Many people meet and develop genuine connections online. However, as these 21 stories prove, many people are also deceived by fake pictures and promises. Some people are even tricked for years! You can be talking to anybody online.
Double Catfish
“When I was 13 and instant messaging was cool, my best friend and I were ‘catfishing’ some 16 year old boy named Jason. He was a bit baby faced, but pretty cute. And to a couple of 13 year olds it was so cool to be talking to a ‘hot’ 16 year old. We used some cute older girl’s picture, and said her name was Rachel. For the record, the picture was from one of those ‘personal stories’ in the mag, not of a celebrity.
So we chat with Jason over AIM back and forth, ‘Rachel’ and Jason being romantic/cyber sex-ing and eventually calling each other on the phone.
One day we are hanging out, chatting with Jason on the phone when we hear the other line pick up and a kid says loudly, ‘ERICA MOM WANTS YOU OFF THE PHONE NOW’ and an immediate click. Both the kid (we assume ‘Jason’s’ little sister) and ‘Jason’ hung up.
We both looked at each other like WTF? Trying to deduct why Jason would be called Erica. Was it a mistake? By then, Megan (aka Rachel) had been talking to Jason for nearly a year. As most 13 year olds would react, she was smitten. They talked every day. In her mind, this was something serious.
So the next few days go by and Megan finally speaks to Jason. Apparently, Jason is not a he but indeed Erica. Upon further inspection of the pictures (which were allegedly legit), Jason’s baby face also had femininely full lips and other features that could definitely be of a 16 year old girl’s. ‘He’ always wore his hood up in pictures and would not show anything but from the upper chest and up or wear really baggy clothes.
Megan was devastated. Me, not so much. I think there was a point in time where Megan tried to be friends with Erica, but they eventually drifted apart. I always found it a bit ironic how betrayed Megan felt, when Erica never found out that ‘Rachel’ also lied about her appearance”
How Despicable
“I used to run a page for ladies dating/married to Marines…
90% were completely legit ladies. Now and then we would get ‘tag chasers’ trying to figure out who was having relationship problems and try to move in on the guy… real scummy.
But the worst was one girl, who was engaged to a Marine… or so she said.
The problem was 1. She was like quasimodo ugly with a personality to match so I doubt anyone has ever touched her and 2. He was ‘deployed’ for a good year and half straight with no trips back home 3. Every single picture, his name, his story…. I found out from a simple google search were all taken from a real Marine. Except he didn’t have a fiancée by this name- when he was still alive.
She stole a Marine who was KIA and tried to pass him off as her fiancée.
And I know she wasn’t being catfished, because she had claimed to be pregnant towards the beginning, by him. Eventually ‘losing the baby’ after making mistakes on how far along she was (our calculation was 45 weeks. Pregnancy usually doesn’t go much past 42, and that’s considered very overdue… she claimed to then be only 36, losing 9 weeks somewhere along the way)
Man, I hate some people. I looked her up, he is still on a magic 3 year deployment to Iraq and they have moved their wedding from last summer- Yeah, she is still doing it”
She Killed His Cat
“My very good friend Ben’s dad has always had an online girlfriend called ‘Dr. Sam.’ She was the reason Ben’s parents divorced about 12 years ago. I don’t know the story of early Dr. Sam, just that she claimed to be a doctor of some kind, and also some kind of cancer.
Steve (Ben’s dad) sent Dr. Sam all kinds of money. Enough that his wife divorced him. When those little hands-free phone headsets came out, he got one and was on the phone with her literally every second of the day. She would make him talk to her cats on the phone, and he’d be places like the grocery store, meowing into a headset no one could see.
He tried to visit her many times, but every time he had his tickets squared away, her cancer would come back and she’d need emergency medical treatment, or (I kid you not) her pet tiger would bite her and she’d go to the hospital.
Steve is a high-ranking Naval officer. When he had to go to Afghanistan a few years ago, he sent his cat to live with Dr. Sam. She had it put down immediately, because, ‘He wasn’t happy.’
Eventually, Dr. Sam claimed to have died; I wouldn’t believe a word of this if Ben’s mother hadn’t confirmed all of it”
So Many Years!
“I met this young man named Shane on a website called Neopets when I was 13. My best friend was 16 and so was Shane. He lived in Holland and we would chat daily. I told my mom about our international friend and she reminded me that, ‘You never know who you’re talking to on the Internet.’ I got freaked out and wouldn’t talk to Shane for a couple of months- my best friend would still talk to him daily.
The strange thing was, Shane shared an email address with his sister Rowena and we had only ever seen one picture of Shane. Whatever, not many people back then had digital cameras or video cameras.
