Should I report Internet friend missing.

[Patienceisntvirtuous]

I follow a woman on SM. Don't know her personally. She's ALWAYS online. Day and night as she doesn't sleep well.

She messages me each time she posts new content. I've had a few chats with her and been in a few of her 'live' sessions, and have learned that she has BPD, suffers from depression, is estranged from her family and has lost a close sibling quite recently. She also has epilepsy and has been in a very abusive relationship.

She's now not been online since Thursday.

I don't know her so feel a bit 'busybody'. But I'm worried. She doesn't work, doesn't have people near her who know her.
I've got hold of two mobile numbers from her, no response. I've emailed her yesterday, no response. The worrisome thing is she is always online, she doesn't work other than her SM. It's out of character.

Should I ring the police? I don't know her address but I know her real name, number and town she lives in. Wwyd?

Oh, brilliant. I have a very good friend that I met online. I very much consider her a friend and would have done the same as you!

(we have since actually met in person).

I vote for a welfare check. If, as you describe, her life is lived online, if anything were to happen to her, who else would notice apart from the strangers who follow her online? What harm can it do to ask someone to check on her?

@CourtenayDevon Ohh, shut up and get a life 🤣

I vote for using the see all option on a month's old thread to check that it wasn't all resolved ages ago 😂

There’s no harm in asking the police for advice, or you could ring one of the Mental Health helplines and ask for their advice on the situation. You’re obviously worried so it’s best to do something, even if it’s only to put your own mind at rest, if she’s ok there’s no harm done, if she isn’t ok then you’ve probably helped her.

100% contact local authorities in her area for a wellness check. A lot of people who are Extremely Online are housebound and don't go outside and live their entire lives online, so a significant change in online activity is a red flag that something might be wrong. The chance that this person just woke up and decided to live a full offline life feels pretty low. It's very possible there's an innocent explanation but a wellness check can't do any harm.

Of course it's possible to have friendships with people you know online without ever having met in person. I'm not a huge Internet user anymore but when I was younger, some of my best friends (people I was video chatting with multiple times a week) were people I'd not met in person.

A lot of people on MN are quite old school in terms of how they use the Internet (probably because MN is a very, very old school type of forum), which is totally fine and probably a lot healthier, but comments like "x super common thing is bizarre just because I personally haven't heard of it" are so common all over this forum.

Nowadays the culture of being anonymous online and using usernames (which was the norm in 90s/early noughties Internet when, due to bandwidth speeds, text-based Internet dominated) is much less common, so the whole "maybe they're actually a big fat bloke named Dave" is a bit of a throwback. Obviously there are lots of scammers and people online pretending to be someone they're not, but most social media now is video content, which can be faked of course but faked in a different way.

I mean, if everyone on Mumsnet communicated entirely through video (which is the norm for a lot of younger people) it would sure cut down on a lot of trolls and sockpuppeting.

Sorry I’ve just read your update.

D'oh, didn't realise this was a zombie, sorry!

No problem, I clicked on 'threads I'm on' and someone had asked what to do in a similar situation so I posted and suggested they began a new thread-that's what's put the thread in active again. @flurbubbly that is a very good point. I'd already mentioned that I'd been in this person's 'live' videos, seen her actually in person-her being a fat trucker named Dave would have taken a miracle-just a daft comment given that the world has moved on since the days of text chat rooms and people hiding behind AOL usernames.

Just a daft comment.

This.

I did this once for a neighbour and it turned out that he was recuperating in his back bedroom and I have never felt like a bigger twerp when they told me.

But ... the police were happy to do this and even happier they didnt have to deal with a half rotten body. Call and let the police make sure she's OK. If nothing else she will know that someone gives a toss about her.

@TeaGinandFags

Zombie thread from over a year ago