THE MOST POPULAR TIKTOKER IN THE WORLD / Khabane Lame reached planetary fame without saying a word

When Italy first went into a “lockdown” last year due to a coronavirus epidemic, Khabane Lame had just lost his job at a factory near the city of Turin. He spent his days trapped in his parents’ home in Chivasso with his three brothers and looking for other jobs. One day he took to TikTok and started messing with it in his room, posting videos under the name Khaby Lame. And gradually a surprising career was born, writes CNN.

In the beginning, like many TikTokers, he created clips on which he dances, watches video games, or does comic stunts. Then, earlier this year, he started making fun of videos of “life hacks” flooding social media, reacting to them by shrugging his shoulders without a word or an expression of resentment. And he hit the wire.

Lame is now the most popular man on TikTok. He has an incredible 114 million followers, and the only other person in front of him is dancer Charli D’Amelio, a teenager from California who posts playful videos, often with her older sister Dixie.

He brought in a little simplicity

And Lame (21) does it all without a word. On TikTok, his silence speaks volumes. “I came up with the idea because I watched those videos circling and I liked the idea of ​​bringing a little simplicity into it,” Lame told CNN in a recent video interview.

"The type of gesture came by accident, but the silence didn't. I figured out a way to reach as many people as possible. And the best way was to keep quiet."

Lame is a slender Senegalese man with long limbs and an expressive face. In most of his clips, he shows videos of people doing overly complicated tricks and responds to them with a simplified and more logical way of performing the same task.

In one video, Lama peels a banana with his hands in response to a video of someone carefully cutting a banana with a knife. In another, he reacts to a video in which a woman noisily peels a cucumber with her teeth by using a vegetable peeler to perform the same task.

His reactions embody the term “shaking his head”. After a common-sense approach to the task, Lame held out his hands with his palms facing up as if to say "for God's sake." Sometimes he inserts rolling his eyes or shaking his head.

These quiet but expressive reactions made him one of the most recognizable digital creators on social media. “Maybe because my facial expressions are funny and make people laugh, simplicity makes people laugh and I love it,” Lame said.

One marketing expert argues that the popularity of Lame’s videos shows how nonverbal communication can transcend language barriers and establish connections between cultures.

“You don’t have to speak to be seen or understood,” said Christina Ferraz, founder of the Houston-based marketing agency Thirty6five. "His resentment can be identified, and the feelings are universal."

By: Olivia J. - Gossip Whispers