My best friend fell madly in love with Shane and, like I said, talk to him daily. They talked about meeting up but something would always get in the way, even when my friend was in holland with her family. We also found the same picture of Shane on vampire freaks, which was weird, because it was under a different name.
After years of talking, like four freaking years, my best friend received on email from her lover. He told her there was something he needed to tell her and was just so embarrassed about but he had been hiding something for quite some time and to look for an email to her about it. She responded and waited for the email for months, it never came, she never heard from Shane again. She sent emails and instant messages to Shane, but he never responded again.
She started digging and she found Shane’s sisters, Rowena’s, social media site. On it were all the photos and drawings Shane had been sending her for years claiming that they were his. Pictures of Shane’s new shoes, of a drawing he had made for my best friend, all of Shane’s favorite bands, ect. My best friend then realized he had not fallen in love with Shane, but a girl from Holland named Rowena.
It’s been four years since she’s spoken to Shane, and the first year after they stopped talking she sent Rowena an email letting her know that she knows that Shane never existed. I know deep down she still wants answers, but I’m pretty sure shell never get them”
Unbelievable Twist
“I was ‘in love’ (naive high schooler) with a girl I went to school with. I started talking to her on Facebook right after summer break happened. We were both too busy ever get together due to sports and stuff, so it was only ever a relationship over the phone and fb. It eventually became emotionally abusive because she would use my past mistakes with girls against me. When school started up and I tried to talk to her, she would act creeped out or bothered. I assumed it was because she was embarrassed by me because of my past or that I was kinda dorky, so I stopped going up to her in person.
It was an off and on phone relationship that was really abusive to me but I stayed in it for a long time because I convinced myself that she was ‘the one’ and made me a better person. After a year or so we decided to sneak out of the house at like 1 in the morning and meet up in her backyard. It was in the woods really late so I couldn’t really see her that well. We started ‘fooling around,’ but as my eyes started acclimating to the dark, I started to realize this wasn’t her. Eventually I realized it was her mother. I didn’t say anything because I was afraid if I called her out she would start yelling rape or something (not to mention I was traumatized at that point).
It turned out her mother had been pretending to be her daughter the whole time, using her Facebook and everything. Because she is her mother and a pretty small school, she knows all of her friends and was able to talk about things, so I never was suspicious. Also understand, her mother and her look kinda similar (especially as their build goes).
Eventually I called her out about it, she denied it but continued to stalk me. Couldn’t get a restraining order (I believe because the gender roles were reversed). The mom thought I would tell the daughter and other people so she started telling people I was stalking her daughter. Most people believed her, because in a sense I did considering I thought I was talking to her daughter (which explains why she was creeped out the few times I talked to her in person). I had minor PTSD and it took several years to cope and recover from that whole 2 year charade”
Everyone Thought He Was Lucky Until…
“I was 18 years old, very awkward, but still felt respectable. I had my own car and a job. I didn’t go to college though, and I didn’t know any way to meet people except through the Internet. I remember I found Jessie on the Literotica forums. She said she was 19 and lived less than an hour’s drive from me. In Los Angeles, that’s not bad. She sent me her picture and she was beautiful. We exchanged phone numbers.
We would talk for HOURS on the phone. I forget everything we talked about, but I really connected with her. She was smart, had a mature, sexy voice, and was studying to be a doctor at UCLA. Eventually, we started having phone sex and cyber sex. I discovered that the mere sound of me ‘purring’ by rolling an infinite ‘r’ could actually make her orgasm. Wow!
We tried to meet a couple times, but she got nervous and chickened out. I wasn’t suspicious though. I mean, the Internet was new for a lot of people and it was understandable that someone would be nervous about meeting a stranger like that. Never the less, I told my real life friends about her. I introduced her to the online hangouts I frequented. She got to know my people and she charmed them as much as she did me. They all thought I was a lucky motherf–ker.
One day, over the phone, Jessie invited me to come see her perform at a play and I got really excited. But she broke down crying and was inconsolable for a few minutes while I tried to figure out what had set her off. She told me that she had a confession to make. When I finally convinced her to just tell me, I had slowed my breathing down and was a picture of serenity, ready to have reality driven into the back of my skull like a railroad spike.
She wasn’t 19, she was 14. She wasn’t a student at UCLA, she was a student at one of those ‘special needs’ high schools in the Valley. She wasn’t beautiful, she was fat and ugly. The play wasn’t Shakespeare, it was Seussical, and she was the elephant.
