The Views: Khaby Lame And The Art Of Simplicity
Tiktok
Like many, Khabane “Khaby” Lame began posting videos on TikTok during the COVID-19 pandemic. Unlike the majority of TikTok’s newfound user base, Lame quickly rose in popularity and is now the most followed person on the platform with over 150 million followers. How did Lame garner such a following without saying a word?
Handle: Lame’s TikTok handle is @khaby.lame. He also posts on YouTube @khabylame, Instagram @khaby00, and X (formerly Twitter) @KhabyLame.
Series: Lame doesn’t have any named series on his socials. However, his fame on TikTok arose from his frequent use of the “stitch” and “duet” features. Lame used these features to comment on videos within the “life hack” genre. Rather than following the advice of the oftentimes complicated hacks, Lame would complete the task in silence in a simple way before doing his signature exasperated hand gesture.
Creators: All of Lame’s socials are run by him.
Platform: Lame posts on TikTok, YouTube, Instagram, and X. However, he gained virality through TikTok and primarily posts there.
Genre(s): Lame is a self-described comedian, and most of his content falls under the comedy genre.
Subscribers: Lame’s largest following is on TikTok, which has 162.8 million followers. He has 81 million Instagram followers, 9.81 million YouTube subscribers, and 390.2 thousand followers on X (formerly Twitter).
Lame was born in Senegal in 2000. A year later, his family moved to public housing in Chivasso, Italy — a town near Turin. He lived and studied in Italy until the age of 14, when his parents sent him to a Quranic school near Dakar, Senegal. He would later return to the Turin area where he worked as a CNC machine operator at a factory.
Lame was one of many people who were laid off during the COVID-19 pandemic. Locked away from the outside world with his three siblings and parents and with no job prospects, Lame turned to the Internet. At first, Lame followed typical trends on TikTok including dance videos, reaction content, and comedy stunts. It was this experimentation that brought forth Lame’s signature style of comedy.
Two of the most helpful features on TikTok for interactive video content are the “stitch” feature and the “duet” feature. The former allows for a user to respond to another person’s TikTok, showing a segment of the original video before the user responds with their own video. The latter plays two TikToks side by side, with the duetted video on the right and the new content on the left. While creators can duet and stitch their own videos, the features are typically used to respond to others.
Lame’s comedy hinges almost entirely upon these two features. Often, he creates content within the “life hack” genre. In these videos, creators take a simple task, like peeling a banana, and complete it in a complex way, such as cutting the banana open with a knife. Lame openly mocks the genre, subverting it in his stitches and duets by completing actions in the simplest way possible. Trademarks of his videos include performing the entire action in silence and throwing his hands in exasperation upon completion.
This criticism of content in the genre clearly struck a chord with TikTok users. The word “hacks” suggests that viewers will learn easy methods to complete tasks, rather than overcomplicated methods. If Lame has managed to build an entire career upon unnecessarily complex life hack videos, this clearly isn’t the case.
Though Lame began posting on TikTok in 2020, his popularity surged in 2021. In a time when people were returning to hybrid versions of work and school, Lame’s videos acted as a reminder to keep things straightforward. This was a welcome reassurance to TikTok’s user base of minors who missed out on pivotal moments of their adolescence like graduations and school dances.
Lame may not have intended to go viral, but he has since accomplished some remarkable achievements. Currently just 24-years-old, Lame was listed in Fortune’s “40 Under 40” and Forbes’ “30 Under 30” in 2022. He’s signed deals with brands like fashion company Hugo Boss, acted as a judge at the Cannes Film Festival and Italia’s Got Talent, and even has his own skin in the hit first-person shooter game Fortnite. Lame has interacted with traditional media as well, starring in an ad for State Farm in 2023.
Making TikToks with celebrities like Matt Damon, Robert Downey Jr., and Tom Cruise isn't his only involvement with the film industry. In an interview with Forbes, Lame shared his dream of acting in and directing more films. In June of 2023, Lame’s directorial debut, I Am Khabane, premiered at Italy’s Taormina Film Festival. The documentary short film explores Lame’s early life, his sudden rise to fame on TikTok, and a trip to LA where he attended the 2023 Oscars.
A jump to traditional media would not be unsurprising for Lame. He is often compared to comedic film legends from the silent film era like Charlie Chaplin, Buster Keaton, and Harold Lloyd. However, Lame never drew inspiration from these actors.
“I’m trying to be myself. These are legends, who have made their own story. Every person is a person in their own way, with their own dreams and I just want to be Khaby Lame.” — Khaby Lame for Deadline
Khaby Lame has spread his message of simplicity to over 150 million people, crowning him as one of the most followed people on TikTok. The numbers are staggering, and possibly a bit stressful. But at the end of the day, Khaby Lame can remind himself, as he reminds us so often, to keep things simple.
