A well-known online comedian and rapper who was reported to have died is actually alive and well, according to someone who says they are his family.
Who Is MK Slatt?
MK Slatt, 23, who is also known as Slimeball MK and whose given name is Marquel Holmes, has three million followers on YouTube and Instagram combined.
The comedian and rapper, from Birmingham, Alabama, went viral on Monday evening after a TikTok account claimed he was dead.
What Has Happened?
The account, Danky Underground, shared a video of Holmes with a caption that read: "Instagram comedian MK Slatt passes away at the age of 23. Further investigation is still processing."
It caused confusion and worry among fans and got 1.1 million views in a matter of hours.
About three hours later, the same account shared a video of what appeared to be a coroner or police report about the death of an individual who it said had died from a "drug overdose." The caption over the video read "Proof."
But it did not long to debunk the rumors, with a person saying she was Holmes' cousin saying he was fine and very far from dead.
"Stop spreading false a** rumors, my Cuz good !" wrote the Facebook business account Wigsby K Way.
Newsweek contacted Holmes and Way by social media for comment. We have been unable to connect the Wigsby Facebook account to Holmes in any way and cannot verify the original claims of his death or what Way said about him on Facebook.
Following the Danky Underground post, one of Holmes' friends, fellow artist Reggie Baybee, reshared a video of the pair of them performing together.
"Man I hope this s*** ain't true," he wrote on his Instagram stories to his 2.2 million followers.
People were not happy with the Danky Underground post showing Holmes' alleged death report.
"Ppl (people) who like this scare me," wrote @trinity.nicholee in the comment section.
Another person pointed out that the report said the patient had been discharged, and others noticed there was no name on the report.
"Two things, it says she and the person was discharged," wrote @yodadsfavudo.
"Where the name at," added @jeremycrescendo.
Bogus celebrity death rumors have occurred many times in the past and even targeted high profile names such as Kate Middleton, Donald Trump, Joe Rogan and Russian President Vladimir Putin.
In December last year, search engine Google incorrectly reported that rappers Eminem and Bia had died.
A spokesperson for Google told Newsweek at the time that the search engine's knowledge graphs were influenced by a variety of sources across the web such as Wikipedia—which anyone can edit.
Eminem, whose given name is Marshall Mathers III, has experienced his share of fake death notices in his long career.
One person claimed on X, formerly Twitter, to have murdered the rapper in 2020. In 2006, a conspiracy theory did the rounds claiming that Eminem had been killed in a car crash and replaced by an android body double.
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