Photo Joe McCartney ’19 doing stand up with mic and stand

Photo: Lee Pellegrini

Meet the Fenti Fried Chicken Guy

How Joe McCartney ’19 became a social media comedy star.

Joe McCartney ’19, who studied finance and information systems at BC, is four years into a successful corporate career. But what he’s known for—what gets him recognized every weekend around °¬¿ÉÖ±²¥â€”are the wildly popular comedy videos he posts to social media. In his riffs on the minutiae of life in the city for a young professional, he portrays a variety of familiar characters—an exhausted participant in an office Zoom meeting, someone on a cringe-inducing first date, or, yes, one of the T subway lines. Capturing these absurdities of modern life has earned McCartney more than one hundred thousand followers on both TikTok and Instagram, and even given him a dose of celebrity in °¬¿ÉÖ±²¥. “Any °¬¿ÉÖ±²¥ bar I go out to, someone’s going to point at me and be like, ‘You’re the TikTok guy,’â€� he said. His most popular video on that platform—in which his love of Hulu’s The Bear inspires him to act like the main character—has been viewed more than ten million times, a number that would have been unfathomable when he started. “Now, if I don’t even get ten thousand views, I’m like, ‘what a waste of time,’â€� he said. “It’s crazy how quickly the goalposts move as you grow.â€�

But if McCartney’s face is well known these days, his name is not. He posts his videos under the pseudonym Fenti Fried Chicken, a version of his original handle, Fentucky Fried Chicken, which was a play on his favorite fast food chain. McCartney, who made his first video in 2021, is usually the only person on camera, wearing just enough of a costume to suggest, say, an office worker or a diehard °¬¿ÉÖ±²¥ sports fan as he speaks to an imagined character who is out of frame. 

Growing up in Massachusetts, McCartney memorized the stand-up routines of his favorite comedians, including one by Brian Regan that he recited in a third-grade talent show. “Getting that initial laughter from my classmates was a rush,� he recalled. When he got to BC, he began writing for the New England Classic, the University’s satirical newspaper.

These days, McCartney has weekly stand-up gigs at °¬¿ÉÖ±²¥ area venues such as Bleacher Bar and Bill’s Bar. He’s also diligent about his social media schedule, posting six new videos per week. “A lot of times I film three or four videos in one go and edit them all, usually on the bus or the train to a show,â€� he said. He manages all of this while succeeding in his day job as a senior associate at the professional services network PwC. “I like having two jobs,â€� McCartney said, “because it forces you to sit down and say, ‘All right, I can’t procrastinate.’â€�

McCartney said he plans to continue building his business career while doing comedy on the side, and to keep asking himself the important questions about his dual pursuits. “It’s, am I enjoying myself? Am I having fun?,� he said. “That’s the best perspective."  


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