From friendships to romance, the internet has opened the door to countless ways of connecting with people. But that same freedom also gives anyone the chance to lie, hide, and pretend to be someone they’re not.
Redditors from different threads shared their catfishing experiences—whether they were the ones deceived or the ones doing the deceiving. The stories range from shocking to heartbreaking, with a few even ending on a surprisingly positive note. Scroll down to read them all, and remember to be cautious about who you trust online.
#1
It was when I was a teenager, not too long after the birth of ICQ. I had met this one person in a chat room, and things started to get more and more personal. Not too long later, they eventually broke down and admitted that they had been lying, and that they weren’t a young hot girl but instead a man.
The guy seemed really remorseful, and I couldn’t bring myself to tell him that I actually wasn’t a young hot lesbian either.
Image source: Jux_, krlyukav/Freepik (not the actual photo)
#2
Oh boy this is gonna be a fun story.
I used to be on omegle (a chat-site) a few times when I was 17 or so. Everyone asked age and s*x (male/female) and most of them would disconnect when you said you were a male, so at one moment I told people I was female just to be able to talk to people.
Anyway, I connected to a girl and we had a great time together, we chatted for two hours or so I believe before we gave each other our skype address.. I had to create mine in a quick hurry because I didn’t have a fake girly-skype address that matched my fake name.
We went on to chat almost every day just for fun and even though I knew I was lying to her by being a girl I still had some fun but I really felt guilty for lying to her, and I knew we couldn’t meet in real life (even though we lived close to each other).
One day, she confessed that she was lying to me about something… That thing turned out to be that she was a guy as well. We kept contact and we had a great time together still and we actually met each other once. He died two years later though but still, good times.
Image source: anon, bristekjegor/Freepik (not the actual photo)
#3
In college I was swiping right on everyone on Tinder. One girl wanted to just meet up in the campus gardens and make out. It was cold out, I bundled up, headed over. Why not? She wasn’t there. I messaged her a couple times and she responded with stuff like “on my way” and “meet at this exact spot.”
My terrible iPhone4 battery was dying, so I couldn’t message her anymore. I started walking around the gardens, watching the meeting spot but not hanging out there. It wasn’t long before a few other dudes showed up in the general area and were all suspiciously checking their phones at regular intervals.
I realized what was going on and just went home. Never heard from that match again.
Image source: theonlydidymus, pvproductions/Freepik (not the actual photo)
#4
It’s a bit embarrassing to admit I was catfished… But I was.
About 10-11 years ago, I started talking to a guy on Myspace. I’m pretty sure he messaged me first, and at first we just talked about tattoos and stuff since I had JUST got an apprenticeship at a shop. The guy said he knew my friend … Let’s call her “Amanda.” So I talked to Amanda, and she said she knew the guy and they grew up together and what not. Anyway, guy and I keep talking online and of course I developed feelings. We’d talk on the phone for hours and finally after a few weeks, we agreed to meet up.
This was before the show catfish… And what do ya know? Guy doesn’t show up. He wouldn’t answer his phone and I was waiting around like a j*****s. Hours later, he calls, saying he is sorry. His phone d**d and he got lost and we’d try again another day. I stupidly ate up the b.s., forgave him, and agreed to meet him another time.
The next time, I brought Amanda and her girlfriend to meet this guy. Even though Amanda vouched for this guy, he didn’t show up again. Again, I’m feeling like an idiot and I’m crying, so Amanda and her gf drive me home. Immediately I go online and “break up” with this dude I never met.
We still talked for 6 months after that, with me questioning if he was real… But after that, he was supposedly vacationing around Europe and I wasn’t trying to persue anything anymore. I would still hang out with Amanda, and she would tell me that the guy called her and had some crazy stories about Amsterdam, or Paris or wherever.
Well, about a year ago I got a message on FB from a girl. She asked if I knew _____ (Myspace guy) and if I had ever met him. I told her no, I never met him. She messaged me back that Amanda told her I had met this guy and that she had a brief online relationship with the guy. Then, one night, this girl was staying at Amanda’s house when she was sick and I guess her voice was hoarse. She said it sounded exactly like the guy she was talking to online. She confronted Amanda and Amanda came clean.
So, my “friend” of 10+ years catfished me while she had a gf. I always wondered why she was a little clingy for a friend and hated all my boyfriends. Now I know. I haven’t confronted her yet, but I also haven’t talked to her for a year. I feel like she most likely knows that I know now. It hurts that a good friend did that to me.
