9 million followers. Now her most recent content focuses on her relationship with her new Jamaican Muslim hubby Max, her life at North Carolina and her super entertaining trips to Jamaica as she chills, attempts to cook and relaxes with Max’s family. What’s great is that Mama Wafaa loves Max. He’s a great partner who adores Mai’s sense of humor and bubbly energy. Some of their cutest videos include “Acting like my Wife part 1” were Max hilariously nails mimicking Mai’s behavior and “Teaching Max Arabic” were Mai teaches Max some Egyptian and totally swoons over him attempting to speak in Arabic.
@khaledandsalama
Known as the UAE’s comedic Arab couple with over 4.8 million followers on TikTok, Khaled and Salama have been making hilarious, snappy content about everything from their relationship to their travels and everything in between. Meeting through an arranged marriage, they ended up falling in love.
Their relationship is considered the heart of their content. In their videos, they depict all aspects of an Arab married couple in love: the good, the bad and the hilarious. Many of their videos revolve around Khaled giving and enacting marriage tips to help his audience learn how to navigate a relationship. In one of the videos, Salama barges onto Khaled, stating she’s upset with him and Khaled diverts her attention by exclaiming that she smells incredible. The fact that he noticed she bought a new perfume made Salama forget why she was reprimanding him in the first place. Once Salama left, the video ended with Khaled confidently putting on a pair of sunglasses with a backtrack of an Eminem song playing in the background to comedically show how to effectively diffuse an argument. Other than that, the couple also do a hilarious series consisting of the two of them unapologetically roasting each other.
Its not all bad though. There’s also the emotional lovey dovy aspect of their relationship like the adorable video they posted of Khaled failing miserably to serenade Salama as he attempts to sing her Ed Sheeran’s “Perfect” during their trip to the Maldives. His vocal chops weren’t so great making the video quite hilarious to watch especially as the couple end up giggling at the end of the video.
@mohanadalhattab90
Similar to Mai, Mohanad’s career journey was far from where he is today. Initially studying Marketing and Management, Mohanad made a dramatic career shift when he realized that what he loves to do is make people laugh.
Known to make hilarious snappy original sketches, the Dubai-based Syrian content creator with over half a million followers on TikTok would don a wig and transform into a series of personas of his own creation. He would play around with different accents such as Egyptian, Syrian and Khaleeji to bring his characters to life.
Other than his characters, some of his most hilarious content would involve the famous billionaire, Oprah. He would pick out random videos of Oprah on the internet and then would dub in his voice to replace Oprah’s. His commentaries would be hilarious as the video would be of Oprah, for example, watering her plants while you hear Mohanad’s voice as he chatters and babbles about very random topics that you would never expect to come out of Oprah’s lips. He would also speak in a hilarious female voice with a sassy attitude, adding more humor to the already hilarious video.
@mohammedtarek
A TikTok comedian with 4.3 million followers, Mohamed Tarek is someone who places a lens on the hum drum as well as comedically frustrating moments of our day to day lives. As an Egyptian medical student, many of his videos revolve around how exhausting his degree is and how he desperately craves a vacation. Yet, he also complains about many other common daily annoyances. In one of his videos, he complained about a common relatable scenario many of us have been through. He said that on days he looks disheveled, wearing sweat pants and flip flops and heading out to buy a few groceries, he’d stumble into hoards of people he knows. Yet, on days he’s dressed up and looks good, its as if people completely disappear and he doesn’t stumble into anyone. In the video, he keeps hilariously exclaiming “Why me, God, why me?”.
Despite this, not all his videos are seeped in general annoyance. He does also have videos where he would get hyped up and excited about certain happenings in the Middle East. For example, he recently posted a video about Al Abaik finally opening in Egypt and him feeling ecstatic about getting to finally eat his favorite childhood meal of fried chicken.
His videos also depict the beauty of Egyptian humor like his hilarious spin-off of famous western songs like Dua Lipa’s IDGAF wherein he’d sing the song in an Egyptian accent coupled with dramatic hand gestures and sound effects.
@Keemokazi
Known as Kareem Hesri, he’s a Syrian American musician and social media star with a hefty 29 million followers on TikTok . His videos revolve around the daily shenanigans of his day to day life. Similar to Mai, he is most famous for his hilarious interactions with his mum. Yet, in comparison to Mai, he relies on ingenious pranks to rile his mum up whether it be him pretending to break his fast by chugging a bottle of water in front of his mum or unapologetically spilling water on her face. She would then either chase him around the house to give him a good smack or yell out her signature phrase “What the heck Kareem!”. Despite how much he annoys her, they do have many cute moments together like their hilarious “Ramadan song” where Kareem belts out an original rap song about the holy month as his mum sways and vibes behind him in a flashy limegreen prayer scarf, intermittently yelling out ‘Yeah!”.
Kareem’s videos aren’t just focused on his mum but also include his four sisters and his adorable, puppy faced dad. With his family content, he would sometimes do rating videos wherein he would rate each of his family members as they try out a certain activity. For example, in one video he rated each of them singing out Willow’s ‘Wait a Minute.’ In another, he rated their outfits during an Arab wedding. As with his mum, he also loves to prank his family especially his younger sister. In one his videos, he went to pick her up from school and then purposely locked the door whenever she tried to exit the car. To his utter satisfaction, this totally riled her up.
So, be sure to check out these TikTokers to get a good laugh.
Don’t Forget: We Said This… Mai’s Vault; An Egyptian-American’s Comedic Attempts At Translating Arab Mom Logic