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?

Cyber sex

I did laugh out loud at the thread title. I could post about listening to pirate radio when I was a teenager.

I used to listen to that but it was Jeremy Kyle before he became famous! It was on a local station. I’d drop friends off after a night out and listen to it on the way home

Fortunately I was in my 20s before online was a thing. I was such an idiot as a teenager/young adult I can only thank my lucky stars it hadn't been invented when I was growing up 😂

@UndermyShoeJoe Wobbles was a miserable bastard I was very pleased to see that the forum turned to shit when it incorporated ‘momtastic’. It’s dead there now.

@Username73638 was it Emma’s Diary?

I found a diary from 1998 writing about going on the internet for the first time at someone’s house. I had no idea what to do!

PP mentioning Graham Torrington - i’d completely forgotten about him. I used to listen to that in the car driving home at night and found it very entertaining!

I think my most daring thing as a teen was buying More to look at position of the fortnight 🤣

I used to post on iVillage when I was pregnant, and there was always people in there pretending to be pregnant.

As a teen, I used AOL instant messenger and used to sit talking to other people via chat after they’d send an email”a/s/l?” Message. And I used to post on their message boards and have awful signatures with emo lyrics.

As teenagers in the mid-late 00s we would make fake MSN accounts and add people from school as a hot guy/girl and try to get them to agree to become boyfriend/girlfriend 😭 We had to use the excuse that the webcam wasn’t working all the time haha. No idea what we got out of it!

Has it haha deserves it. It was far too love love mwah mwah. As soon as I found Mumsnet I stopped posting there.

Age13 mid 90’s gave my real name & address to a random on MSN and he went wild sending flowers/ chocs etc in repeat. I was horrified, parents more so.
I now work in IT 😂 security savvy me is now completely ashamed!

@HansHolbein nope

My cousin and I would get the telephone directory and phone anyone with a famous surname. For example David Cassidy, Donny Osmond, I can’t remember who else. We thought it was hilarious at the time. We must have been crazy.

I can't believe how many of us had fake personas, were we all tapped 😂

I think it’s the online version of when kids would make up stories at school about an uncle or great grandad being famous or having the newest console before its release date because their daddy works there.

We used to terrorise paedophiles in AOL chat rooms. Leading them on and then laughing at them. We were wildly bold as teenagers and very ignorant about internet safety.

We did similar in real life. Bolshy, brash idiots.

Erm interent didn't exist until i was heading towards 30

What happened to handbag.com? I remember it being a busy, vibrant website and forum but it seemed to disappear overnight.

@Username73638 A girl I used to go to school with did the same thing when we were teens and would tell us about it the next day. I think she also had a unhappy home life. I hadn't thought about her until I read your OP and cannot remember if she got found out. Do you mind me asking what it was that made them rumble you?

Anyone else use Habbo Hotel back in the day?

My biggest clanger on there was when I was about 11 and asked my (real life) cousin’s habbo to “Cum 2 da lido deck I’ll meet u there”.

Except Habbo’s moderation system blanked out my misspelled “come” with its censor word “bobba”.

11yo me was confused. So I wrote an email to Habbo Hotel asking why they had censored me and could they please explain what “cum” meant as I didn’t think it was a rude word.

They never replied 🙃

Ooo loved a little habbo hotel.

On the more game site of things also used to play hobo wars and torn city 😅 updating MySpace daily and Bebo.

No idea why there are so many posts on this thread saying the same thing

"Internet didn't exist when I was a teenager in 1875, thank goodness I was selling matchsticks on the street corner instead of being on the internet."

Great. Don't answer then.

OP, I got up to all sorts of ungodly mischief having free rein on a machine that my parents didn't understand whatsoever. The internet was the Wild West back then and the shit I got up to was so dangerous it makes me ill to think back on it. Absolutely mental. My parents couldn't possibly imagine what we were up to- they have no idea what was possible on the internet and thought I was just listening to music and chatting to school friends.

All sorts of chat room and habbo hotel shenanigans. 14 year old girls all talking to genuine and obvious perverts and having an absolute laugh riot doing so. Dark freaky little corners of the internet. Some webcam nonsense and some actual real life meet-ups. It was absolutely nuts. The internet has changed so much.

Omg ivillage! I remember that name!

Yes AOL was crazy. I remember the first time I went on it being amazed I was getting messages from America.

I'm so glad the internet didn't exist when I was a teen! I remember going to one of the first Internet cafes in Manchester with a bf aged about 19 but being utterly confused/bemused as to what it was all about. Meanwhile (unbeknownst to me) in London aged 28 dh would've been starting up his internet company in primrose hill with two friends!

Actually met my first long term boyfriend on aol chats. Then biked to his house haha then he introduced me to the man who became my husband.

Me and a friend would regularly go on those weird chat sites where men sat there with their penises out on webcam. We’d put bra’s on our knees to make it look like we were showing them our boobs and they usually fell for it somehow🤣

You had a lucky escape!