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?

Ask baby?

I used to love that forum when I was a newly pregnant teen mum!!

I was catfished by a girl in America and thought I had a boyfriend, he committed suicide and I was really messed up - I was only like 12 or 13.

I also spent a lot of time on that's phucked up.

I wish my parents monitored my internet use tbh

You could sync msn messenger with windows media player and what you listened to scrolled across for your friends to see.

My brother and I renamed tracks on embarrassing albums so we could listen to what we liked and make it look like we were so much cooler.

This is hilarious. How did you get found out, OP?!

I am about 10 years older than you and didn't have much internet access til my 20s. I think our teen equivalent was doing prank phone calls.

Whatever happy to Naturalmamas forums?
I left it for a while and when I tried to go back on, it had gone.
That was a lovely place (although I'm sure plenty of people on here would hate it) and very busy.

The Internet was only just starting out when I was a teenager. I 97 the height of my Internet fun was sending those silly sheep in emails to people. Once in a packed computer suite at Uni I opened an email which made the screen flash and the sound of a siren come out of the computer very loud....I was terrified, thought it was hackers....turns out it was just a joke email.

Another 1970’s kid here ….. We used to ring random phone numbers and ask if they know Teresa Green, or Mr Wall, then when told we had the wrong number asked if there were any Walls there, when they said no we’d ask ‘what keeps the roof up then?’ Cue hysterical laughter (from us) and we’d hang up quick!! We thought we were so badass!!! 😂😂😂

I bloody loved Girland!

When Skype was new you could call any Hookers branch and ask to speak to Crystal. Guaranteed high jinks for naive UK kids!

Played bamboozle on teletext haha wild times

Called the operator and insisted on talking to Buzby. Or when people called the home phone pretended to be the FBI and asked them how they got the number and pretended to trace the call.

@dogpool

I did learn a lot about basic HTML and coding during this period of my life and these definitely helped me get into my career more than my degree ever did😅

This is another loss with the way the internet is today. Everything used to be so... home brew. I really miss that.

Oh my god you've just reminded me about online RPGs! Not quite fanfic but my friend and I used to role play as horses. Yes, horses. You created a character by describing this fictional horse you've just made up, and there was a trend to create ~cool~ graphics for them - you either made your own or you could request someone to do one for you. Then you joined or started a new herd. Each herd was its own little community but every week or so stallions could "battle" it out to try to take over other herds. Writing about it now just feels so cringe. Did improve my creative writing and graphic design skills as a young teen though. Can't express how many times I've described a "nape".

Band forums were very much about this. 50pc bored teens into music and 50pc men going through a midlife crisis.

I am a 90s baby so I have a lot of these !
my friends did some crazy shite too

1. when home internet was first becoming a thing I was 7-8ish. My brother (older) made me an email address and AOL had tons of forums and chat rooms for kids. It’s very obvious now that the early days of internet predators were starting to emerge and decide talking to small kids online was something they could do with no recourse, it just wasn’t ’a thing’ to consider. I remember having a pal on a pony forum on AOL and it became clear to me after a few weeks that it was not a fellow 8yo pony mad girl. I never told anyone anything and there were no pictures exchanged or anything (wasn’t technologically possible) but definite probing questions etc. I remember about 2 years later ‘internet grooming’ became a buzz word and we had talks on it at school etc and being like oh yeah that’s a thing.
2. Omegle. Nuff said
3. fanfiction - I wrote and read it for hours. Some stuff was actually really beautifully written but I definitely read some VERY lewd and sexual stuff aged about 12/13
4. used to come in from nights out at uni circa 2010/2011 and go on chat roulette and literally cry with laughter with my flatmates , saw SO many unsolicited penises
5. tumblr. Just the whole place was weird

I used to spend hours on a wedding forum called Hitched. I still remember loads of the user names, people would share so much personal information and photos and there were lots of meet ups. Had forgotten all about it until this thread.

