Connor Wood Is Setting A New Pace For Himself

TikTok’s shutdown may have lasted just 14 hours (for now), but Connor Wood’s ban kept him off the app for two full weeks. The day before the platform briefly went offline on Jan. 18, the 29-year-old got a little too cheeky. “It was the end of TikTok, so I thought we could have a little fun,” he says. “I posted a video saying goodbye and thanking my followers. At the end, I turned the camera and the mirror behind me showed my whole butt.”

The video quickly racked up over 1 million views, but within an hour, it was taken down and Wood was blocked from sharing videos. “I thought, ‘OK, cool. A little bit of forced time off. Then I was like, ‘Wait, how long is this gonna be — am I in jail?’”

While many content creators have spent the time since the app was restored posting overtime in anticipation of a future, more permanent ban, Wood didn’t get out of TikTok jail until Jan. 28. In his first post back, he celebrated his return by showing off a Times Square Billboard promoting his upcoming tour.

Rookie mistakes and mooning incidents aside, Wood has used the app to cement his career as a content creator and comedian. His off-the-cuff videos range from retelling his latest coffee shop encounter to imitating the best angles for soft-launching a boyfriend. Since he started posting in 2019, he’s amassed over 860,000 followers on TikTok and nearly 340,000 on Instagram. Brooke & Connor Make A Podcast — his podcast with fellow content creator Brooke Averick — has nearly 100,000 subscribers on YouTube and five stars on Spotify. Even people who don’t regularly tune in will likely see viral clips of the duo on TikTok mispronouncing celebrity names or solving riddles with Ilana Glazer.

Wood began bringing his comedy to in-person crowds, and in August 2023, he launched his show Fibs & Friends. In 2024, he took his stand-up on the road, selling out over 70 shows. Now, he’s getting ready for the next stretch of his Fibs & Friends tour, beginning in March. This time around, he’s visiting nine new cities from Honolulu, Hawaii, to Omaha, Nebraska. Audiences at each venue can expect plenty of crowdwork and fresh material. “We’ve got a new show happening,” he says. “I wanted to challenge myself a little bit and write a new set.”

Despite his undeniable success, influencing doesn’t come naturally to Wood. “Some people are really skilled with it, but it’s not easy for me. I’m not too good at it,” he says. Just about five years into posting on TikTok, he says he’s “still not past” the awkwardness of filming himself in public.

This bashful attitude is a hallmark of Wood’s comedy. The one exception to his self-deprecation: Wood knows he’s good at stand-up. “On tour, so many people who are used to seeing me on a screen now are seeing me on a stage,” he says about his follower-laden crowds. “They're clenching their jaws, nervous for me. I’m like, ‘I got this. It's going to be OK.’”

As he gears up for another leg of the tour, he’s confident that it will just get better. “After every show, I'm always telling my mom, ‘That was my best show,’” he says. But that doesn’t mean he’s past having pre-show nerves. “My good luck ritual is just panicking the whole time leading up to the show. Then 20 minutes before it starts, I'm like, ‘Wait, you're good.’”

It takes everything in me not to be like, ‘Hey, I’m pregaming and going to dinner in a second — listening to “That’s So True” right now.’

Even without tour preparations, it’s a busy time for the Texas-born comedian. Wood is in the process of moving from Los Angeles to New York City. “I have been in LA since I graduated college. I’m just ready for a little bit of a change,” he says. “And then stand-up took my heart. I wanted to be somewhere more conducive to pursuing that.”

When we talk over Zoom, Wood is staying in a hotel room in the city while he tours apartments. “I have six apartments that I'm going to see today. I saw six yesterday,” he tells me. The search is not going well. “They all individually were the scariest place I’ve ever been.”

He’s also looking for a remote studio to record his podcast with Brooke Averick, who will still be based in LA. “We’re not going to skip a beat,” he says. They launched their podcast in 2022, and in each episode, they break down trends and pop culture, share hot takes, and give life updates. “It wasn't our idea to start a podcast,” he says. “One of my agents suggested it. And the first time we tried was really bad, but we were friends right off the bat.”

The easy chemistry and banter between Wood and Averick has their followers hoping for a friends-to-lovers story arc. (One fan edit shipping the two of them has over 100,000 likes.) Wood brushes aside that kind of fanfare and speculation. “She and I have never and will never, for lack of a better phrase, hook up,” he says. “But I am constantly setting her up with people and vice versa. We haven’t had a successful wingman-wingwoman situation yet. It’s something to look forward to.”

Dating in general isn’t a focus for Wood right now — much to the chagrin of those who have labeled him the internet’s crush or the fan who wrote, “This man just does it for me,” in his comments. “I’m not dating. I’m so focused on myself. I’m like an absent father to the dating apps right now,” he says. “I haven't been swiping, but I'm hoping to check in with my apps soon.”

Wood may not be in the dating scene at the moment but he admits he's curious about why New Yorkers are so obsessed with talking (see: complaining) about dating. He has plenty of friends in the New York and Los Angeles influencer space — names like Grace O’Malley, Jake Shane, and Alix Earle. “Grace is rumored to be joining the Fibs & Friends tour at some point… based on me texting her and her not responding,” he says. “She is the best, truly is the best.”

Wood has nothing but good things to say about his fellow content creator friends. “Jake and I were neighbors, and we had a lot of mutual friends. We hung out one time and became very close friends,” he says. “I knew because Jake and Alix were best friends that I would be good friends with Alix, too.”

According to him, they’re all a “sounding board” for each other — especially when it comes to reminding one another to ignore the comments section. “I can have a hundred really positive comments and read one that ruins my evening,” he says.

Hate comments are part of making a career in the public eye — something Wood seems to have mixed feelings about. “I love getting recognized. It's job security,” he says. But there’s an undeniable weirdness to it, too — even though he’s never had a bad experience meeting a follower, he is taken aback whenever someone he’s never met before knows intimate details about his life. “Every time I talk to someone, they're like, ‘How's your dog? How's your mom?’ I forget that I'm sharing all that stuff,” he says.

I want an air of mystery. just want to accomplish some things quietly.

There’s one follower he’s especially conscious of: Gracie Abrams. “Believe it or not, based on the people that follow me, I really have some strong will to not DM people,” he says about The Secret Of Us singer. “I don't know why she followed me. It takes everything in me not to be like, ‘Hey, I’m pregaming and going to dinner in a second — listening to “That’s So True” right now.’ I don't because I want to keep her around,” Wood adds. “I'm trying to act cool, but now I'm telling you in an interview how much every day I wake up and tell myself, ‘Don't mess this up. Gracie's watching.’”

With hundreds of thousands of eyes on him, Wood wants to start “moving in silence” in 2025 — like the groom who only hard-launches their partner on their wedding day, or the marathon runner who skips the weekly Strava updates and only posts their finish-line photo. “I want an air of mystery,” he says. “I just want to accomplish some things quietly.” He won’t say what those things are — hence the “silence” — but he’s hopeful that the move to New York helps make them happen.

“I usually keep a list in my phone of cool things that have happened,” he says. “Because I move so fast, I need to remember how cool these things were when I did them.”

That list has range: from talking to Bill Burr at the Saturday Night Live after-party to touring apartments in Manhattan. With New York as his home base, Wood is confident he’ll be able to add more to that “cool things” list soon, starting with his first tour’s stop: Salt Lake City on March 7.

“I am straight-up just thinking, ‘How can I grow and be a better person?’ With New York as my catalyst, I'm just so excited to be here. Truly.”

Wood is ready to embrace the chaos of his new city — and it already feels like he belongs. “I love jaywalking. I'm addicted to it. Finally, I can continue my pace.”