Tl;Dr : my friend of 10+ years catfished me, didn’t find out until recently.
Image source: michonne_impossible, yannamelissa/Freepik (not the actual photo)
#5
MIL had just gotten a computer and she was losing her grip on reality as she aged.
My husband and I didn’t have a computer yet so we didn’t know the dangers she faced. One of her other sons set the thing up for her.
Long story short she met some man on the internet who *convinced her he was her [late] husband.*
She was on a fixed income so had to go to her son to get the bulk of the money he was asking for.
The son shut things down real quick, but the poor woman was sure we were keeping her husband from her for the rest of her days.
Image source: ligamentary, EyeEm/Freepik (not the actual photo)
#6
I was maybe 18 or 19. I started talking to a girl on some social media site. I was dumb, and missed an obvious red flag where suddenly decided she wanted to be called a different name. This was during a pretty rough point in my life(dropped out of college, s****y job, very few/no friends), so even though it was weird, I didn’t question it. Also didn’t ask for actual proof of who she said she was, since I was naïve and thought well why would she lie, and it’s not like the pictures she used were unbelievably hot so it didn’t stand out.
I didn’t really get the sense knocked into me to start questioning it until the cliché “got badly hurt in a car accident” happened, which had me freaking out and wanting to fly there(she was in CA, I was in PA). After half a day of worrying, she calls and said she made it up because I had been “neglecting her.” Being a d*****s desperate for love, I didn’t cut it off immediately, but I decided one day to actually google her name and her “original” name, and whaddya know, different people in the same town and pictures of her matching the original. Questioned her, and she admitted to lying because she knew the girl and was jealous of her so she pretended to be her and got caught up in the lie after falling in love. Told her to never contact me again, and that was it.
Basically I’m a f*****g d*****s who doesn’t see red flags.
Image source: anon, Freepik (not the actual photo)
#7
Not me but an old gf of mine.
We were teens. She was sending n**es to some 17-year old guy. (Yes while we were dating, but I didn’t hold it against her. Honestly I just felt bad. We still broke up for it though). She had no idea he wasn’t who he said he was until the FBI showed up at her door. They said he was some 40-something year old ex con. They were doing a huge investigation into the guy and were contacting all the victims before arresting him.
She had to go through every text, every picture, and times they talked and what about and all of that. I sat there with her going through it all. Which was not easy, she couldn’t look me in the eyes the whole time. She could have had me leave, I offered to, but she insisted I stay because she needed my support at the time. So I did stay. After all was said and done, and they left. We went out to eat with her family. Had as good a time as we could. Then I broke up with her and explained why when we got back to her house and I left. Haven’t spoken since.
I haven’t been catfished myself other than the standard flattering pics to not show weight or other features that weren’t flattering.
Image source: GreenAdler17, prostooleh/Freepik (not the actual photo)
#8
I (26F) was on Tumblr one night a found a website similar to Omegle where you could randomly talk to strangers over chat. I met “Charlie” (M) and we hit it it off. We talked for upwards of 8 months via text and it was fairly serious, but I never would commit because I couldn’t verify his identity online ANYWHERE and I knew he was hiding it from me (I’m generally a very good detective, and I couldn’t find anything). About 8 months in, my friend helped me discover that he was really a SHE named Rachel, living a few hours from me. Cue shock and and anger. After all of the shock wore off, I jumped in my car to go meet her, and everything was great from there. We’ve been together for almost 5 years, one of which was long distance, and we’re now engaged and getting married next fall. Up until meeting her, I had never dated women, only men. I’m fairly open minded, and I honestly think sexuality is a very grey area, so it wasn’t a HUGE deal to me to end up with a woman, just not something I thought would really happen. Now we have a house, a dog, and are planning our wedding.
Image source: jbuckeye10, Freepik (not the actual photo)
#9
I call this “My D**d Girlfriend” story.
Matched on OKCupid and she was super cute. We started messaging and I was stoked to meet her. Unfortunately she was out of town for a couple of weeks for work. Fine, I’m not in a rush. We start talking on the phone all the time. Texting. Voicemails. It was great. She sent me random pics of her. All seemed normal.
Well, it’s been a couple of weeks and I’m pushing to meet. She finally comes clean that she went out of town not for work but that she has breast cancer and was getting treatment for it and wasn’t sure how to tell me. Whatevs! That’s okay! Hope it’s going well! I totally dig our conversations and she’s cute so I’ll let it go.