I don’t know why I agreed to see it. I guess I held out some sliver of hope that she was lying to test my resolve or that she had some hidden quality that shined through all of the s–t that had just been dumped onto me. I drove up to the school and felt like a creep. Her mother was there, with a shiner that the father had given her. Apparently Jessie had told her mother about me, and it was her mother who recognized me and invited me to sit beside her. There’s something sad about how, in the pure pathetic nature of this whole situation, the miserable, battered mother actually thought her developmentally challenged daughter had an admirer. I declined silently, hating that I was a part of this, still wondering what the f–k I was doing.
The lights went down and the curtain was drawn. And there she was, bounding around on the stage. Clearly the most talented of special kids. Clearly the largest of them, too. During intermission, I stood up and walked outside, into the parking lot. I got into my car and drove away. I turned my stereo off and sat silently, listening to the road for an hour. I never spoke to her again and I never told any of my friends what happened to her”
He Tried To Make It Work
“I met a troll priest named Analiese playing a game, World of Warcraft. We ended up playing a lot together as she became my pocket healer. The gaming together turned into talking about personal life, to online friends and eventually more complex emotions formed. I found it odd to really be in an ‘internet’ relationship but decided what the hell. We traded pictures, and even talked on the phone. She was rather busy with school and the sort, talking about going through classes at a local college in order to apply to med school. It all seemed pretty damn legit at the time. Anyhow fast forward to a year and a half later, with me settled in to my own apartment, in a different town at a new school. I live a regular young college life with the caveat being that I have a girlfriend online.
My friends know of her and all want to meet her. Ana tells me she got accepted to a well known Med School near me and of course I was ecstatic, wanting to know when she started and would be around. After a few days of questioning she tells me that…you guessed it…she is really a he. Told me about how it started off simple enough between the two of us, and how he desired to be a transgender so generally referred to himself as she. Said all the emotions were true and what she said was true with the exception of med school.
I was pretty pissed…furious and at first told my friends that she died. When they asked for details I stared blankly at them and never said a word. I was embarrassed and shocked that I was so fooled. Though…I still loved the person at the time, and decided to give it a shot. We did end up meeting and she stayed with me for a few weeks. I tried but in the end it didn’t work out. Not because of her physical features, but because she was in a place that caused a lot of anger at herself and was about to enter a very trans-formative state that at the time I was far too young and involved with my own life to be a part of. Lots of emotional outbursts which were directed at me regardless of deserving it. I am sure I was an a– at times also, being in a new type of relationship on top of the college stress. When we parted ways I made sure to give a lot of information on what she needed to do in order to start the physical process to outwardly live her true gender.
Last I talked to her, she is living physically to her true gender, finished school and seemed happy with life. I don’t regret it happening at all to be honest, though I certainly wouldn’t go through it all again”
Too Good To Be True
“Friend and I frequent dating sites. He was catfished once. Her name was Alexis McNally. She was the head RN at a hospital a half hour away making $150,000 a year and was in love with my friend. She was going to fly him to Vegas after 3 weeks of knowing him and they were going to get married. He was happy as hell and thinking of pretty much nothing but the money and the hot pictures she was sending him. She said she bought him all this stuff and his kids Ipads and computers. She said that she had a multimillion dollar house she was going to live in with him. He didn’t think anything was odd but I did so I did some research. First I called the hospital and they said they never heard of her. Then looked up her phone number which the area code was from Ohio. After a while he wised up and started calling her out on stuff. She ended up sending him a box filled with new American Eagle clothes for him and that was pretty much the end of it”
Her Demon Name is Lillith
“Once… I was 20 at the time and she was believed to be 19. Really friendly and, albeit a little odd, I have a thing for quirky people and she was damn cute too. When I drove out to her place to pick her up for a date, I accidentally drove right by her, waiting at the side of the road for me, because I didn’t recognize her at first.
First, she was really short.. 5′ at the most (I’m 6’4″). Second, from the moment she got in the car, she was as cuddly/close as though we’d been dating for a long time. She was also only 16 years old. Furthermore, she was 7 months pregnant. With kid #3.
Wait, it gets better.
While her name was Lilly, her real, demon** name, is actually Lillith. Why? Because she isn’t human. To be precise, something along the lines of 50% human, 40% vampire, 8% demon, and 2% angel. it sounds made up, but over the course of the evening, she repeated it SOOOO many times, it was permanently engraved into my mind.
While talking to her and debating whether or not to kick her out of my car or not, I kinda realized something. Something about poor Lillith wasn’t right. In all honesty, she was actually a really cute and adorable kid – demon nonsense aside – who had no sense of right or wrong. She was the perfect mix of wanting and loving to give/receive attention, while not knowing to say no and valuing herself.
