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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:
Y2ker · 20/02/2025 23:06

YourSparklySeal · 20/02/2025 22:20

Spent a lot of time on band forums and then way too much time talking to middle aged married men who I genuinely thought were my friends. Hindsight paints it very differently. I was about 15 when two said men tried to meet me, thankfully I was way too socially awkward to go through with it!

Band forums were very much about this. 50pc bored teens into music and 50pc men going through a midlife crisis.

dogpool · 20/02/2025 23:06

Serriadh · 20/02/2025 22:12

Cannot believe no one’s admitted to fanfic yet. Or is that just mainstream now?

I was in Harry Potter fandom in the early 00s. Absolutely mental. You’d start off with wish fulfilment about how the sexy new female teacher is the only person who understands poor handsome unloved Snape and end up reading some 40yo American bloke’s paedophilic musings about Hagrid bumming Harry.

Oh my god you've just reminded me about online RPGs! Not quite fanfic but my friend and I used to role play as horses. Yes, horses. You created a character by describing this fictional horse you've just made up, and there was a trend to create ~cool~ graphics for them - you either made your own or you could request someone to do one for you. Then you joined or started a new herd. Each herd was its own little community but every week or so stallions could "battle" it out to try to take over other herds. Writing about it now just feels so cringe. Did improve my creative writing and graphic design skills as a young teen though. Can't express how many times I've described a "nape".

Spudthespanner · 20/02/2025 23:06

@dogpool

I did learn a lot about basic HTML and coding during this period of my life and these definitely helped me get into my career more than my degree ever did😅

This is another loss with the way the internet is today. Everything used to be so... home brew. I really miss that.

LaPalmaLlama · 20/02/2025 23:06

Called the operator and insisted on talking to Buzby. Or when people called the home phone pretended to be the FBI and asked them how they got the number and pretended to trace the call.

Ihopeithinkiknow · 20/02/2025 23:04

Played bamboozle on teletext haha wild times

CootchyCoo · 20/02/2025 23:02

When Skype was new you could call any Hookers branch and ask to speak to Crystal. Guaranteed high jinks for naive UK kids!

TennisLady · 20/02/2025 23:01

Carno13 · 20/02/2025 22:27

I remember AOL chat rooms well.. A/S/L.. sure there were chat rooms linked to msn messenger also where you could chat to people from your area.. I remember talking to someone and him working out a family member of mine & threatening that he knew who I was :O

Also does anyone remember faceparty? Just remember looking at peoples pictures on there and talking via audio - I think?

also when I was a bit younger I loved neopets - the games were really good - remember one about collecting eggs. Also always went on girland - there were problem pages on there and girls of 13/14 always writing they were pregnant, looking back I think they were making out! You could get stars I think for giving good advice and remember the main person on there was called Lola something, would love to hear more about girland if anyone else remembers 😂
looking back I was always online haha

I bloody loved Girland!

Sixtygoingonthirty · 20/02/2025 23:00

Hoppinggreen · 20/02/2025 20:34

No such thing when I was a teen BUT I did get up to all sorts on my CB radio and me and my friends used to make up outrageous stories to send into newspaper Agony Aunts (which we used to physically post)

Another 1970’s kid here ….. We used to ring random phone numbers and ask if they know Teresa Green, or Mr Wall, then when told we had the wrong number asked if there were any Walls there, when they said no we’d ask ‘what keeps the roof up then?’ Cue hysterical laughter (from us) and we’d hang up quick!! We thought we were so badass!!! 😂😂😂

WonderingWanda · 20/02/2025 22:58

The Internet was only just starting out when I was a teenager. I 97 the height of my Internet fun was sending those silly sheep in emails to people. Once in a packed computer suite at Uni I opened an email which made the screen flash and the sound of a siren come out of the computer very loud....I was terrified, thought it was hackers....turns out it was just a joke email.

CrossCountryWoosh · 20/02/2025 22:56

Whatever happy to Naturalmamas forums?
I left it for a while and when I tried to go back on, it had gone.
That was a lovely place (although I'm sure plenty of people on here would hate it) and very busy.