I had made it clear that I wasn’t looking to date anyone with kids, which she didn’t have. She did have a niece and mentioned that one thing she really liked about me was that I knew ASL because her niece was deaf and she was learning it too. Cool. Common interest.
Christmas comes and goes and we still haven’t met. It’s been about a month and every excuse made *just* enough sense that I believed her. Traveling to visit family. Traveling for Christmas. Busy with work. Put together…and I’m a d*****s for believing her…but individually it made sense.
Finally my friend starts to question things. I dig into the pictures and the file names are weird. Like when you just pull them off Facebook. Flash forward and I call her out and she finally admits that the pics were of her 25yo cousin, not pics of her (she was 32yo). Also, not her niece…it’s her daughter. The breast cancer? Well, I never found out the truth in that.
Anyway, I tell her that I’m out because how can I trust anything if these are the lies she’s telling me. I wish her a happy life and move on. About 4 months later, I get an email from her “sister” saying that she had passed away and that she regretted lying to me and really loved me and wished she could have been with me and her sister thought I’d want to know that she had d**d.
What. The. Actual. F**k.
So, I explain that I’d love to meet the daughter because I really cared for her mom (I didn’t…I just wanted her to come clean!). At the first hint of an excuse, I called her out and said, “I think this is so-and-so and you’re just trying to stay in contact with me. Don’t ever email me again.” Haven’t heard anything since.
TL;DR – Woman uses fake pics and lies about having a kid and fakes her own death to stay in contact with me after I call it off.
Image source: mjolnir76, rawpixel.com/Freepik (not the actual photo)
#10
Back in the early 2000’s when the internet still had kind of a “wild west” vibe and law enforcement hadn’t quite caught up yet (no sting operations, no “to catch a predator”), I’d go on chatrooms claiming to be a 12 year old girl and when guys contacted me I’d give them each others phone numbers or send them to each others houses.
Image source: the-crotch, Freepik (not the actual photo)
#11
I was chatting up this girl I met online and we were hitting it off pretty good. Finally, after a week of chatting back and forth online we agreed to meet up for drinks. I was excited as Ashley was a little out of my league and genuinely seemed nice. I arrived at the proper place and time and someone walks up to me and introduces themselves as Ashley. I take out my printout and realize, OMG… Ashley is the Dude in the picture, not the girl. WTF dude?
Now, I am a straight man and not into this thing, but Ashley clearly knew I though he was the girl in the picture and led me on. He thought I might want to try “switching teams”. I nearly threw up. Needless to say that was the end of that conversation.
TLDR; Gay guy catfished me and thought I might “switch teams” on the spur of the moment.
Image source: anon, drobotdean/ Freepik (not the actual photo)
#12
About 6 years ago I found out my brother was a catfish. He had been catfishing this young man in the UK whilst being in America. He had fake pictures, a fake name but his real phone number. The guy being catfished -we’ll call him lenny- would repeatedly call my brother and leave messages on our house phone. My brother and Lenny often sent each other packages of sweets. Lenny made the decision to come to America to visit, since he’s never been. My brother agreed. On the day lenny arrived in Texas my brother told him the truth, but never actually met up with Lenny. Lenny tried all week trying to convince my brother to meet him, telling him he just wanted to know who he really was. My brother never showed. Lenny called religiously everyday for about a month trying to get my brother back. I think he really loved him. After that I never heard from him again.
Image source: January11_2015_1214a, vproductions/Freepik (not the actual photo)
#13
I recently found out that someone has been using my pictures to catfish people for over 10 years! A woman my age has been pretending to be me (a guy) and has been in an online relationship with two girls! She made over 15 Facebook profiles using my family and friends’ pictures and at least eight Twitter accounts to make things seem more believable.
She created a twin brother for ‘me’ and photoshopped me into pictures of myself to make it seem like there were two of me. The twin d**d at some point, and the original ‘me’ used to check in at a crematorium with a Facebook memory now and then. One of the girls thought something wasn’t right and did some investigation. Eventually, she tracked me down and everything started to unravel. I spent four hours at the police station yesterday trying to describe all of this in a statement.
Image source: r2bee2, drobotdean/Freepik (not the actual photo)
#14
About seven years ago, I catfished my then-boyfriend because I had a hunch he was cheating on me. I’d caught him chatting online with other women a couple of times already, s**ting, begging for n**es, trying to get them to come over, etc. He cried and groveled each time I caught him — it was just chatting, he wasn’t actually gonna do anything, he’ll never do it again, blah blah blah. I didn’t catch him again for a while, but I just had that feeling, you know? I should have just dumped him after the first offense, I know, but I was a lot more naive in my 20s. I made a fake profile with some random hot girl’s pictures, named myself Ashley Adams, and made up a backstory that included cheerleading and n**e modeling.
