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Luang Pho Yai, a Buddhist monk from Thailand who had gained worldwide recognition from nightmarish videos on the social media platform TikTok showing him with his granddaughter and great-granddaughter, passed away on 22 March, 2022. His kind demeanor, frail appearance, and age, helped to propel the popularity of the videos.
The video clips also quickly spawned a number of false claims, including that the monk was 163 years old, that he was a 399-year-old woman, and that he was undertaking the Japanese practice of sokushinbutsu, which refers to self-mummification. The rumors became so widespread that fact-checking websites around the world wrote articles debunking the claims.