SexAndCakes · 20/02/2025 22:56

This is hilarious. How did you get found out, OP?!

I am about 10 years older than you and didn't have much internet access til my 20s. I think our teen equivalent was doing prank phone calls.

Parlezz · 20/02/2025 22:55

You could sync msn messenger with windows media player and what you listened to scrolled across for your friends to see.

My brother and I renamed tracks on embarrassing albums so we could listen to what we liked and make it look like we were so much cooler.

ChaosAndToast · 20/02/2025 22:54

I was catfished by a girl in America and thought I had a boyfriend, he committed suicide and I was really messed up - I was only like 12 or 13.

I also spent a lot of time on that's phucked up.

I wish my parents monitored my internet use tbh

riverislandjeans · 20/02/2025 22:53

Ask baby?

I used to love that forum when I was a newly pregnant teen mum!!

TheScenicWay · 20/02/2025 22:52

We used to follow people around chat rooms and ask them random stupid questions and if they'd marry us.
My friend used to try to blackmail people for stupid (yet hilarious) reasons in the chat rooms by telling them he was going to blow up their internet. All ridiculous of course and before 9/11 when the threat of such things were not really that serious.

FcukTheDay · 20/02/2025 22:51

I spent many a days chatting to people on a chat room, it was UKChat. I then faked ID so I could become a 'host' basically a mod.

Tigergirl80 · 20/02/2025 22:50

Not in my youth I didn’t have internet access until around 2010. I do remember sleeping at my friends sisters flat when I was about 15. Would have been 92/93. I hear the police radio over the CB going all night about someone losing a lot of blood and they don’t think he will make it. Found out the next day he was a mate of her sister’s partner. He had taken an overdose and slit his wrists. It was so odd but sad.😢😢😢

dogpool · 20/02/2025 22:50

I made a fandom website for Orlando Bloom 😂this was during his peak popularity with LOTR and the first Pirates of the Caribbean. You could then register your fandom page on an "official" fandom directory and it would be listed alongside other sites, so people could collect little GIFs made by each official fandom page and put it on their own websites to show they too supported that actor/film/character etc. A much more innocent time!

I was also in an online community about a virtual pet game where you could adopt, breed and show your virtual cat/dog. Some learned to hex code and mod the cats and dogs into all sorts of cool things!

I did learn a lot about basic HTML and coding during this period of my life and these definitely helped me get into my career more than my degree ever did😅

Mummyoflittledragon · 20/02/2025 22:50

Am Loving these stories. No such thing as the internet in my youth. I used to call the speaking clock I was that bored. I did borrow a cb radio for a while. That was fun.

Pinkypup · 20/02/2025 22:50

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?

Was there a wedding forum attached to it as well? Could it be baby and bump? I think someone else said it earlier but you may have missed the comment. Think the wedding one was band of brides or something similar?

NameChangedForThis1985 · 20/02/2025 22:49

PassingStranger · 20/02/2025 22:48

What a waste of time, what was the point?
I couldn't be arsed doing that.

Show quote history

Are you lost?

PassingStranger · 20/02/2025 22:48

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?

What a waste of time, what was the point?
I couldn't be arsed doing that.

CrossCountryWoosh · 20/02/2025 22:46

When you had to pay for text messages, there were various websites that you could use to send free text messages. I use to spend hours sending pictures made from text to random people anonymously eg. I'd send a message that just said:

=.=

No malicious intent but I have no idea why I thought it was so funny. I mean, if I got a random cat text I'd find it funny but not after getting tens of them.

I'd also bait people online. Again not sure why that was funny but I guess I was bored and lonely.

Later, I'd "write" very authoritive articles on various websites as if I knew what I was talking about rather than giving really bad advice. I stopped that after a website published my university email address and I got into trouble.

angieboo1 · 20/02/2025 22:44

Username73638 · 20/02/2025 21:18

@ShrimpBoil @Niknakcake nope and nope. It had the word baby in it I’m pretty sure.

@verysmellyjelly wow 🙊

Babyworld?

battgirlatheart · 20/02/2025 22:42

Was it babycentre?
I was on there with a daughter now 22 and there were often fakes like this.