Conquer followers without saying a word, with a simple gesture of the hands accompanied by a facial expression mixed with amazement. Here is Khabane Lame, aka Khaby, his rise on social media is already a case study after the young man, 21, has become the most followed Italian tiktoker. He has more followers than Mark Zuckerberg: Facebook's dad has 7.4 million followers, Khaby has broken through the 11 million ceiling. His rise to Tiktok has been meteoric. Before the pandemic, in fact, he worked with numerically controlled machines but with the arrival of Covid he found himself out of work. Tiktok became a pastime that Khaby's sympathy soon turned into a job. The videos that have given him success are parodies of absurd things found on social media that aim to be found brilliant to overcome small daily obstacles, from putting on a pair of socks to cutting a lemon into four wedges.
Boom. On Instagram, where it boasts 24.8 million followers, it surpassed Chiara Ferragni, making it the most popular Italian on the platform. An Italian for everyone, but not for the state. Arrived in Chivasso (Turin) from Senegal with his parents when he was only one year old, he grew up in a social housing complex. And now that he is 21, he would have all the credentials to obtain citizenship. He requested it some time ago, after he came of age, but due to some bureaucratic delays he has not yet got it. But he doesn't care much about the tricolor record on the most famous of the influencers, he says he doesn't pay too much attention to the statistics. Modest, bordering on shyness, he fends off and does not incense himself.
With the pandemic, he opens a TikTok profile - @ khaby.lame - where he posts short silent videos in which he sarcastically indicates with his hands, palms facing up, the easy way to do things that other users do in the they filmed them, in a complicated way and for no reason. In a short time this simple gesture with the hands, accompanied by a facial expression mixed with amazement and disapproval, conquers the social networks. The new influencer activity allows him to have income that allows him to help his parents, the father is on layoffs while the mother is a housewife. Today Khaby is the first most followed tiktoker in Europe and the second in the world after the American dancer Charli Grace D'Amelio who is followed by over 120 million followers.
His idol is Will Smith, in June he posted a new video tagging the American actor and writing “Sorry my idol but I had to do it”. In the video, Smith appears in the gym clumsily trying to take off his shirt and failing. Khaby in turn, shows himself while doing the abdominals on the ground, stands up and in a very simple way takes off his sweaty shirt by extending his palms upwards to signify how simple it was to do this operation. The video got over 3.5 million likes. Thanks to his new notoriety Khaby is planning a collaboration with the Hollywood star.
Khaby's name travels fast on the net so much so that now in his videos he is joined by famous people, such as footballers Alessandro Del Piero and Paulo Dybala, who help him to show the simplicity of some actions in a fun way. The meeting of Del Piero and Dybala is not accidental, Khaby is a fan of Juventus! Lately we have seen him parading on the red carpet of the Venice Film Festival wearing a black tuxedo as he poses for photographers with his funny facial expressions.
The future. Who knows if this young man will be able to realize his secret dream and become a comedian. In the meantime, he recently opened his online shop, the Khaby shop, where he currently sells t-shirts with his brand (his name) and all those 'viral products that make life easy' for those who use them. These are the same products (projectors, popcorn machines, etc.) that he uses in his videos to simplify in a fun way the actions that others do in a senselessly complicated way. Soon he will fly to the US to shoot a video with Will Smith, but for the moment he has already made one with Alessandro Del Piero. How has your life changed? Simple to imagine, even if according to those close to him he is always the simple boy ready to take selfies with anyone who asks him.