We ended up going on the date, which was my treat since she was broke and hadn’t a penny. Mini golf and snacks/treats in a busy tourist location, with hundreds of eyes on me with an underaged, massively-pregnant, won’t-stop-clinging-to-me girl. I knew what I was doing; I was giving this poor girl the only date she’s ever had with a guy that didn’t end in sex. I knew it, but that didn’t prepare me for the heart-breaking reality of what she said when I dropped her off at her house.
As I pulled up to her house, she sincerely thanked me for the fun night, saying it’s one of the best she’s ever had, but asked me, ‘Is something wrong? Why haven’t you tried to touch me or have sex yet?’ It’s not that she herself wanted sex, but she’d been so accustomed to being taken advantage of by every guy who ever went out with her, she thought something was wrong with me not ripping her clothes off and forcing myself on her… I tried to explain, realized it wouldn’t matter, and gave her a big, heart-felt hug and wished her a good night. After she left the car and I bid farewell, I gave a sorrowful sigh at the poor girl’s state, wiped the feels from my heart, and f–king gunned the car without looking back”
Twisted
“My sister and I have the suspicions our mother was a catfish. All the signs were there. The bad part was that she used my sister’s pictures.
My mother had asked my sister one time how make multiple Facebook accounts, would close her laptop whenever you entered the room, kept tape over the camera on the computer, and her phone would ring all the time, but she would never answer it.
My sister told me one time she was out with our mother and our mom’s phone rings. My mom’s kinda getting panicky so she asked my sister to answer it. At first my sister hesitates but agrees. She said there was a guy on the other end with a funny accent she didn’t recognize. I guess the guy started asking her random questions on what she looked like and stupidly my sister answers him. She said that the guy asked her what happened to her Irish accent. My sister said she got creeped out and hung up on the guy.
Shortly after that, my sister moved out and got her own place”
A Misunderstanding
“I met this girl on myspace a few years back, she was really cute and we hit it off through messaging. She lived about 400 miles away. We confessed our love for each other in three days. She was 16, I was 17. Well, this continues for 2-3 months, with us talking on the phone any chance we get and constantly myspace messaging for hours. I was smitten with this girl
After 2-3 months, she gets the chance to come visit her Dad, who, as it turns out, lives up here. She gets into town; I can’t wait until morning to see her, so I swing by about right away. Her house was laid out in such a way that she could just turn the shower on and sneak out the front door so we could see each other for a few minutes – her dad didn’t know about me.
I parked across the street from her house and she walked up to meet me. She was a little bit heavier than her pictures let on, but all in all, she was pretty cute. She looked sort of young, but she was definitely matured and she had a mature personality as well. We kissed for 5 minutes outside of my truck and I walked her back to her house. We stood for another ten minutes at the end of a side walk that lead directly to her dad’s house; far too long, but we were in love, and this was a magical moment.
Mid-kiss I hear a screen door slam. I look up and see a large man, who I locked eyes with. She said, ‘Go!’ and so I started running. In the opposite direction of my truck, of course. I realized this halfway through the street, with the Dad in hot pursuit – literally chasing me. I took a deep breath, clenched my jaw, and decided to man up. I turned around and walked straight up to him and held out my f–king hand like a dips–t and said, ‘Hello, nice to meet you.’ He slaps my hand away and says, ‘Don’t try to shake my hand, I’m about to knock your a– out, boy. I’m guessing you’re a minor?’ And I said, ‘Yes I am.. I’m sorry about runni-‘ He cuts me off with, ‘Get the hell out of here!’ And so I leave.
I get a text about 45 minutes later from her number, and it says something along the lines of, ‘She is 12 years old, I have half a mind to call the cops and get you put in prison for the next 35 years…’ Blah blah blah. I didn’t think the dad would lie to me about her age just to keep me away from her, so I believed him. I told him I was misinformed about her age and I would never talk to her again. She told me her age was 14 after that, and I was just about to turn 18. I told her it wouldn’t work out and to stop texting me or calling me”
Wow!
“I’ve been catfished twice. Both times they were underage but led me to believe they were the same age I was.
The first time wasn’t too big of a deal. The second time was the last time I tried to meet a girl online. Period. I was a junior in college and had been talking to this girl a few states away for weeks online. She claimed to be 19 (I was 20) and she was a cute red head in the pics she sent me, so I chatted her up regularly even though she lived far away. At some point, she surprises me with her plan to take a bus out to my university and spend the weekend hanging out and partying with me. When I picked her up at the bus stop I barely recognized her. She sort of looked like the cute redhead I had pictures of, but waaaaaay younger, like she could be the daughter of the girl I had been talking to online. I played it cool, trying to be a gentleman, but quickly decided that spending the weekend partying with what appears to be a 14-16 year old would be a bad idea. I told her that there were no good parties on the docket and took her home to my parents house where I figured we could lay low until Sunday when I could shuffle her back onto a bus and be rid of the jailbait.
