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Original poster

To ask what the strangest thing you did online as a teenager was?

314 replies

Username73638 · 20/02/2025 20:31

I’ll go first… when I was about 12 or 13 (mid-00s) I signed up to a UK mum/baby forum - I can’t remember what it was called but it was a bit like Mumsnet but way, way smaller, everyone knew everyone - and created a whole fake life and made a load of ‘friends’ on there who were presumably women in their 20s-40s. This was when the internet was a very different place and everyone had their kids’ names and DOBs on ‘tickers’ I think they were called in their signatures. There was minimal anonymity. I had a fake husband and a couple of fake kids with names and back stories and then ‘got pregnant’ and tracked a whole pregnancy and birth. All of my online ‘friends’ were really excited to hear the birth announcement and helped me pick the baby’s name. I made up a fake birth story. There was actually an in-person meet up with all the kids that I was invited along to but obviously I couldn’t go, I pretended that one of my kids was sick.

I still remember some of the names of the women and their kids and think about how old the kids would be now (in their 20s!)

Anyway after 1-2 years, can’t remember exactly how long, a group of them realised I was fake and ‘confronted’ me online. I didn’t confess but deleted my account and never went back.

I had a difficult home life and I think I wanted to imagine the happy family I might have when I grew up. It was a bit of an obsession though and I spent so many hours on there, basically every afternoon and evening after school. I’ve never done anything similar since, my catfishing days were over after that!

Did anyone else do anything similar online as a teenager, pretending to be anyone else or something?

OP posts:
UndermyShoeJoe · 20/02/2025 21:57

RaveToTheGrave1 · 20/02/2025 21:56

I can't believe how many of us had fake personas, were we all tapped 😂

I think it’s the online version of when kids would make up stories at school about an uncle or great grandad being famous or having the newest console before its release date because their daddy works there.

RaveToTheGrave1 · 20/02/2025 21:56

I can't believe how many of us had fake personas, were we all tapped 😂

ArtyFartyHippopotamus · 20/02/2025 21:56

My cousin and I would get the telephone directory and phone anyone with a famous surname. For example David Cassidy, Donny Osmond, I can’t remember who else. We thought it was hilarious at the time. We must have been crazy.

Original poster
Username73638 · 20/02/2025 21:51

@HansHolbein nope

OP posts:
Fruitbatdancer · 20/02/2025 21:50

Age13 mid 90’s gave my real name & address to a random on MSN and he went wild sending flowers/ chocs etc in repeat. I was horrified, parents more so.
I now work in IT 😂 security savvy me is now completely ashamed!

UndermyShoeJoe · 20/02/2025 21:48

HansHolbein · 20/02/2025 21:46

@UndermyShoeJoe Wobbles was a miserable bastard Grin I was very pleased to see that the forum turned to shit when it incorporated ‘momtastic’. It’s dead there now.

@Username73638 was it Emma’s Diary?

Has it haha deserves it. It was far too love love mwah mwah. As soon as I found Mumsnet I stopped posting there.

Prettypennies · 20/02/2025 21:48

As teenagers in the mid-late 00s we would make fake MSN accounts and add people from school as a hot guy/girl and try to get them to agree to become boyfriend/girlfriend 😭 We had to use the excuse that the webcam wasn’t working all the time haha. No idea what we got out of it!

Anewdawnanewname · 20/02/2025 21:47

I used to post on iVillage when I was pregnant, and there was always people in there pretending to be pregnant.

As a teen, I used AOL instant messenger and used to sit talking to other people via chat after they’d send an email”a/s/l?” Message. And I used to post on their message boards and have awful signatures with emo lyrics.

CoffeeCakeAndALattePlease · 20/02/2025 21:47

I found a diary from 1998 writing about going on the internet for the first time at someone’s house. I had no idea what to do!

PP mentioning Graham Torrington - i’d completely forgotten about him. I used to listen to that in the car driving home at night and found it very entertaining!

I think my most daring thing as a teen was buying More to look at position of the fortnight 🤣

HansHolbein · 20/02/2025 21:46

@UndermyShoeJoe Wobbles was a miserable bastard Grin I was very pleased to see that the forum turned to shit when it incorporated ‘momtastic’. It’s dead there now.

@Username73638 was it Emma’s Diary?

JasmineAllen · 20/02/2025 21:45

Fortunately I was in my 20s before online was a thing. I was such an idiot as a teenager/young adult I can only thank my lucky stars it hadn't been invented when I was growing up 😂

fashionqueen0123 · 20/02/2025 21:44

Anon501178 · 20/02/2025 20:41

This reminds me of when circa 2000 aged 12/13 I secretly used to listen to Graham Torrington's 'Late night love' on the radio with my headphones 😂 I was an only child with older religious parents so they would have been mortified if they knew, but it taught me all the juicy bits about romance and relationships that they would never have done and was probably more useful than the PHSE lessons at school for setting me up in such areas! 🤭😂

Show quote history

I used to listen to that but it was Jeremy Kyle before he became famous! It was on a local station. I’d drop friends off after a night out and listen to it on the way home

RitaIncognita · 20/02/2025 21:44

I did laugh out loud at the thread title. I could post about listening to pirate radio when I was a teenager.

Cedrabbage · 20/02/2025 21:42

Cyber sex

littleluncheon · 20/02/2025 21:40

user0987637829 · 20/02/2025 21:30

Reading this is actually freaky because I did the exact same thing as you as a teenager. Sitting there on my family computer and was pretending to have a whole family/ new baby - even down to the meet up that I couldn't attend. I can remember all the names too. It was on a site called Babyzone.

