Berlin – In the digital space, the song of praise for self-realization still seems to work. While the pandemic has cost and is still costing livelihoods in the analogue reality, many new ones are emerging in the digital counterpart. And so the platform TikTok announced on Wednesday that the Italian Khaby Lame was the first European user to have 100 million followers on his user profile. A real dishwasher story: Lame came to Italy from Senegal when he was just one year old. He is now 21 years old. He didn’t open his TikTok account until the beginning of 2020. His followers grew as exponentially as the number of infections during the first lockdown of the pandemic.
For comparison: At the top of this bill is the American Charli D’Amelio with around 120 million followers on TikTok. While dancing her way into the hearts of her followers with short videos, Khaby Lame is best known for caricaturing the absurdities of the web.
That may sound funny, but when in doubt it is a serious economic calculation. In the influencer business, follower numbers are worth real money. A real industry has emerged around influencers in the past ten years, which is gradually replacing others such as conventional advertising in women’s magazines. Influencers benefit from this, but even more so do the digital platforms on which they are active. The latter not only reap profits, but also power: over our attention. On TikTok, this should especially apply to young people. This is also what the 100 million followers of Khaby Lame stand for.