Well, late the next evening while we were sitting on the living room floor watching a movie with my parents, the phone rings. I answered the phone to hear a crying woman pleading to know where her daughter was and if she is ok. That’s when it hit me… I was harboring a freakin’ teenage runaway. I got the girl on the phone with her mom, and started grabbing all of her stuff and putting in my car. Apparently her mom had found my phone number on their phone bill and traveled to my school looking for her daughter. I promised to meet her on campus with her daughter ASAP. Well, we didn’t even make it out of the driveway before the police cars showed up. The cop looked at me, then pointed to the girl and said, ‘Is that her?’, and I replied, ‘Yeah, take her home man’ and that was it. Luckily for me, I think this girl may have had a history of running away from home because they didn’t ask me a single question or anything they just took the girl and left. Then my mom came out into the driveway asking why the cops were there… I had some ‘splainin’ to do. And then, when I returned to school, all of my roommates and neighbors told me that the campus police, local police, and state police had been scouring the campus for me and an underage runaway. I spent the next couple weeks explaining to everyone I knew how I got hoodwinked by an internet girl and that the police had the story wrong. It could have gone worse I suppose…
On a whim, I Googled the teenage runaway’s name and the state she came from. She looks very happy in the pic I saw-I hope she is”
That Escalated
“A fairly attractive Asian girl started messaging me in a chat room on gay.com. I am lesbian, so the gay.com chatrooms for the women weren’t really known for having bots.
She comes on strong and actually shows a lot of interest in me even though I didn’t really have much interest in her at first since she was in Florida and I’m in Oklahoma.
I actually start to really like her and think maybe we could really hit it off if we met. We started talking/texting pretty much 24/7.
Then she tells me about how she can’t date anyone locally because her dad is a marine engineer and builds multimillion dollar yachts for famous people.
I don’t really believe it at first, but she starts mailing me all these fairly expensive things like clothes, flowers, gift cards, etc to ‘prove’ it, even though I tell her I didn’t really want them.
The weird thing is she wouldn’t tell me her last name and would be very weird about it, saying if I found it out I could Google it and it’ll pull up her dad’s yacht business and I could see how rich they really are and she wanted to make sure that I really wanted to be with her and wasn’t just in it for the money…. Even though she kept sending me gifts without me asking to ‘prove’ her wealth.
She also said she was a head hair stylist at Tony&Guy and made $700/day in tips.
Anyway, one of the gifts she sent the company sent a receipt slip that had her last name on it. I Googled it and nothing really pulled up. Even (name) Yachts, nothing. (Name) yachts Florida, nothing. Nothing at all came up for it.
Things started to seem weird so I called the Tony&Guy she claimed she worked at and asked if I could schedule with her. No one worked there with that name.
I waited a couple days to tell her that her name came on the receipt.
When I did she flipped the f–k out and said I was crazy and that she was going to stop talking to me anyway because she has cancer then hung up on me and disconnected the number within minutes.
It was so weird. I don’t know what the point of that catfish was, I’m the one who got a bunch of stuff, and I didn’t even ask for any of it.
Oh well, I still wear some of the stuff she got me lol”
Who Are You??
“I met a girl on OKC, very nice, we clicked pretty quickly and talked for about a month before deciding to meet up. There were no immediate red flags in her profile and her pictures looked legit.
We agreed on a park (I’m a cheap date, what can I say?) for our first meeting and I was lying back on a grassy hill when I hear a voice say my name. I look up and see…someone I don’t recognize at all. I was confused and asked her if I knew her. She was quiet for a second before revealing it was the girl I’d been talking to.
She looked radically different from her pictures; the girl I saw in the pictures was quite pretty, very fit, looked like she took good care of herself. The girl that showed up…less so. She was much plainer looking, much more weight than the girl in the photos, and much less sure of herself now.
I asked her why she’d lied, especially considering that I actually did find her real self attractive. She burst into tears and said she was so scared that people wouldn’t like her that she felt like she had to do this. She had a lot of self-image problems, her shirt sleeve slipped up a couple times and there were a lot of scars.
Initially I was pissed. I’m a really chill, good natured dude (at least I try to be) and I really hate when people take advantage of that. We talked for a little while and she admitted she was terrified of people and their reaction to how she looked and that this approach helped her get past that. I explained that lying about it wasn’t going to help.
We actually had a pretty good conversation and kept in touch after that but she stopped responding to pretty much everything about two months later. She stopped answering her phone and the texts dropped off. I hope she’s alright and that she stopped catfishing people. It was a shame because I did actually find her attractive and she wasn’t a horrendous human being but I can’t start a relationship on that big of a lie.
