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

Jesus I just remembered when I was 18 and this was v early 2000s chatting with a guy for weeks and FLYING to meet him in London (he paid) when I got there he looked nothing like his pic, he was my age but wasn't the pic he sent. But we still hung out anyway. He could have murdered me! We stayed friends for a while after till I blocked him 😂

Online as a teenager?
Blimey.
There weren't even mobile phones til I was over 25

There are some core memories here!

Head of IT (we only had 1 IT teacher 😅) was so inept that a a bunch of non- tech savvy 14 year old girls could get round the firewall and onto the internet. Never got caught.

Chat rooms galore. Would email and chat to this one guy for hours on end. He was in his late 20’s in NZ. Clearly grooming.

How did we all survive?

LIke this... (not sure if pictures are uploadable at the moment?) but if they are...

I LOVED an AOL chat room. There were some that were known for more 'sexy talk' - I think 'Beach Party' was one of the rooms. And something to do with an elevator....

I would spend ridiculous amounts of time in them at work because the internet was always 'on' whereas at home, I would have to unplug the phone and dial up and always had my parents tapping their imaginary wrist watches at me.

I really vividly recall chatting with someone who was called FloridaBeachBum (fuck knows how I remember that) in a room every day for about a week, before he declared that he loved me. I then got a message on ICQ (remember that?) from a girl in New Orleans to warn me that he had told her he loved her the week before. Me and girl from NO "called him out" 🙄 in the chat room thinking we were doing a big 'reveal' and everyone gave literally zero fucks. I then started chatting regularly with the girl from New Orleans - she lived rurally on a bayou and her life was so different from mine - we would chat on ICQ or in one of the AOL private rooms (maybe that was the elevator bit?) Anyway - me at night, her first thing in the morning - about our lives/our day etc. This went on for about a year including sending photos in the post of us and our pets and talking about the boys we liked. Looking back it seems weird, but actually it was quite sweet - like having an old fashioned pen-pal. I sometimes wonder about her.

not a teen but use to go on aol chat alot pretended i was someone else just for a laugh sometimes- so many friens made also met my husband-confessed my real name before we met
anyone remember the pub chat room

I used to go on random lesbian chat rooms and start chats with "make me cum" then masturbate to them 😬

Also I have a handful of friends who I met through a self-harm recovery forum at 15/16. In retrospect it’s insane that emotionally unstable teenagers and young adults were being encouraged to get together in groups without any kind of supervision.@DonningMyHardHat

I was a member of a secret eating disorder community where everyone was on stackers and gave advice on how to stay thin. There was a section called Thinspo or something like that where people posted pictures of dangerously underweight women and artwork of sexualised skeletons. I didn’t have an eating disorder myself but an online friend invited me and I wanted to be part of her world.

We didn't have the internet; we had a dumb terminal linked via telephone wires to the Big Computer in Barnet. My mate Janet found out a way to get it to spit out horoscopes.

Oh, I almost forgot the time I signed into MSN messenger and I got several IMs from people asking how I was online. I had no idea what they were talking about. It turned out there’d been a huge blackout in NYC (2003). I panicked so started typing something then switched off my computer at the socket mid sentence.

I was born in 1992 so can obviously relate to pretty much everything that has already been mentioned.

Does anyone else remember gurl.com? The message boards there were basically a hotbed of paedophiles grooming tweens/teens into talking about sex and masturbation, combined with a lot of teen pregnancy and marriage stuff that was mostly made up. I was kind of obsessed with the ‘real’ teen pregnancy members though. There was a core group of members who had blogs etc., some of whom I still follow on social media 15-20 years later!

Also I have a handful of friends who I met through a self-harm recovery forum at 15/16. In retrospect it’s insane that emotionally unstable teenagers and young adults were being encouraged to get together in groups without any kind of supervision. I never told my parents what I was doing or how I knew these people. I could have been meeting up with anyone. It would have been so easy for someone to pray on vulnerable young women (and pretty much all of us have since been diagnosed as neurodivergent).

