Khaby Lame

Submission 41,731

Part of a series on TikTok. [View Related Entries]

About

Khabane Lame, known as Khaby Lame, is an Italian TikTok content creator known for his reaction videos to ironic life hack clips and other TikTok videos with the poker face expression. Lame first began creating content on TikTok in early 2020.

History

On March 15th, 2020, Khabane Lame uploaded his first video on TikTok with the username @lamekhabane (now @khaby.lame).^[1] In the video, Lame is seen washing his hands with hand sanitizer. The video received more than 11,100 likes and 3,000 comments in one year (shown below).

On June 22nd, 2020, Khaby Lame became the world's most followed TikToker with over 142.2 million subscribers,^[7] taking the title from Charli D'Amelio.

Online Presence

On February 17th, 2021, @khaby.lame^[2] uploaded a video about his reaction to a phone charger stuck ironic life hack by @breaktheglasshandle. The video received more than 4.6 million likes and 29,000 comments in three months (shown below).

After that video, he suddenly became popular and many memes were made about him reacting to various life hack videos. On April 30th, 2021, Reddit user lolpollll^[4] uploaded an object-labeling meme about Khaby Lame watching life hack videos to the /r/memes subreddit. The post (shown below) received more than 172,000 upvotes in eight days.

Khaby Lame then had his memes expand from object-labeling to photoshopped variants. On May 3rd, 2021, Facebook^[5] user Shankar Sarkar reposted the image to the "Marvel Memes" group. The post (shown below, left) received more than 16,000 reactions and 21,000 shares in four days. On May 4th, 2021, Facebook^[6] user Teddy uploaded a Khaby Lame meme to the "Don't click this or you will regret it ENTERTAINMENT" group. The post received more than 2,800 reactions and 634 shares in three days (shown below, right).

Khaby Lame Fortnite Skin

On August 24th, 2023, the TikToker was announced as part of Fortnite Chapter 4 Season 4 Battle Pass Skin pack. A trailer was posted on YouTube^[8] (shown below) indicating Lame as a potential playable character. The video amassed over 1.2 million views and 82,000 likes in a few hours.

The announcement became a trending topic on social media. For instance, X^[9] user @FN_Assist commented on how the game got the TikToker's hand gestures right in the trailer (shown below), which garnered more than 107,000 views and 2,800 likes in a few hours.

It's That Simple

It's That Simple or the Khaby Lame Shrug refers to a series of screenshots from a 2021 TikTok in which 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.