I was going through a difficult time (parent was ill the eventually died) so was a form of escapism I guess.

So weird that someone else did the exact same as me - I wonder how common it actually was.

I joined an American forum called something like Motherhood that was very early crunchy/gentle parenting/homesteady and enjoying making up crazy names for my 8 children that I'd birthed at home in between churning butter and tending to chickens (as a 14 year old in a council house in Birmingham Grin)
I never sustained any of these personas for very long though before starting again!

Andsoitbeganagain · 20/02/2025 21:39

@ShillyShallySherbet We met many times. In retrospect, it could have been a very dangerous disaster waiting to happen but I was lucky.

Portakalkedi · 20/02/2025 21:36

Online? 😄😄As a teen my evening entertainment was a 1/2 mile walk to the nearest phone box so I could talk to my mates. We had a cunning ruse whereby they (mostly had phones at home) would make a collect call to me in the phone box, so I didn't have to pay, and it wouldn't run up their parent's phone bill.

FelicityBeedle · 20/02/2025 21:36

Used to go on Omegle video, and end chats quickly until we found a cock to laugh at. Remember once there wasn’t a person just sort of PowerPoint slides with ‘thumbs up for 1 point’ until it progressed to flash your boobs etc. Probably made some pervert very happy.

I think I was 17 when I first joined mumsnet after my mam read out a funny thread to me which is pretty odd too. I also remember answering questions on yahoo answers with completely unearned authority, logged in to my account a few years ago and I spouted so much shite

BilboBlaggin · 20/02/2025 21:36

Yeah, no such thing as internet in my teenage years. Most "outrageous" thing we'd do is use the local telephone box to ring a random number and start talking to whoever answered as though they were our mum or dad. We probably confused a fair amount of people. Quite lame really compared to what some get/got up to.

ShillyShallySherbet · 20/02/2025 21:34

Andsoitbeganagain · 20/02/2025 21:30

Handbag.com.. Met my soul mate. 25 years later and he's still on my mind every single day.

Did you meet in real life? I had a very boring job in my early 20s and got slightly addicted to handbag.com! As a teenager I used to enjoy making up fake personas in chat rooms. My favourite was pretending to be a professional ballerina. I also used to call 100 the operator on New Year’s Eve to wish them a happy new year, they’d always say thank you!

Original poster
Username73638 · 20/02/2025 21:33

user0987637829 · 20/02/2025 21:30

Reading this is actually freaky because I did the exact same thing as you as a teenager. Sitting there on my family computer and was pretending to have a whole family/ new baby - even down to the meet up that I couldn't attend. I can remember all the names too. It was on a site called Babyzone.

I was going through a difficult time (parent was ill the eventually died) so was a form of escapism I guess.

So weird that someone else did the exact same as me - I wonder how common it actually was.

Wow that’s crazy 😳 Sorry to hear about your parent ❤️

OP posts:
Original poster
Username73638 · 20/02/2025 21:32

roseymoira · 20/02/2025 21:28

How did they realise you were fake, what gave you away?

I don’t actually know, but seeing as I was a child barely older than some of their own kids I assume it was pretty obvious by the things I wrote 🤣 I actually judge them a bit for not working it out sooner. The only reason I remember them giving was that I was ‘online’ so often I couldn’t possibly have time to be raising 3 kids or if I was I was a terrible mother 😅 Bear in mind this was before smart phones so you actually had to be sat at a computer at home to be on the forum. Although I always thought it was a little rich coming from them because some of them were on there all the time too!

OP posts:
CurlyhairedAssassin · 20/02/2025 21:30

Ilovelowry · 20/02/2025 20:37

When I started university in the mid 90s, chat rooms on the Internet had just started. I remember randomly chatting to an American person at 3am online.

It was so novel I couldn't quite believe it.

Only worked if there was space on the computers, there were only ten in the halls of residence!

Oh I have such strong memories of realising how revolutionary it all was! It seemed SO exciting, the idea that you could go looking for stuff on a computer that wasn't anywhere near you.

user0987637829 · 20/02/2025 21:30

Reading this is actually freaky because I did the exact same thing as you as a teenager. Sitting there on my family computer and was pretending to have a whole family/ new baby - even down to the meet up that I couldn't attend. I can remember all the names too. It was on a site called Babyzone.

I was going through a difficult time (parent was ill the eventually died) so was a form of escapism I guess.

So weird that someone else did the exact same as me - I wonder how common it actually was.

AlpacaYourPicnic · 20/02/2025 21:30

Well, it wasn't around back in the 70s and 80s when I was a child but I certainly made the most of it when it finally arrived!

I remember using the search engine 'Ask Jeeves' for the first time. Must have been over 25 years ago give or take. Was paralysed with what to type so just typed 'Russian amputees' and somehow stumbled across some dating site for Russians who were missing limbs.

I pretended to be Miley Cyrus and would send my daughter - who was a big fan! - emails of encouragement from Hannah Montana. Oh and I set up a Facebook account pretending to be Simon Cowell ... would regularly be sent messages from literally hundreds of fans.

I also spent time on some weird chat room and was amazed to be able to tap some keys and make handcuffs on the screen!

These days, I have a following online as myself of over 250,000 people (no, not famous!) so you could say the internet has worked out ok for me