Khaby Lame
You might remember it as Khabane Lame
Latest viral16 of 24
2020·Short-form and streams·funny
The most-followed person on TikTok became so without saying a word.
Keep watchingStill to come
What this wasThe story
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. A documented example is on YouTube.
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.
Why it is here: something the internet still knows by name · a moment that changed what the internet did next · it got out of its own corner of the internet fast · still being watched and quoted years later
This is the copy ViralWorld can show you. Whether it is the first is not established.
- SourceNo single original
- MediaPlayable from the source
Where it came fromWhat we know
This spread through many posts rather than one identifiable original. The example shown is one surviving copy and is not claimed as the first.
Nothing here is claimed to be the first version of this. It spread through many posts rather than from one identifiable original.
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.