When I first discovered Kimmi Kaiy online, it was obvious she knew how to hold people’s attention.
But during a recent Instagram Live Q&A for Bitches in Stitches, I discovered something more interesting:
She doesn’t actually want to be famous for that.
“I don’t want to just be known for my boobs,” she told me.
“I’d rather be known for making people laugh.”
It’s a deceptively simple statement.
But underneath it sits a question that many women — particularly those who create online — wrestle with:
What’s the difference between being visible and being seen?
One gets people looking at you. The other makes them understand you.
And for Kimmi, the journey from content creator to comedian has been about learning the difference.
One of the most interesting parts of our conversation was hearing Kimmi talk about her previous life as a content creator.
From the outside, everything looked successful. The views, the audience was there, the attention were all there.
But something felt off.
At one point she described parts of her online persona as “fake me.” Not because she was deliberately misleading anyone. But because algorithms tend to reward a simplified version of who you are; that’s easier to consume. Easier to categorise. Easier to sell.
Especially if you’re a woman.
And while the internet was rewarding one version of Kimmi, comedy was calling another one.
When trading algorithms for open mics is the only choice that feels right
Kimmi didn’t grow up dreaming of becoming a stand-up comedian.
Like many comics, she sort of stumbled into it. People had been telling her for years that she should try stand-up. Eventually, she signed up for Ultra Comedy and wrote her first five minutes.
Then something clicked.
“As soon as I stood on stage, I kind of knew.”
If you’ve ever fallen in love with stand-up, you’ll know exactly what she means. There’s something uniquely addictive about making a room laugh.
No algorithm. No editing. No bloody ring light. And absolutely no filters.
Just you, a microphone, and a room full of strangers deciding in real time whether what came out of your brain was worth laughing at.
Which brings us to what Kimmi describes as comedy’s greatest drug.
"It's like a free drug."
We spent a while talking about the feeling comedians chase:
That weird post-gig high.
The butterflies.
The adrenaline.
The warmth.
The sense that for five minutes, you’re somehow more alive than usual.
Kimmi describes it as a free drug — something that makes her feel like a superhuman.
Which is funny, because from the outside stand-up often looks completely irrational.
Travelling hours for unpaid gigs. Performing in pubs where nobody asked for comedy. Being judged by strangers. Bombing in public.
And yet people keep coming back.
Because every so often, a room erupts.
And for a few minutes, nothing else matters.
She’s giving dark humour in pink jumpers — like a Disney princess telling dick jokes
One of my favourite observations from Kimmi was how much audience expectations work in her favour. If you’ve seen her online, you’ll know she presents as soft, feminine and approachable — the sort of person audiences expect to tell sweet stories.
Instead, they often get dark jokes.
Very dark jokes.
She described herself as being a bit like “swear words in a Disney film.” The audience thinks they know what’s coming. Then she hits them with something completely different. And that’s part of what makes the material work.
Comedy thrives on surprise. The gap between expectation and reality is often where the laugh lives.
And Kimmi has become very good at exploiting that gap.
Hecklers are just wankers full of audacity and zero follow-through… but it still sucks
Unfortunately, no conversation about women in comedy is complete without at least one man making things weird.
During a recent gig, a heckler interrupted Kimmi to inform her:
“I wouldn’t fuck you.”
The fucking cheek.
Thankfully, our gal was ready.
“I don’t know how to break it to you,” she replied, “but you don’t have the face to be fussy.”
She then clapped back at him and said he’d probably be going home to wank about her later.
The room loved it. Willy Wanker did not.
What struck me wasn’t the comeback itself, but what the interaction revealed.
Sure, male comedians get heckled too. But as, women we’re heckled differently.
The interruption isn’t always about the joke. Sometimes it’s about reminding women that they’re being looked at before they’re being listened to.
And that’s fucking exhausting.
Comedy happens when you write from a scab, not a wound
As our conversation got deeper, we started talking about dark comedy. Specifically, when something painful becomes something funny.
Both of us agreed on an important distinction:
The best comedy tends to come from the scab, not the wound.
You don’t joke about something because it didn’t hurt. You joke about it because you’ve survived it.
Kimmi shared a story about helping a friend through an ectopic pregnancy. At the time, humour became a coping mechanism. Not because the situation was funny. Because it wasn’t. But because laughter made it survivable.
That’s the strange power of dark comedy.
It doesn’t erase pain.
It changes your relationship with it.
The memory remains. But it loses some of its power over you.
On feeling guilty for betting on yourself — and being brave enough to do it anyway
One comment from Kimmi stayed with me long after our Q&A ended.
“I still feel selfish for wanting to do comedy.”
That shook me.
Because here’s someone building momentum, getting gigs, improving rapidly, doing something she genuinely loves…
And still feeling guilty about taking up space.
I suspect a lot of women will recognise that feeling — The pressure to justify our ambitions. The need to prove that what we want is productive enough, useful enough, worthy enough.
But tbh, comedy doesn’t really work like that.
You do it because you love it. Because you’re curious. Because it makes you feel alive.
And maybe that’s reason enough.
She ditched millions of views, took a mic and was finally seen
When I asked Kimmi what she’d say to someone considering stand-up, her advice was refreshingly simple:
“Just do it. Not when you’re ready. Not when you’re confident. Not when you’ve finally figured everything out.
Just do it.”
One year ago, Kimmi Kaiy thought stand-up might be something she’d try once and cross off a bucket list.
Today she’s roasting internet celebrities, handling hecklers, obsessing over punchlines, and discovering parts of herself she couldn’t access through a screen.
Maybe that’s the difference between visibility and being seen.