Very early 00s I found a Yahoo club dedicated to a TV show I absolutely loved at the time. For some reason I decided to set up a profile pretending to be one of the actors. It was supposed to be totally harmless and I was completely daft and overboard with it all. Most people there knew it wasn't real but a couple really believed it and we're so full on I quickly disappeared.

I also had a profile as me and would chat to some of the club members about the fake actor. I made good friends with a couple. Not sure if they ever realised I was both profiles but I still think of them quite often to this day!

I've never done anything like it since. The internet was such a novelty at the time I think all sensible thought went out of the window!

Omg you have taken me back!!!! I used to listen to late night love all the time 😂😂

Why are so many people posting this? If you don't relate to the thread then don't bloody post on it. Christ almighty.

Making up for lost opportunities to do strange things online as a teen by doing them now?

I suppose my most youthful 'online' experience was a pre-WWW network while a postgrad student - played Mornington Crescent in about 1983!

Amazon and eBay used to be so good. Everything has turned to shit. Poor Etsy has fallen now. And wtf happened to Pinterest. Absolutely chock full with AI images.

I even remember how nice Facebook used to be. I'd log on in the university library, poke a few friends, and play my turn on Scrabbulous. That was before anyone without a university email could have a Facebook account.

Online didnt exist 😂

Yes to this! Me too. The soundtrack was pretty great; I wonder if anyone has made a playlist from the show.

He has some pretty weird contributors.

Oh this thread is great, so much Babyworld and Ask Jeeves and Friends Reunited (whatever happened to that?) and Yahoo. Amazon sold books and then Google took over the world.

Fuck.ing.hell

Why are so many people posting this? If you don't relate to the thread then don't bloody post on it. Christ almighty.

I spent so much time in a bravo chat room, I was 13, but I would share my A/S/L and always say 17/f/some made up place. I used to download pictures of Jessica Simpson or the Olsen twins and find it so funny when I managed to convince people that they were pictures of me.

I’d be talking to grown men pretending to be 17. I’d be getting unsolicited dick pics and would show my friends who were all do equally batshit and dangerous stuff on their computers.

I gave my address to some boys who lived in the same area as me, as me and my friend had been talking to them. They were a year older than me and went to a different school, they turned up at my house and luckily they were legit and we all stayed friends. Honestly I’m lucky to be alive lol, the internet back then was like the Wild West!

I remember a lady posted a picture of her in her wedding dress after it had been made. She clearly loved it and was beaming in the photos. She was just showing off the dress, not asking for advice.

Unfortunately the dress was obviously very, very badly made.

Some people were kind eg complimented the colour, some were supportive eg gave some gentle suggestions on how to improve the fit etc

Unfortunately most people were horrible. I've never seen a pack of women descend on one person for literally doing nothing like that. They were all egging each other to mock the dress and/or the woman. It must have been so upsetting for her.

She left the forum the same night. I left too.

I do sometimes wonder about her. I hope she was able to wear a dress she loved and see those awful people for what they were.

I remember that! Still remember things you could do if you had an ac.uk extension - for example, you could already check on people online - by typing finger and then their name and surname and it would tell you what time that person was online, that was in 95, such a novelty! And those round macs in computer rooms!

@Username73638 There wasn't any internet in my teens.

Yup, and I hope my DC are never as stupid as I was.
At 13 I joined adult dating sites, saying I was 18, and regularly swapped numbers with much older men. Mostly sent texts back and forth, but a few did call and must have known how young I was due to my voice.
Eventually told my Sister who was older than me, thinking she'd be impressed. I was wrong, she was horrified and instantly told our Mum who went ballistic with me.

Handbag.com is still to me the greatest chat room that ever existed (sorry mumsnet). It was so fun, and full of really sharp, witty people and some absolutely fantastic trolls. It was such a shame when Boots took over and everyone dispersed off to new places.