Prank Video Claiming Elders Are Abandoned Goes Viral on Social Media
भदौ १६, २०८२ १४:१४
Kathmandu: A video made by a young man “for fun” has gone viral on social media platforms including TikTok and Facebook in recent days, creating confusion and spreading misleading claims. In the video, a young man in a white T-shirt is seen talking about a place along a trekking route.
“Sir, here, it is customary to throw elderly parents away like garbage. Did you know this, you keep coming here. What is this about?” the person filming the video asks.
The man in the white T-shirt responds as if narrating a real incident: “Yes, this place is for throwing (parents). They still throw (parents).”
Emphasizing the same statement, the person filming continues, “Oh, this area has been set aside, right? For throwing (parents)?”
The young man replies, “Just the other day, someone was dumped. We won’t say their name, but it happened a week or ten days ago.”
The cameraman then asks, “Are there clothes there?”
The man answers, “They do throw them (parents) there. They just threw them, an elderly mother was dumped a few days ago. Villagers say this practice should be stopped. Let’s see what happens now.”
The cameraman then points to a spot on the road where some clothes are scattered and says, “Oh, my! That’s right. Scary!” He can also be heard muttering, “They throw them (parents) from up here.” By the time this report was prepared, the video had been viewed nearly 793,000 times.
Binu Pokharel, a YouTuber who calls herself a podcaster, shared the video on her page. By then, it had been viewed around 20,000 times. She wrote, “Whatt! Is there such a culture in Nepal? Disgusting, us humans!”
She added further commentary: “During times of crisis (epidemics or famine), some practices may have been adopted to ease hardship, but that doesn’t mean they remain as culture today. Such things should be erased! It’s shameful to hear this. If wrong practices are not removed, how can we live in today’s society? It won’t be long before people start justifying such things, citing scripture.”
A keyframe extracted from the video and checked through reverse image search revealed that the video was uploaded by a TikTok account named Thulobuba. The account belongs to Santosh Basnet, who captioned the clip “Pranking my thuliama.” However, the video only shows the young man in the white T-shirt and the person filming him, no “thuliama” appears in the 1-minute, 11-second video. A horror sound effect was also added to make it scarier.
Because TikTok captions often appear at the bottom of the screen, many users did not notice the disclaimer. Santosh later commented, “This is not a custom in Nepal.” But he did not clearly state that the video was a prank.
Santosh has posted other similar videos. In another one, trekkers are shown as the man claims: “It was many years ago, a son dumped his father.” This clip too is incomplete and uses suspenseful audio. The caption reads, “We were pranking thuliama, guys, there is no such custom.” In that video, the same young man who previously said “a mother was dumped a few days ago” laughs and insists the event was “many years ago.”
Even in his follow-up “clarification” video, Santosh did not directly call the earlier content a prank. Instead, he again made it ambiguous, showing a dog, some clothes, and an old woman nearby, without finishing the explanation. In all three clips, the same soundtrack was used.
His YouTube channel features a vlog about visiting the Dudhkunda in Solududhkunda Municipality, Solukhumbu. From that vlog, it is clear that he and his family saw some discarded clothes and a headscarf near a cliff and fabricated the story for TikTok. Because the video was incomplete and the caption unclear, many users believed it to be real and began sharing it further.
As a result, the misleading video has gone viral, with comments such as “Where is this custom?”, “This evil practice should be eliminated,” and “We should inform the police.”
Speaking to TechPana, Gandhi Maya Tamang, Deputy Mayor of Solududhkunda Municipality, said she had never heard of such a practice. “I may have heard it in a story when I was young,” she said. “But I don’t know of any such custom anywhere on the way to Dudhkunda. This is something I have never heard of.”
After viewing the clip, Deputy Mayor Tamang said it might have been made as a joke but warned against such content. “Even if it was for fun, it shouldn’t have been about something that doesn’t exist. Dudhkunda is a sacred religious site, and this is the peak season for visitors. Talking about practices that don’t exist harms both domestic and foreign tourism.”
She also expressed concern that elderly people using TikTok might take the misleading content at face value and refuse if their children try to take them on a pilgrimage.
पछिल्लो अध्यावधिक: भदौ १६, २०८२ १४:१४
