How to lose your job and become a millionaire, or The story of the "destroyer of life hacks" by Habi Leim

This dark-skinned guy probably saw everyone who has accounts in social networks. His videos, recorded for TikTok, are on the Internet, and his popularity is growing by leaps and bounds. Until recently, unemployed expat Haban Leim seriously thought about what to eat, and now he is getting used to living in the status of one of the most popular bloggers on the planet. How did TikTok's new top-5 star rise and what does quarantine have to do with it?

21-year-old Italian of Senegalese origin Haban Leim in just a couple of months became the most popular online "destroyer of life hacks". Known to users of social networks as Khaby Lame, the guy has already collected 67 million subscribers in TikTok and this is far from the limit. Some experts believe that Leim has enough potential to dethrone the most popular blogger of the social network, American Charlie Damelio, with her 117 million followers.

Habi Leim can be called a tiktok phenomenon – he does not sing, does not dance, does not perform dangerous tricks, and even almost does not speak. He just looks at other people's videos with life hacks with disapproval and disappointment, and then offers his own, extremely simple solution to the problem. The biography and daily life of the new Internet star is hidden by a veil of mystery, but we will now try to look under it. Journalists of The New York Times went to visit the blogger and learned a lot of interesting things about him.

Haban Leim was born in the African country of Senegal, but when he was just a year old, the family managed to move to Turin, Italy. In a European city, the future blogger grew up, graduated from high school and got his first job. It should be noted that although Leim has been living in Italy for 20 years, he still does not have citizenship and has a Senegalese passport in his pocket. Expats get Italian citizenship at the age of 18, but only if they were born in the country, and Habi has a problem with this.

Despite this, Leim considers himself a true Italian. After school, he had no financial opportunity to continue his education and the guy got a job as a handyman in a factory in the small commune of Chivasso near Turin. He worked there until the COVID-19 epidemic came, which forced the company to close. We all remember how Italy became one of the first hotbeds of viral disaster in Europe and declared a very tough national lockdown.

Because of this, Leim was left without a job, locked in a small parental apartment in isolation. Of course, the guy could have tried to find another job, but instead he decided to become a vlogger and started an account on TikTok. Xabi's first experiments were unsuccessful – he recorded short videos with jokes in Italian, which turned out to be of no interest to anyone.

But Leim did not despair and continued to experiment with the format. In January 2021, he shot his first videos, in which he reacts to network life hacks. The videos were short and concise – first, Khabi watched another "good advice", and then with an expression of condemnation on his face, he solved the problem in a simple and obvious way, without effort and additional resources.

Habi always ends the same way – he rolls his eyes and throws up his hands, as if asking the author of the life hack – " Why are you making everything more complicated?". Such videos were very easy to produce, and the lack of words made them absolutely international and understandable to everyone. Gradually, the blogger's audience grew, but it was still not a success.

Tiktok users began to show real interest in the video of Habi Leim only in April. Its content began to be shared, it was published in other social networks and actively discussed on forums. On the Internet, 2-3 videos roamed and many of them found the blogger's account and saw the rest of the content there. By mid-April, the Khabi channel had already 10 million subscribers, and by the end of the month – three times more!

Leim says that he is often recognized on the streets, but his popularity is not at all burdensome. Although he is very well known in Europe, the most active subscribers of his channel live in the United States and Brazil. Many fans of the blogger and in his native Senegal, whose residents are proud of the worldwide success of the countryman.

Realizing that he now belongs to the whole world, Xabi maintains his social media accounts in Italian and English, but the blogger's fan pages, supported by enthusiasts, are in German, Polish, Arabic, Portuguese and other languages. When the journalists asked Xabi Leim what he thinks about the phenomenon of his popularity, he answers simply:

The popular ticktocker received many offers for advertising from various brands, for example, one of the first representatives of the manufacturer of toothpaste Barilla came to it. Leim also participates in collaborations – at the end of May, he appeared at the Juventus stadium in Turin in the same box with the stars of the Italian national team. Before that, the blogger made a video in which he cuts an apple for the legendary Juventus player Alessandro Del Pierrot.

Unfortunately, Xabi Leim is not able to fully realize the commercial potential of his image – he is very hampered by the lack of an Italian passport. He has repeatedly received invitations from the United States, but it is very difficult for him, as the owner of a Senegalese passport, to get an American visa. The blogger is making significant efforts to obtain citizenship of a European country as quickly as possible, but everything is slowed down due to bureaucracy.

In the meantime, Habi Leim daily records his wonderful videos and gains subscribers. The Instagram account he created is also a great success and the blogger has high hopes for it. We have to work a lot, but Xabi is not going to return to the factory. Now he is closer than ever to his long-standing dream-to buy his mother a spacious house and is ready to show maximum diligence to achieve this goal.