The profile was comically fake, but I knew he’d fall for it because t**s were involved. I friended him and waited for him to send the first chat. I didn’t have to wait long, either. As soon as he popped online, he took the bait. ‘Hey s**y, wanna chat?’ Why yes, ‘Ashley’ would love to chat! He asked me for n**es, asked me where I lived, and was happy to hear that I only lived one town over and could be there in half an hour. I agreed to come over, he gave me his address, and told me to just come right in and jump on him. Oh, that motherf**ker…I knew it.
I waited about 15 minutes before heading over to his apartment. I went right in like he requested, and I saw his expression change from excitement to ‘oh s**t’ when he saw me walk in instead of Ashley. I could tell he was trying hard to come up with a reason why I couldn’t stay, but I made myself right at home. I just sat there watching him squirm and glance nervously at the front door every time he heard a noise. He must have been terrified, expecting Ashley to show up any minute while his girlfriend was cuddled up right there next to him. I hung out for several hours just relishing in his discomfort, and then left him with blue balls after he realized Ashley wasn’t gonna show. He tried to get frisky with me, but I said, ‘Sorry, babe, I’m suddenly not feeling very well!’ I dumped him a few days later. I gotta say, catfishing him was actually pretty fun.
Image source: Lydious, Freepik (not the actual photo)
#15
A couple of years ago, I was chatting with a very good-looking guy on a dating app. He would make plans with me, but then have to cancel because something would come up with his kid. One day, I saw a pic of him on Pinterest. Turns out the ‘very good looking guy’ lived in a different state with his wife, running a successful blog (hence the easy access to his pics). I confronted the guy on the app about it, and he said he’d joined to keep an eye on his ex-wife and found me in the process. He said his goal wasn’t to catfish me, but he’d already put himself in this situation with the fake account. His loss.
Image source: FearTheWeird, Freepik (not the actual photo)
#16
I was catfished. Not in a romantic relationship, but in a friendship. Many years ago, when I was a teenager, I started talking to a guy named Zack online. We spoke daily on MSN Messenger for a year or two, but never bothered video chatting. He was 16 like me, told me about his family, how his mother and sister abandoned him, how he’d never met his dad, etc. One day, he came online and just didn’t seem right.
“I asked him if he was OK, if something had happened at school, or with his friends. He told me he wanted to chat on webcam. When I turned the webcam on, I saw a 14-year-old girl. I had been talking to her the whole time.
Zack d**d a few years before we started chatting, and when he d**d, his little sister took on his personality as a coping mechanism. She had finally told her mum she was speaking with me, and her mum got on to explain a few things. The sister believed she was Zack. She would talk like he did, introduce herself to people as Zack, etc. I was shocked and upset. I really enjoyed my chats with Zack, but to think he was never actually alive during the time I was talking to him is so strange. I still struggle to get my head around it.
Image source: Arhia, pvproductions/Freepik (not the actual photo)
#17
One of my close friends in high school catfished someone. She’d been over at my house and borrowed my laptop. After she left, I went online and saw she’d left a Tumblr account logged in, but it clearly wasn’t for herself.
After a quick scroll through her account, I found she was pretending to be a French guy (we’re American) and she was using one of our classmates’ photos. I immediately told the rest of our friend group what was going on so we could try to figure out what to do. We ended up reading through some of her messages and learned she had a deep relationship with a girl who lived across the country.
This girl knew NOTHING about who my friend really was. We felt awful. For weeks, we debated telling this girl the truth or even confronting our friend about what she was doing. In the end, we were worried about our friend’s mental health and didn’t want to rock the boat. So we did nothing. I kept an eye on the account for a while, and she deactivated it about a year later. Our friendship fell apart for other reasons not long after. Just a strange situation from start to finish.
Image source: NumberOneNoodleFan27, EyeEm/Freepik (not the actual photo)
#18
Not me, but my best friend. She was (to put it lightly) an average looking, dark skinned, chubby girl, who was usually dressed in traditional (indian) clothes. When we were 15-16, Yahoo Chatrooms were all the rage and she started talking to a guy from our city. Now I too used to chat with guys there but never got too serious with it and the conversations didn’t last more than a day. Soon I got over the craze but she didn’t. She kept chatting with this guy and even sent him her photos. Only…the photos she sent were of some other girl she had randomly added on Orkut, who was fairer, slimmer and dressed differently (shorts, t-shirts, skinny jeans etc).