1998, I was at sixth form, had never been near the internet before. Discovered Yahoo chat rooms and ICQ. Hooked. It was in the days where you'd enter a chat and put 17/F/UK to introduce yourself.

Started to chat to a guy regularly who was 18 and lived in Australia. He was gay and unhappy that his entire family had disowned him. I had a difficult home life myself so we used to chat daily, I was bunking half the lessons to make sure I was online.

He was so unhappy he wanted to leave Australia so we concocted this whole idea where he would visit on a visa, marry me, then we would divorce once he had a spousal visa. I would be paid a significant amount for this.

Of course, I had no idea if he was legit and at 17 believed he was. My parents found out about the plan and I was banned from the internet at sixth form. Managed to get back online eventually but he never replied.

I do often wonder if it was a scam. I always tell my two DCs that people they speak to on Discord are not friends and to be cautious and never give your details.

The majority of my social life was conducted via MSN messenger. Then later, MySpace which I still believe was superior to Facebook.

I met a lot of interesting people from all over the country online. A lot of boys who gave me great music recommendations that I'd illegally download on limewire. There was one guy I'd talk to for hours, knew so much about him and vice versa, he seemed really nice. Then my friends were with me one day and basically encouraged me to say really horrible things to him and he blocked me. Still wonder what became of him.

Completely agree! The hours I would spend on Lissa Explains to code a table just right on my free Geocities page...

Me and my cousin used to go on a chat room, which was supposed to be for teens, but which wasn't monitored. Even at 11, we assumed that most of the other "tweens" were just paedos. Anyway, we used to lure people into a "private chat box", and they would always immediately ask for "cyber sex". We used to start off pretending to do it for real. Stuff like "oooh yeah, I'm getting undressed - I'm wearing a lacy top...". Then start saying more and more stupid and outlandish stuff, pushing to see how much unsexy nonsense they'd put up with, before they gave up and left. Then we used to hound them continuously, saying we were pregnant with a "cyber baby", whenever they appeared in the chat room, asking them about name choices, and whether they were going to pay maintenance 😂😂 Those were the days.

Oh OP 🤣

I'm a 1993 baby, so very much grew up as the internet suddenly became a huge thing.

I saw all the dark shit everyone from my era saw- rotten dot com, beheadings, 2 girls 1 cup, creepy men touching themselves on chat roulette, etc. My parents knew nothing about the internet and at the time couldn't use a computer, so I had completely unfiltered access. It was definitely the days before internet safety.

In terms of weird things I used to do- I'd go on Omegle (a kind of chatroom with people from all over the world) and pretended I was talking to them from jail and that I'd committed crimes ranging from theft to murder 🤣🤷

I was also just a very weird kid who was into classical music/opera and hated all other music, so I spent most of my early teen years talking about Sarah Brightman on the official Sarah Brightman forums, lol. I still have some of the people I met on there on Facebook!!!

As I said, I was weird and nerdy, so also spent a lot of time roleplaying on forums as fictional characters I liked. As in, you'd write a few paragraphs, the next person would continue it, and so on. At least it helped my creative writing skills I guess 😁

My 11 year old self also learned HTML and CSS, alongside paint shop pro, so I could code and create graphics for my Dragon guild on Neopets, so I did gain some useful skills.

I remember AOL chat rooms - remember ASL (Age,sex,location) whenever someone new popped up! Mobile phones were just starting up too so I'd get chatting to people on AOL and then move to the mobile. Got myself in q a few scrapes to be honest but luckily nothing bad happened.

@Ladamesansmerci I'd forgotten about two girls one cup 😂 What even was that?! And the even more horrifying one man one cup 😬

Pretended to be older than I was in chat rooms 😭. Not internet related but I also remember looking up names and numbers in the phone book and pretending to be from British Gas....asking why they hadn't paid the bill 😲. No idea why. Must have been about 14.

I still read fanfic as an adult, lmao. But yes, my 11 year old self also read 'lemons' as the smut was called back then.

And Tumblr!!! I spent many an hour of my life wasted on there.