You may not know his name, but there’s a huge chance you’ve seen his face, or some of his social media content. Khaby Lame is the most followed person on TikTok and also has huge followings on other social media sites as well. With this level of notoriety, there seems to always be a backlash. Are we now witnessing it happen to Lame?
Lame, 24, rose to viral fame during the pandemic, when he took to TikTok to make fun of complicated “life hacks,” showing the same results with much simpler solutions. He never talked in his videos meaning they were relatable to pretty much everyone.
With his level of fame, there are bound to be haters. Other creators resented just how simple his videos were and questioned whether he deserved the level of fame he got for the perceived low amount of effort he put into his content.
About three months ago, a popular YouTube channel called SunnyV2 released a video titled “Why Khaby Lame Has Suddenly Become Hated.” In the video, which has more than 4 million views, SunnyV2 explained that fans of TikTok’s next biggest user, Charlie D’Amelio, are vocal about how they don’t like him or his lazy videos.
Another point of drama came when Lame posted a video about how he hated racism. While this wouldn’t seem to be a controversial take, he also told racist fans to unfollow him and that he didn’t want to foster an atmosphere of hate.
“You can also unfollow me,” he said, per screenshots captured by Dexerto. “I don’t care about the numbers, I care about your hearts! If you do think of something new, do it right and in a positive way!”
After this statement, he promptly got in trouble for being anti-racist. What a world! It feels like people will find any reason to try and knock him down a peg. In the SunnyV2 video, he’s criticized for using body shaming in his videos. Others pointed out the fickle nature of social media fame, where you can be on the Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon one night and never heard from again a week later.
There’s another point of controversy with Lame involving religion. He recently posted about performing Umrah, a pilgrimage to Mecca that Muslims can take any time of the year, unlike Hajj, which must be done during a specific time.
He posted in front of the Kaaba, a sacred Islamic structure in the center of the mosque in Mecca, Saudi Arabia. “I just want to say thank you to God. God has given me everything and, most importantly, the strength to continue and believe in my dreams,” he said. “I’ve faced many struggles in life, and when everything seemed impossible, my faith kept me standing.”
And, as you can probably predict, Islamophobic haters turned up en masse to leave racist comments. Fortunately, Khaby seems to be taking it all in stride. He recently decided to step back a bit from TikTok and focus more on other projects, like his work as a judge on Italy’s Got Talent or his upcoming movie 00Khaby.
Published: Dec 30, 2024 05:21 am