After that, I’ve started looking on catfishers with a little more empathy. A lot of them are people who have social issues and don’t mean to be malicious or to hurt people. That doesn’t make it more acceptable, but it’s easier to understand”
She Was A Court Witness
“I was 16 and for some reason got sucked into a group of people on yahoo games. Started talking to this guy who I started ‘dating’. He had a myspace with very good looking pictures, but not unbelievingly good looking. He claimed to be 17 and from Delaware, said he lived with his aunt because he moms in WA with MS and his dad hates him. Eventually my mom found out, flipped on me, and I had everything taken away from me so I lost contact with him. We never mentioned anything sexual in that time.
My first year of college, I was 19 and living on campus. I was on messenger one day and he popped on. Things took off from there. He’d only want to talk sexual, never sent pictures. Had the same pics on MySpace, nothing new. I’d ask for more and he’d say soon. If I asked for special pictures, he’d say he’s embarrassed and ‘too small’. He’d always get off the phone when his aunt got home. I was stupid and naive and too in love to question him or notice these things. He’d always make vague plans of seeing but always had them cancelled. This continued a couple of months.
I unfortunately forget what caused us to ‘stop’ talking for almost a year. I think I’ve blocked out a lot of these memories. The next year I have a girl contact me asking if I know him. I told her my story and she said her uncle was a PI and was looking into him. Turns out he was 34 and married. His aunt was his wife. He stole someone’s pics because he was an obese Asian man. We both reported him (I forget what site it was). Submitted the stolen images and mentioned I was underage when this started. I searched for his wife, called her at work and told her. She just said, ‘Oh he’ll never hurt you, he’s just a giant teddy bear’. I called him one last time and said never contact me again or I’d go to the police, and he hasn’t since. I told him I knew everything and reported him.
About 3 months later I was subpoenaed as a witness in the state vs. him for ‘personal incrimination’. I was broke and in NY so I called and got out of it. I have no clue what happened beyond that. I’ve searched and found no court records. I’ve seen he has a twitter but no information beyond that- I’d actually love to know if he got in trouble”
So Many Layers of Catfishing
“This a story about two people Catfishing each other. Back when I was 12, I was really into a game called Runescape. I would use the game to scam people and get cool items. So one day when pulling one of these scams successfully, I was messaged saying ‘give my sister back her stuff’. My twelve year old brain was so amused at the idea that there was a girl on my favorite game, that I actually did give her back her stuff, and then I apologized, and bought her some more stuff. We got to talking, we exchanged AIM addresses and talked some more. Through these chats we established that we were both 18 years old, and were totally popular. Then we decided to ‘date’ and this is where things start to get a little blurry.
The relationship started as a standard twelve year old AIM relationship, but years started to go by, and we couldn’t keep up with our lies. So we just started to become more and more ridiculous. She would go ‘partying’ when she would really just log off AIM and go play some other game. And I would go ‘drinking’ when I would really just go call a friend and talk to them for an hour. This is just the tip of the iceberg, things started to become pretty insane, she started to have imaginary cousins, half brothers, step mothers that were cocaine addicted strippers that lived near me. I started to have suicide issues because college was too much for me.
This relationship became more and more toxic for about three years. After three years we both came clean, both of us were lying out of our a–es and we had no idea why at this point. We were now actually 15-16 and I had spent the hardest part of my life thus far with her. I had been dealing with a lot of weight issues as a kid and it got really bad around that time. Our relationship started to become normal, and once the lies went away things became fairly intense. We thought we loved each other, which made the next part even harder.
Then one day when she sent an email from a throwaway account, ‘I’m sorry, I love you, we can’t be together, goodbye now.’ She deleted pretty much everything after a solid 4 years. Her MySpace was gone, her phone number changed, her AIM deleted, her RuneScape account completely dropped, and her emails all deleted. I was floored, I had no idea what to do. I searched for about another year, assuming that eventually she’d come back to me. I ended up losing 70 pounds over the course of the summer that she left me, I gave up RuneScape, I got into the social crowd of my school and made a lot of new friends for once, but once I started dating people in real life, I just couldn’t shake that feeling that she left me with. Fast forward another two years and on a whim after a breakup, I feel a bit lonely, and I search through the now popular FaceBook for her and she’s there. So I go back to basics.
