Khaby Lame Shrug / It's That Simple

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About

Khaby Lame Shrug, or It's That Simple, refers to a series of screenshots from a 2021 TikTok in which influencer Khaby Lame criticizes a bad pizza life hack, shrugging and gesturing with his hands to highlight the obvious, easier alternative. The video was first uploaded in April 2021. In May, a series of screenshots taken from the video became popular in a series of image macros, used to highlight the simple alternative to a given situation.

Origin

On April 26th, 2021, TikToker^[1] Khaby Lame posted a video reacting to a pizza hack claiming you can use a pizza saver to separate and pull a slice of pizza off the whole pie easily. In the reaction, Lame simply pulls the pizza apart without the hack, saving time and proving the hack useless, shrugging to highlight the obviousness of the alternative (shown below). The video went viral on TikTok, gaining over 200 million views in two months.

Spread

On May 13th, 2021, Twitter^[2] meme page @ChurchOfBoobism posted an image macro in the same style as the Drakeposting format featuring two screenshots of Lame from the pizza hack video on the right and reaction content on the left. The first image shows Lame staring into the camera with an unimpressed expression, and the second shows him shrugging with his hands up as if pointing at something that should be obvious. In this case, the top left image reads "OnlyFans" and the bottom left is a Google search reading "boobies" (shown below). The image was posted to /r/funny^[3] later that day by u/In-Jail-Out-Soon, garnering over 900 upvotes in a month. It was shared to /r/dankmemes^[4] the same day, garnering over 16,500 upvotes in the same span of time.

Later that day, a screenshot of the meme attached to a funny comment from it gained over 17,400 upvotes on /r/cursedcomments.^[5] The format continued to spread across Reddit over the course of the month. On May 25th, Redditor u/space-_-man made a post to /r/ProgrammerHumor^[6] using the format, garnering over 1,900 upvotes in a month (shown below, left). On May 26th, u/SregioPrez posted another new variation to /r/memes,^[7] garnering over 35,100 upvotes in a similar span of time (shown below, right).

On May 30th, a post to /r/memes^[8] by u/antisocialhomebody using the format gained over 60,000 upvotes in under a month (shown below). The format continued to see use over the course of June, resulting in a number of other viral examples.

On June 4th, Tumblr^[9] user dankmemeuniversity reposted a meme from /r/dankmemes^[10] with over 60,000 upvotes using the format in reference to Twitter Blue, garnering over 17,000 notes in three weeks (shown below).