TikToker Duane Cali may want to avoid social media for a few days. After posting a video of himself appearing to have monkeypox while grabbing a bite to eat from McDonald’s went viral, he wants the world to know what was really going on with his skin.

The controversial video was posted to the popular app on Aug. 14. It begins with Cali saying, “My bad I’m not in the house,” before he shares a cautionary tale about showing up for others who would not return the favor. “You might show up for the wrong motherf**ker at the wrong place, at the wrong time, and end up with the f**king monkeypox,” he said towards the end of the video.

The 44-second clip was met with visceral reactions from people outraged across social media. Cali even reposted a clip showing that his video had landed on the news. “If the news says it, it’s fact,” he wrote as the caption. For over a week, he responded to various comments of people calling him out for endangering the lives of others.

The rare disease has been a major health concern in various countries across the globe. Though a vaccine is available, domestically, many states have been forced to issue stringent vaccination requirements to help preserve current supplies.

On Saturday (Aug. 27), Cali revealed that having monkeypox was all a hoax. “Yeah, this was just a promo gone wrong,” he said. In part of the minute-long clip, he is seen laying down as a makeup artist meticulously places each of the pox on his arms, hands, and face. He claimed the not-so-brilliant idea was all a ploy to get people to check out his latest record.

He explained, “I have unique and unconventional marketing methods when it comes to promoting my music, and I usually try to tie the marketing around the premise of the song. This song was called ‘Choose Yourself.’ So, I was trying to market it in a way where it displays the person choosing themselves regardless of how other people feel about it. Unfortunately, it didn’t translate that way. People just ended up getting mad at me.”

Needless to say, coming clean about not having the monkeypox has been met with mixed reactions. “This is the definition of doing too much,” wrote one person online. “Whew bro that wasn’t the move but we gone check yo song out now that you explained what happened,” commented another. Sometimes you have to see it to believe it, so check out Cali’s revealing video below.