I make a profile with a picture of some random chump I find on Google Image search by looking up ‘hot guys’ or something and she accepts it. I set my location near her and we chat for a while, and get her number. I call her and she recognizes me instantly and tries to hang up. I ask her why she did it, and she answers that our relationship was ruining her life. She was barely going outside anymore. She kept thinking there would be a day she would move to the city I lived and we could eventually be together, but she realized it was just an endless pipe dream. The conversation was every bit of closure I had wanted in the last two years, she told me that she still loved me the way I did her but the distance was too much. Both of us are 21 now and she still calls me from time to time, when she ends a relationship, or needs some advice, but it’s clear the flame has not been tended to in years, and it’s died: That chapter in our lives is done now”
Catfish Marriage
“I met a man from Jordan in a chat room. We talked daily for months on end. He says that he is divorced and used to live in Boston. His exwife took their son and disappeared. He returned to Jordan to care for his siblings after his parents died. He did ask for some financial things but not a lot. One of his sisters who was in college needed a text book from Amazon. He needed some cash for a medical thing- maybe a thousand dollars. But he says he wants to marry.
So I go to Jordan for two weeks. There are beaches, restaurants, romance. So far so good. Everything seems legit. I go home. He still says he wants to marry. 6 months later I return. This time are supposed to marry. I get there, we stay together. I keep asking about the ceremony, getting vague responses. We even go to an office to get a license. Near the end of the week we are in a restaurant having breakfast when he sees someone that he knows. He goes over this guys table and talks for a few minutes then returns. He says that this guy is an old school friend who is able to perform the ceremony and that he will do it for us.
We go back to where we are staying. His uncle is with us. He had been driving us around. The guy from the restaurant shows up. We go through what I think is the ceremony. He says he will send the marriage certificate to me after it is registered so I can start the process of getting him to the states. I go home. Months go by and no certificate. I keep getting stalled. Then all of a sudden he says that he is in Boston. He says that the man he is staying with has his passport and won’t let him have it. Can I send him $1000 to pay this guy so he can get his passport back?
I come to my senses- I say no way to the money. Then he is living in Chicago driving a cab. He contacts me again and wants to come and visit. I’m still in love so I say ok. I pick him up at the airport. He has no luggage. Ok, Whatever. He stays for a weekend and then has to return to Chicago. We start making plans for him to move in. He gives me flight information, date, time, flight number, everything. I show up at the airport and he does not arrive. I go home telling myself that I’m done with him. He calls I tell him to f–k off. He keeps calling. I’m still wondering if I am really married or not. I contact the embassy via email. Don’t hear anything. He continues to call me at work where I can’t see his number.
A couple months later I get a call from homeland security. The embassy must have forwarded my email to them. He asks some questions. He then proceeds to tell me that there is no record of our marriage; He is married and has never been divorced. By this time nothing surprises. All I can say is that loneliness is a powerful emotion and will make people do incredibly stupid things. I got to see a beautiful part of the world that otherwise I would not have and for that I am glad. The whole process made me a lot more suspicious though”
She Never Admitted It Wasn’t Her Picture
“A girl messaged me on a dating website. She looked ‘ok’ in her pics and I hadn’t been on a date in months, so I figured why not. I invited her to Starbucks. Her profile said she was 5’4, about average body type (matched the picture) and was a red head. I was ok with all of this.
I go to Starbucks that weekend to meet her. Notice she’s not outside, so I go inside to see if I find her. I step inside and look around.
The Starbucks was small, but all the tables were full. Then the girl stands up as she recognized me and approached me.
The girl was a full 6 feet tall and towered over me. At this point I was a little intimidated because that’s not the 5’4 I expected. I also started to notice that she looked a little different from her pictures and realized she used a picture of a ‘similar’ looking red head for her own. I then look around me and see the entire Starbucks customers and staff are watching us.
It’s here I realized this is why she waited inside, if we were surrounded by a bunch of people she thought I wouldn’t make a scene or just flat out walk out on her (it was literally my first instinct). Completely surprised and caught off guard, she asked if I wanted to buy a drink and meet her outside. S–t, she thought this through.
I grabbed a drink and sat down with her. Almost immediately she just starts talking and tells me she’s the last one of her friends who isn’t married and doesn’t have kids. . Girl also made it obvious to the Starbucks audience how happy she was to be with me, so again, if I walked out on her instantly I would look like an a–hole (or so she would hope).
She then starts to tell me how she literally almost bought the same condo I did just before me (I never told her I lived there, nor that I was the one who ended up buying it). Creepy as f–k.
I told her that she didn’t match her profile. She said it was ‘her info.’
Sure.
I tell her I have to run and she walks with me as I’m on the way to her car. She asks me if I would be interested in a second date. Well, I had no need to be honest with her
‘Sure, I’ll check my schedule and email you on the site.’
‘Or you could text me!’
