Khaby Lame
The most-followed person on TikTok became so without saying a word.
You might remember it as Khabane Lame
A trend people joined in with
- SourceNo single original
- MediaNot held by ViralWorld
What this was
A video shows somebody doing something simple in an absurdly complicated way — peeling a banana with a machine, opening a car door through the window. Khaby Lame then does the same thing the obvious way, turns to the camera and opens his palms. He does not speak. That is the entire format.
It first appeared in 2020, during short-form and streams.
It is the clearest demonstration of what a global platform actually rewards. Lame lost his factory job in Chivasso, near Turin, at the start of the 2020 lockdown and began posting; because the joke contains no language, it worked identically in every country at once, and he became the most-followed account on TikTok. A Senegalese-born Italian who was not granted Italian citizenship until 2022 is the platform's single most-watched person.
Lame has judged Italia's Got Talent, appeared on Forbes and Fortune lists, and become a fixture at fashion weeks and World Cups. The silent-reaction format is now a standard grammar on the platform, used by people who have never heard of him.
More from 2020
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- Jerusalema 2020Short-form and streams
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- Jerusalema Dance Challenge 2020Short-form and streams
- Ratatouille the Musical 2020Short-form and streams
- We did it, Joe! 2020Short-form and streams
Short-form and streams
- The GameStop short squeeze 2021Short-form and streams
- FoodTok 2021Short-form and streams
- Noodle 2021Short-form and streams
- Hawk Tuah 2024Short-form and streams
- Moo Deng 2024Short-form and streams
- Sigma Boy 2024Short-form and streams
- AI slop 2024Short-form and streams
- Grimace Shake 2023Short-form and streams
- Skibidi Toilet 2023Short-form and streams
Related
Nothing related yet. Relationships are recorded where evidence supports them, not inferred from similarity.
Behind the recordWhere it came from
There is no original to identify: this spread through many separate posts at once rather than from a first one. ViralWorld holds no copy of it either — what it was, when it spread and what people called it is the record.
Nothing here is claimed to be the first version of this, because research established there was not one — it appeared in many places at once.
Not established. This index only names a creator where the evidence supports it.
- What happens
- A video shows somebody doing something simple in an absurdly complicated way — peeling a banana with a machine, opening a car door through the window. Khaby Lame then does the same thing the obvious way, turns to the camera and opens his palms. He does not speak. That is the entire format.