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Original poster

Chatting with ‘ransoms’ on the internet

83 replies

Easycheesy99 · 19/01/2021 22:48

I realise that it is ironic writing this on what is a forum of strangers but I’m interested as to whether anyone else spoke to random people a lot on the internet as a teenager? Obviously I am speaking to a certain age bracket here!!

I grew up in the age of MSN and AIM for messaging, before there was even Facebook. There was MySpace for the cool people. I used to frequent a forum where there were lots of people my age (allegedly, I suppose you never really know!) and often chatted with them on MSN privately.

I used to go in chat rooms as a 13,14 year old and speak to random people and then add them to my contacts. I remember having a contacts group on MSN called ‘random people’. I used to pour my woes and angst about boys out to these random people.

At some point, I just stopped speaking to any of them. Some of them I wonder if they were even who they say they were. Others I’m sure were but there’s no way I’d be able to find them on social media or anything now and wouldn’t want to really as I feel a bit weird about that part of my life?

Don’t get me wrong, I had a lot of friends at school and would usually be talking on MSN with actual friends at the same time as these ‘fandoms’.

I just cannot imagine doing that anymore?!? Did anyone else have this experience? I feel like it was very ‘of the time’. Obviously nowadays people slide into DMs and chat via Instagram etc but nothing is as anonymous as those days.

Anyone else? I wonder if anyone I spoke to is now on here Grin

OP posts:
Original poster
Easycheesy99 · 19/01/2021 22:49

Argh clearly the title should be ‘randoms’!!!! Auto correct fail!

OP posts:
Ellmau · 19/01/2021 22:50

Aren't you doing it right now?

Original poster
Easycheesy99 · 19/01/2021 22:52

@Ellmau

Aren't you doing it right now?
Yes...I did say I note the irony but I do see this more as posing a one off question than sparking off friendships with random people - I don’t tend to keep the same username for long enough and certainly wouldn’t speak to anyone on a different medium?
OP posts:
Original poster
Easycheesy99 · 19/01/2021 22:53

I suppose my question was more about the weirdness of being a young teenager and speaking to people in chat rooms who could have been really dodgy!

OP posts:
queenofSI · 19/01/2021 22:54

I used to do this too. God knows who they actually were I was talking to

Doyouavocado · 19/01/2021 22:55

Yessss I did haha! I used to use AOL chat rooms, gosh I totally forgotten. I was actually in primary school then! ASL? Grin

HeyMister · 19/01/2021 22:56

Wow, you've just dragged up a whole load of my past! 🤣
I used to go to the Internet cafe and sign into Chat.co.uk and talk to randoms. Add them on MSN and pour my heart out to them as well. They were just strangers. I have no idea who they were, where they were from or how old they were.

Admittedly, I did talk to older men when I was 13! I had no idea why. There was no sexual talk though. (as far as I can remember)

Original poster
Easycheesy99 · 19/01/2021 22:58

@Doyouavocado

Yessss I did haha! I used to use AOL chat rooms, gosh I totally forgotten. I was actually in primary school then! ASL? Grin
OH GOD the AOL chat rooms!

A/S/L - that takes me back.

OP posts:
itwillbehormones · 19/01/2021 22:59

I used to do this as well on chat rooms, how many years ago was this about 20 or more!

You've just made me feel very very old

Original poster
Easycheesy99 · 19/01/2021 22:59

@HeyMister

Wow, you've just dragged up a whole load of my past! 🤣 I used to go to the Internet cafe and sign into Chat.co.uk and talk to randoms. Add them on MSN and pour my heart out to them as well. They were just strangers. I have no idea who they were, where they were from or how old they were.

Admittedly, I did talk to older men when I was 13! I had no idea why. There was no sexual talk though. (as far as I can remember)

At least it wasn’t just me pouring my heart out to strangers!!! Christ I do wonder what some of them would think looking back.

I am not really aware that any of my real life friends used to do that but I suppose I wouldn’t know!!! I kept my randoms very separate Grin

OP posts:
quarentini · 19/01/2021 23:00

Chat roulette
Fun times

oliveoilandcheese · 19/01/2021 23:00

Chat roulette !

Original poster
Easycheesy99 · 19/01/2021 23:04

Ha! I am guessing chat roulette doesn’t exist anymore?! Those were the days!

OP posts:
Brighterthansunflowers · 19/01/2021 23:06

I used to go on message boards a lot as a teen and ended up close friends with a few people who I actually met up with in real life. I don’t think I told my mum the first time we met up though! Which is so stupid and dangerous obviously! I had spoken to them by phone though, and fortunately they were all teenage girls as they had said they were! A few months later we then travelled to have a sleepover at another girls house who none of us had met, only spoken to by phone and online. Thankfully she was also genuine, but as an adult I’m horrified by our stupidity!

