Science- TikToker Ana Stanskovsky went viral pretending to get her boyfriend's name tattooed on her face.
- In a follow up video she said the tattoo was fake, and that she had "tricked the whole internet."
A woman who went hugely viral claiming she got a tattoo of her boyfriend's name on her face admitted she faked the whole thing, and said she did it to remind people that they might regret their tattoos when they get older.
On November 5, TikToker Ana Stanskovsky posted a video of herself lying down on a chair as she appeared to get the word "Kevin" tattooed on her forehead.
@anastanskovsky My new face tattoo ❤️
♬ original sound - Ana Stanskovsky
The video received over 32.9 million views, and it left some people shocked, asking what she would do if she and her boyfriend broke up. Other viewers appeared to be more skeptical, commenting that they thought the video was a prank, and that the tattoo didn't look real.
After posting several more videos over the course of the week denying suspicions that the tattoo was fake, Stanskovsky finally told the truth in a video posted on November 12. It was captioned, "I regret my tattoo."
"All I want to say is that I regret my tattoo. But not this one," she said, pointing to the viral tattoo on her forehead. "Because this is actually not a real tattoo."
Stanskovsky, who does appear to have real tattoos around her neck and arms, rubbed the ink off her face, and said she "tricked the whole internet" because she wanted people to know that they might regret their tattoos when they get older.
"When people see me on social media, the first thing they notice about me is my tattoos. So if I influence people, I want to influence people in the right way," she said.
She added that when she first started getting her tattoos 10 years ago, her friends and family told her she would regret them.
"I didn't listen, maybe because they didn't have any tattoos. But if there was a person covered in tattoos saying they regretted their tattoos, I would have listened," said Stanskovsky.
@anastanskovsky I regret my tattoo #facetattoo #tattoo
♬ original sound - Ana Stanskovsky
So far, this video has been viewed over 23 million times. Many viewers wrote that they had never believed the tattoo in her first video was real.
Others said that there were removal options available for those who regretted their tattoos, but some people pointed out that tattoo removal is typically expensive and that not everyone can afford it.
One viewer joked, "You waited too long and I got a forehead tattoo in that time."
Viral TikTok hoaxes are not uncommon, and some creators gain renewed attention when they come clean. In March, a woman backtracked on her story about standing up her date, saying it was mostly fake. More recently, a TikToker admitted that a 2021 video of a dating disaster that went viral wasn't real, leading his TikTok account to grow from 3,000 followers to over 90,000, he told Insider.