‘Uh, yea, I’ll text you instead’ (there was no F–KING WAY on Buddha’s fat belly I was going to text her and let her have my number)
I walked into another building and made she she left before I got in my car and never talked to her again”
I Feel So Bad For Her
“Many years ago I started talking to a guy called Zack. He lived in Pennsylvania. Nice lad. We spoke daily on MSN. We did this for a year or 2. We never bothered going on webcam with each other.
He told me about his family, his mother and sister. He had never met his dad but had heard stories of him being a complete dick to his mum.
One day he came online and just didn’t seem right, I was asking what was up, had something happened at school? with friends? etc. He told me he had to go on webcam. So He did.
So webcam turns on and there’s this girl. She looked about 14. He was 16. Anyway. I had been talking to ‘her’ the whole time. Except I hadn’t at the same time. Zack died a few years back. When he died (I have no idea what had happened to him) his little sister took on his personality. She had finally told her mum she has been speaking to me and her mum explained a few things to me. She believed she was zack a lot of the time. Spoke like she was him, told people she was him.
So the whole time i had been talking to a personality of a mentally ill girl. I was shocked and upset. I really enjoyed speaking with Zack, but to think he was never actually alive in the time i was talking to him.
Its a pretty strange one, I still struggle to get my head around it. I wish I was a little older at the time so I could have understood more what was going on. This was about 10 years ago now so I can only piece together bits of the story”
How Did No One Call Her Out?
“This was a strange girl I went to school with catfishing HERSELF on facebook, so other people would think she would have hot dudes after her.
Starts off with this dude called ‘Joel Smith’ who was playing for the AFL (biggest sport in Australia) yet he somehow never appeared in any of their games? Joel has very few photos, but all of them have a hot boy with a surfboard and can be found easily over google image search with the hashtag #hot or #abs. She tags everywhere she goes with Joel, and hes always posting on her wall with ‘hey beautiful xxx’. Sure enough she soon makes some more hot AFL player boys (Joels friends). During an AFL award night, she photoshopped her face over the face of some other players girlfriend on the red carpet, with the caption, ‘OMG best night ever! Thanks babe!’. This girl is not thin by any standards. The girl she photoshopped her face over is about a size 6. I wish I’d saved this photo because she deleted it about 2 hours later.
But disaster strikes! Joel Smith somehow DIES! No mention of how, and of course the AFL makes no press releases about the death of a star player. All of Joel Smiths 6 hot abs friends post ‘RIP’ on his wall. This girl gets over it pretty soon, and starts seeing his friend ‘Michael Jones’. Not an AFL player, so doesn’t last long. Joel’s profile is revived, his brother ‘Jimmy Smith’ is now using it, with all of Joels hot abs photos. He’s a professional surfboarder! Nice!
Soon this girl is in with surfing royalty. Befriending hot dudes and super cool chicks. But no more photoshopped red carpet events. But then as soon as they appeared, the profiles are all gone. Now all that remains is Jimmy’s profile, under the name ‘Jimmy Smith (rip joel)’. Funniest part is this chick is training to be a psychologist”
Ruined By Lies
“I was about 16 at the time (24 now), and I had just discovered the social website Vampire Freaks (VF). . . judge me now if you’d like but I liked it. Back than Facebook hadn’t become huge and MySpace made it too difficult to find people in your area with similar interest. VF had a huge collection of gamers, cosplayers, otaku and ‘nerds’, which is my thing.
Ran into the girl that I thought was the love of my 16 year old life. We had the same interests, we talked on msn voice chat numerous times and sent ‘recent’ pictures to each other all the time. It was awesome, we had a great time and generally seemed to connect really well. After 3 months I decided it was time to meet, I lived in Southern NJ and her in Upper NY, it was a bit of a hike. I lied to my mom and told her I was going to Philly, which was only a 15 min train ride, and set off on an adventure of epic proportion. After hopping on two trains and walking for 2 hours, 5 hours total, I had finally arrived at our meeting point, a cafe in her neighborhood.
I was waiting in line to get a cup a of coffee when suddenly a monstrous shadow that could be compared to the sun caught the corner of my eye. Chills went down my spine, as I heard my name get called out. The girl who had just sent me a picture last night had gained 120 pounds, and caused the ground the quake beneath her. Having little to no experience of the outside world I panicked, turned and said the most disappointing greeting of my life. I ended up spending the rest of the day with her, I tried not to be a jerk and bring up the fact that she lied to me. In the end she went for the kiss and I just gave her the cheek.
I probably would’ve dated her if she hadn’t lied to me, I’m a romantic and feel as though beauty is on the inside. But if she could lie about something like that, what’s to stop her from something even bigger”