I didn’t talk to “randoms” Though, it was always the same few people who I got to know well on the message board then by instant messenger. I do still believe they were genuine but obviously I don’t know for sure.

Even years later as an adult I became close friends with a few people from various places online, but again, talked a lot with the same people so feel I knew them quite well. And they’re still maintaining the same persona on social media 5-10 years later so pretty sure they were genuine!

Original poster
Easycheesy99 · 19/01/2021 23:08

@Brighterthansunflowers

I used to go on message boards a lot as a teen and ended up close friends with a few people who I actually met up with in real life. I don’t think I told my mum the first time we met up though! Which is so stupid and dangerous obviously! I had spoken to them by phone though, and fortunately they were all teenage girls as they had said they were! A few months later we then travelled to have a sleepover at another girls house who none of us had met, only spoken to by phone and online. Thankfully she was also genuine, but as an adult I’m horrified by our stupidity!

I didn’t talk to “randoms” Though, it was always the same few people who I got to know well on the message board then by instant messenger. I do still believe they were genuine but obviously I don’t know for sure.

Even years later as an adult I became close friends with a few people from various places online, but again, talked a lot with the same people so feel I knew them quite well. And they’re still maintaining the same persona on social media 5-10 years later so pretty sure they were genuine!

Oh yes by randoms i do mean I had a specific set of people I grew quite close to - not quite chat roulette randomness Grin I never met up with any of them though! I would have been too scared and also a lot of them were allegedly American.
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LizzieVereker · 19/01/2021 23:08

@Doyouavocado

Yessss I did haha! I used to use AOL chat rooms, gosh I totally forgotten. I was actually in primary school then! ASL? Grin
What’s ASL please? It rings a bell but I can’t remember.
EatingAllTheCookies · 19/01/2021 23:11

Yahoo chat and play pool then add to MSN omg!

BlackForestCake · 19/01/2021 23:12

age/sex/location

JustPickleRick · 19/01/2021 23:12

This was my life growing up! I used to arrange to meet my friends on msn at X time. I was also very into something called Habbo Hotel where you made a little person and walked around chatting to people in different rooms. Would end up adding lots of them on my msn too and putting them in the random group 😅 Who knows who I was talking to 😬

NotCornflakes · 19/01/2021 23:17

I only used a chat room once, at the library in around 1995. I was chatting to a girl my age who was from the same town as me but had moved to America Hmm. "She" invited me into a private chat room, luckily I was too technologically inept to work out how to do it!

Original poster
Easycheesy99 · 19/01/2021 23:18

@JustPickleRick

This was my life growing up! I used to arrange to meet my friends on msn at X time. I was also very into something called Habbo Hotel where you made a little person and walked around chatting to people in different rooms. Would end up adding lots of them on my msn too and putting them in the random group 😅 Who knows who I was talking to 😬
Habbo Hotel!!! God that takes me back as well. Lots of little characters walking round asking ASL? Grin
OP posts:
LizzieVereker · 19/01/2021 23:19

@BlackForestCake

age/sex/location
Oh yes, thank you

(45, no thank you, London 😉)

kwiksavenofrillsusername · 19/01/2021 23:24

Me too. I used to frequent a load of forums, then ended up adding people on MSN messenger. I’d tell them so much about my life. It’s scary really to think who they might have been. Although I did stay in touch with one of them and we’ve been friends about 20 years but never met.

Yahoo chat rooms too. I’d go on them on my lunch break at school around 98/99. I was the school hero for a while because I worked out how to get past the school’s filter and visit all sorts of dodgy sites! We’d all go on Yahoo and add random people to our messenger. Nearly all of them were Americans.

LouiseTrees · 19/01/2021 23:27

Yep I did this too. Actually found out one of them I met through an online game ended up in one of my classes at uni. Don’t keep in touch though. Weird data back then. I never shared anything personal though only moaning about the state of the world and how crap it is being a teenager ( which it turns out is actually a comparatively easier time of life than adulthood).

Original poster
Easycheesy99 · 19/01/2021 23:30

@kwiksavenofrillsusername

Me too. I used to frequent a load of forums, then ended up adding people on MSN messenger. I’d tell them so much about my life. It’s scary really to think who they might have been. Although I did stay in touch with one of them and we’ve been friends about 20 years but never met.

Yahoo chat rooms too. I’d go on them on my lunch break at school around 98/99. I was the school hero for a while because I worked out how to get past the school’s filter and visit all sorts of dodgy sites! We’d all go on Yahoo and add random people to our messenger. Nearly all of them were Americans.

I honestly never thought other people really did this!! They used to share things with me as well. Maybe we spoke to each other Grin
OP posts: