(CNN)When Italy first went into a coronavirus lockdown last year, Khabane Lame had just lost his job at a factory near the northern city of Turin.
He spent his days holed up at his parents’ home in Chivasso with his three siblings, looking for other jobs. One day, he downloaded TikTok and started tinkering with it in his bedroom, posting videos of himself under the name Khaby Lame. And gradually, a surprising career was born.
At first, like a lot of TikTokers, he created clips of himself dancing, watching video games or doing comedy stunts. Then, earlier this year, he began making fun of the life-hack videos that flood social media platforms — reacting to them with a wordless shrug or a look of exasperation — and he struck a chord.
Now Lame (prounouced Lah-MAY) is the most popular man on TikTok, with 114 million followers. The only other person ahead of him is dancer Charli D’Amelio, a California teen who posts playful videos, often with her older sister Dixie.
And Lame, 21, does it all without saying a word. On TikTok, his silence speaks volumes.
“I came up with the idea because I was seeing these videos circulating, and I liked the idea of bringing some simplicity to it,” Lame told CNN in a recent video interview.
“The type of gesture came by chance, but the silence didn’t. I thought of a way to reach as many people as possible. And the best way was not to speak.”
His videos have a singular style
Lame is a slender Senegalese man with long limbs and an expressive face. In most of his clips, he lampoons videos of people doing overly complicated hacks by responding with a simplified, more logical way of doing the same task.