Chatting with ‘ransoms’ on the internet

[Easycheesy99]

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

@Trouba

I used to run a casino and a Takeshi Castle in habbo. 😂 But also used to be on Harry Potter forums a lot and add my friends off there to my msn! The memories!

I also used to be on Harry Potter forums!! I wonder if we were on the same one

@SockQueen

MSN and Freeserve chatrooms for me. There were some proper dodgy characters on there openly looking to meet underage girls. I was 14/15 at the time but thankfully just about savvy enough to realise that this would be a Very Bad Idea.

I then moved onto the BBC message boards, there was a teens one called "So...?" where I was a bit of a Queen Bee for a while. Made a few friends on there who I then had on MSN messenger for years, we would pour out our angsty teenage hearts for hours over our dial-up internet. Even had a bit of an online romance with one but it fizzled out before we actually met. We did actually meet up a few years later when he happened to be attending a course in my town, he was a nice enough guy but there was no chemistry.

Then, after a brief time on some geeky Lord of the Rings fan forums, moved onto The Student Room when I was at uni, and eventually met DH there!

Wow you met your DH on the student room? I had totally forgotten about that but I used to go on there too!

@MrsDiplo

I met a boy on AOL when I was 13. Moved it to MSN. Continued talking to him until I was 18 and we met up (he drove 5 hours). He picked me up from my house and we went away for the weekend. I then moved to his hometown the following month and we lived together for 3 years. I moved back home and miss his town so so much.

I have never actually told anyone this and, knowing my parents would go mad, said he was an old friend to everyone and we had mutual friends.

That’s amazing!

I went into a couple of chat rooms at that age then my parents told me not to so I didn't again (wasn't always so obedient)

I'm still good friends with someone I met online aged 12. We meet annually. This thread takes me back

Yes! In particular one AOL message board called TOE (the outer edge)... So many random friends back in the day! I'm not in touch with any now and couldn't even remember usernames etc but I often wonder whether I've come in contact with any of those people IRL since! MSN and AIM taught me how to touch type, most useful skill ever!

Yep, in my late teens and early 20s, made some lifelong friends and met some of said friends in 'real life.
We've seen each others kids grow up and supported each other through varying life traumas and events. Feel lucky to have them.

In my early 20's I remember my flat mate who had a computer showing me the chat rooms and letting me chat one night then the next, I become hooked.
I loved talking to people around the world
I chatted to someone overseas who was my crush haha, he sent me the loveliest bunch of roses when I moved house, he is legit and on Facebook.
Many hours over winter chatting online in the evenings talking about different places and career plans etc.

Oh God yeah. About sex aswell alot! The pre Facebook social media platform where you could rank your friends (cant remember its name) had a random chat function too and I'd talk to people on there. It seems so irresponsible and dangerous now, I almost certainly was talking to a lot of grown men getting their kicks off a 13yo, I'm lucky something bad didn't happen to me.

Similar, my friend went on holiday to Italy and made friends with a couple of Italian guys. We all added them on MSN, as well as all their friends. I ended up speaking mostly to Italian boys for quite a while, they weren’t fully strangers but we never met, and I couldn’t tell you any names now. We were all 16-20ish and it was all quite innocent, friendly. I hadn’t thought about them in a long time!

Oh my god yes, this thread just unlocked some memories 😂 habbo hotel, club penguin, omegle the lot. When we first got webcam me and my friends from school would have a sleepover and sit on chat roulette 😳 looking back I have no idea why my mum allowed this... I had an Australian friend I would speak to on Skype everyday after school, its scary how little we knew about the risks and potential dangers back then!

I too used to do this. I 'met' someone online and we used to talk loads, never romantically just we were both the same age and both in similar situations. 20 years on we still talk multiple times a week but now it's by WhatsApp. He was an absolute gem to me when I went through my divorce. Obviously now there's FaceTime etc I am lucky that he is who he said he was right back when we were 14 but I can imagine how many fakes there were!

