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

[Username73638]

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?

I loved LiveJournal! It was how I kept up with all my online friends. It's still going but it's owned by Russians now.

Another thing I remember is playing Neopets. I can still remember the name of my favourite game - Hubrid's Hero Heist.

Oh and logging into my brother's MSN account pretending to be him, chatting to his very shady BNP friends.

Coming back to add that I remember being #ToplessTuesday being a thing on tumblr that lots of my friends would participate in… despite being high school age. Looking back, tumblr must have been a dream for people with bad intentions

Ooh yes! I think I must have listened to both then! I think jezza was on a local Berkshire station? I’m sure he’s from round here

We used to play neopets in 6th form! Learning html 🤣

Absolutely this

Haha we did this too! 😂

Oh I absolutely loved Neopets! The games were great.
Spent a lot of time on MSN, learned a really handy shortcut to clear chats when the parents appeared as the computer was originally in the living room.
I spent most of my teenage years on vampirefreaks, which I know got a lot of stick for being suss, but I met and still speak to a group of really genuine, amazing women. Even after all these years, we now have a WhatsApp group so we can keep in touch with events in each others lives.

Why are people acting like growing up without internet/phone/running water/whatever is such a flex, all it means is your a different generation than the one this thread is aimed at, if someone asked ‘what was your fave type of phone box’ or something and a load of people started posting ‘hahaha phone boxes what are they we didn’t have them!’ It would be weird.

Yes exactly, it's like you're over 45. Well done 👏🏆

I had a ceefax penpal too. I seem to recall penpals were also a thing in girls' magazines? I wonder how many were actually men.

I was about to type the very same thing 😂

Did you ever - if you and friends had no money - dial up repeatedly to hear the 2 or 3 seconds of music before the pips went, to try and recognise the record?

And youngsters today reckon they've got it tough!

Ah, I see the thread has been high jacked.

back to the point of the thread

I also learned html quite well and how to resize images etc to make graphics/ postcard things for tumblr, wish I’d kept it up but it seemed like a silly hobby looking back it really wasn’t!

ive unlocked another memory. Habbo hotel. My brother used to play it and taught me how to play it, I’m sure it got shut down or something recently ?

I had penpals from Ceefax too!

I was 16 when we got the internet and I shudder at the amount of time I spent in chat rooms. My favourite thing to do was get a guy all horny with cyber sex, and then say something like “suddenly the door bell went” or “the phone started ringing”. Poor men trying to have a wank

Lol came here to comment on how annoying this is! But let’s be honest - reminiscing irrelevantly about one’s youth is THE stereotypical elderly person behaviour. Not all or even most elderly people, but certainly all the ones on this thread. We will probably be the same!

Regarding the actual question in the OP - like several PP I had cybersex from the age of about 11 with (apparently) adult men, but I didn’t actually understand the mechanics/vocabulary of sex which I’m sure must have outed me in many cases. I remember some guy talking about his “shaft” and me thinking wtf is this, deciding it must mean jizz, and talking about getting his shaft all over me 😂

Also like others very fond memories of Habo Hotel. When the sims came out i fell over myself to get it but it was never quite as good as habo.

I had a livejournal with loads of those animated tickers on my info page and I lurked on a livejournal community called nonuglies. People posted pics of themselves and only if they were voted good-looking enough by the nonugly members would they gain acceptance. I thought the members were so cool, hot and grown up. Now I realise they must have been absolute weirdos, and arrogant to boot.

I loved Neopets, I used to play it all the time, I think my favourite game on there was called something like meerca chase, or similar, it was a lot like snake.

I used to pretend I was a boy on there and talk to girls, nothing sexual, just chatting, no idea why! When I was younger I did used to wish I was a boy, I often think about whether I would be trans if it was bigger when I was young, I don't wish that now that I'm a 30 odd year old woman with kids obviously!

Oh and I used the idea of Neopets for a DT project lol.

@peppercornrent yes that’s it, when someone mentioned tickers it reminded me! There was some crazy stuff on there,

Me too on the HTML! I stayed up really late doing my website (cursor with trailing stars etc) and was always tired at school… looking back it was probably more useful than a lot of what I learned in school, but like you I didn’t keep it up 😢

Might have been baby and bump, or ivillage. Neither exist now.

Funnily enough I actually used to post on Mumsnet probably about 16 years ago. I'd go on the teenagers board and defend the teenagers' perspectives.😂

Tbf that probably was really helpful

I'm 63, fortunately there was no online when I was a teenager 😂

Why fortunately? Weird take

Oh do regale us with tales of more wholesome times. I want to hear more stories about prank calls from phone boxes. There's not been enough of those on this thread.