A 50-year-old father whose 'ultimate catfish' tricked the internet into believing he was a young woman is now more popular than ever

• A Japanese social media star revealed in March she was actually a man using FaceApp to alter her looks.
• Soya no Sohi, who is 50-year-old Yasuo Nakajima, shocked thousands of his fans with the news.
• Nakajima told the Washington Post that his follower count has shot up since his confession.

The young and beautiful Japanese motorcycle enthusiast Soya no Sohi shocked thousands of her social media fans in March when she revealed she was actually a 50-year-old man who had been using an app to transform his appearance.

Yasuo Nakajima, a father of three and former competitive bodybuilder, was exposed as the "ultimate catfish" on the Japanese "Monday Late Show" after the production team tracked him down in person, VICE reported.

He admitted on live television that for months he had used FaceApp to change how he looked in selfies, telling the hosts he had adopted the persona because no one wanted to read about a middle-aged man thought.

Thousands of his fans were left utterly stunned by the reveal, but Nakajima told the Washington Post this week that it actually made him gain even more followers.

Read more: This expert wrote a book on deepfakes: 'Things will get worse before they get better'

"When you're young, you tend to be scolded or criticized by older people who say you should do this or you should do that. But at this age, there's no one around to really scold me," he told the Post. "I'm having the best time of my life."

Nakajima said he thinks fans are still invested in him because even though his appearance had changed, "his personality shined through."

"The only thing I'm creating is, basically, my appearance. Everything else is me," he said, according to the Post.

Nakajima, who has been riding and fixing up motorcycles since he was a teenager, noticed in 2019 that he was not getting the social media attention he had hoped for.

The 50-year-old, who was posting footage of his many motorcycling trips to Twitter, only gained six followers over the course of a few months.

Then, after watching his children play with FaceApp, he realized he could manipulate pictures of himself. So, he changed his Twitter handle to @azusagakuyuki- a mash-up of the names of his kids - and started posting motorcycle-related content under his new name, gaining hundreds of followers in the process.

Today he has more than 28,000 followers and still continues to post as Soya.

He told the Post he's not sure how long he will keep up the persona but says he is just having fun with it for now.

"In childhood, a lot of us were told, 'As a boy, you should do this. As a girl, you should do this.' And I really dislike that," he said, according to the Post.

"Unless you start, you'll come to regret it. People will say, 'I'll do this once things settle down or once everything is in place.' But by the time everything is in place, your life will end," he added.