I did use to use a website called girland.com, does anyone remember that? When I was about 13, and that had a chat function. I spent a whole evening once chatting to someone who said they were a 15 year old boy in Malta and they were in love with me and would I go to Malta to see them? I was a naive but cynical 13 year old so I believed they meant what they said/who they were, but I said I wasn’t going to come to Malta as they couldn’t possibly love me so soon 😂 we only spoke for one evening but I still wonder about it and who I was actually speaking to. It was most likely NOT a 15 year old boy.

I am so old that in my teen years I had a CB radio! It was the latest in tech back then I remember being about 15 and arranging to meet a boy I’d been chatting to on there and my dad had been listening in on the CB in his car! (That’s how it worked, anyone could hear you). I couldn’t understand why he was so mad with me and forbade me from meeting the boy! Of course this “boy” could have been anyone so I get it now.

I was in my late 20s when we first got the internet but used the chat rooms a lot and used to talk to loads of people. I was a single mum at that point so it was cool being able to just chat in the evenings. I kind of miss those days. It used to be so much more innocent. Hardly anyone would ask for sex talk and would be quite happy just chatting about anything and everything.

Wow this was me in the 90s. I’d almost forgotten about that. I made some really good friends on msn and yahoo chat! We had a chat room a few of us would visit regularly and we all became pretty close. We met up once in McDonalds, well the ones who lived in the uk anyway. I’m still in touch with a lady I used to chat to from America. She’s on my Facebook and we’ve met up a few times over the years.

Loved the 90s! Life was so much simpler and nicer then, even though I never realised it at the time because I was a moody, bratty teenager!

@Trouba

I used to run a casino and a Takeshi Castle in habbo. 😂 But also used to be on Harry Potter forums a lot and add my friends off there to my msn! The memories!

Wow I was on a few Harry Potter chat rooms. I’d say this was probably 1999-2002. After that I moved into my own place and couldn’t afford internet so could only go online at weekends, when I visited my parents!

Habbo, another blast from my past!

Yes! I my DP in one of the really early chat rooms (we both did Computer Science at different unis so had access to early tech). Still together 26 years later with 2 adults sons :)

It was Harry Potter Chat rooms for me.

MuggleNet Chat. Mainly Americans that I still have on my Facebook but also made some firm friends that I have met up with. One of whom I even lived with for a while when she moved to the UK.

Ahh TSR @SockQueen @Easycheesy99! I wonder if we have any mutual friends SockQueen, one of my IRL best mates was a mod on there and I think knows a few TSR marriages.

I was a bit too young for AOL chat rooms but I basically went through Habbo Hotel (2003 - 2005) to TSR (2005 - 2011) and straight onto Mumsnet (2011 - present day). Been a long time since I haven’t had a community of randoms to witter to!

I also used to post poetry on a site called Zenhex and through that started chatting to a guy a couple of years older than me from York. Very geeky guy who I suspect would have liked it to go further but I wasn’t interested so we stayed friends. Added him on MSN and we used to chat for hours, we then added each other on Facebook when we got it. We’re still friends on all social platforms nearly 20 years later, we regularly ‘like’ pictures of each other‘s babies on Instagram despite never having met 😂

I (L) MSN (:s) (R) (8)

Loved changing my screen name to passive aggressive song lyrics depending if I was getting on with my boyfriend or not 😏

This was me for a few years around 2000.
Asl
Started on the BBC boards, and made some great friends playing celebdaq on there. Still have a number of them on Facebook and have met plenty in real life.
Habbo and neopets too. Lol
Lots of chatting on MSN groups

@AmazingBouncingFerret

It was Harry Potter Chat rooms for me.

MuggleNet Chat. Mainly Americans that I still have on my Facebook but also made some firm friends that I have met up with. One of whom I even lived with for a while when she moved to the UK.

Mugglenet!!

Did anyone go on the CBBC Newsround boards? Quite niche but I went on there in the early 2000s - particularly the Harry Potter one!

@DiscustinHunAmFummin

I (L) MSN (:s) (R) (8)

Loved changing my screen name to passive aggressive song lyrics depending if I was getting on with my boyfriend or not 😏

Yes to the song lyric screen name!!!

Oh God, I feel old! I was a teen in the late 80s and there was no internet, but there were phone lines you could call to chat to other random teens. I remember one was called Talkabout.