She also lied about her age, what she did for a living and where she lived. She told him she lived in another country and was visiting India to attend a family wedding. He asked her to meet and she agreed, and I still don’t understand how she thought it would be okay. That day, I was at her place while she got ready for her “classes”. She put on an extra fancy set of clothes (Indian churidar kurta), put on jewellery, makeup etc. I asked her why she was so fancily dressed and she just brushed off the question. she left for her classes and I was back home when an hour later, I got a call from her asking me to come to her home (in between sobs). I ran over and she confessed she had been to meet the chatroom guy. She recounted that once she reached the meeting spot and messaged the guy, someone walked by, looking at her from top to bottom. This is how her text conversation with the guy went..
Guy: What color are you wearing?
Friend: (color she was wearing the day)
Guy: You should go home. I cannot meet you.
Friend: Why? What happened?
Guy: Go home, take a look in the mirror and you will know why.
Well, I was super mad at the guy for implying my friend was ugly. I asked my friend to text him that the person he saw was her friend aka me, and how he was so shallow and she was only testing him before actually meeting him. And now she will never meet him because he is not a nice guy etc. He felt bad I guess and apologized but she never spoke to him again.
Now that I think of it, the guy was totally justified for refusing to meet her because my friend was infact a liar (she was a compulsive liar and a messed up person due to a bad, mildly a*****e childhood) and catfished him. At the time I was being defensive about my friend but I understand his side too.
My friend eventually lost the weight, groomed herself and became quite the bombshell. She is however, now happily married and a devoted wife, so it all ended well I guess.
Image source: ramya92, ASphotofamily/Freepik (not the actual photo)
#19
Older brother (late 20s) was catfished in recent years and it was dramatic.
He’s an emotional guy, always had a hard time dating and never really got over the emotional damage of having an alcoholic, on-again/off-again parent.
Enter the scene a young doctor in training from Australia who was doing her residency in a nearby city. Pretty, went to Harvard, actually royalty on her mother’s side. Some might say too good to be true.
She was always busy with her doctor schooling so meeting was hard. They spoke on the phone but mostly texted. The initial connection was online but we never heard what website. After a while the family starts teasing him that she may not be real and he starts trying harder to meet in person to prove that the love of his life was, in fact, real.
Then begins the series of family deaths. Every holiday he would invite her to our family’s get-together to meet everyone and prove that she’s real. First an uncle d**d, then a grandmother, then a grandfather, then another uncle. Every. Single. Time. And she would have to fly back to Australia or the country her family was royalty in to deal with the deaths. Brother defended her every time. “Do you know how hard it is to lose so many people so fast? You all have no sympathy.” Etc.
After months of hearing about how they’re going to buy a house together and he would get dual citizenship and whisk us all away to Australia everyone was pretty tired of it. He had let his lease expire and moved into mom’s house until they bought their own together with her doctor money. He had taken time off work to see her and then wasted it when she didn’t show up. Work was mad at him for taking a lot of days off in a short timespan. Things were tense.
She went MIA suddenly one day. No texts, nothing. We had been supposed to meet her the same day. A month later she reappears. Girlfriend’s royal, psycho mother didn’t like that she was seeing an American peasant and had gotten her arrested. While getting unarrested, she lost her diabetes medication (oh, shes also diabetic. Didn’t everyone know?) And had gone into a coma. But of course she called as soon as she woke up and made everything better. How could we be such terrible people to doubt this story? The poor girl almost d**d!
Anyways. After a no-show for a promised Pats game (because her father d**d on the way to pick brother up) we think he may have started to get disillusioned and have some doubts.
In the end, brother just had to know. He took his first trip outside of the USA to go to her home and find her. We never found out what happened on the trip but he never talked about her again.
(Information left out for privacy).
Image source: doodledoo1, pixel-shot.com/Freepik (not the actual photo)
#20
I catfished a guy because he is always creeping on (underage) girls on Facebook while he is like 35. He will go trough your friendlist and then he wants to know everything about them, where they live, their phone number etc. I just felt like trolling him at some point so I catfished him for a few months til I got tired of it.
Image source: kattenbief, benzoix/Freepik (not the actual photo)
#21
I got played by a girl I met in an online game, not sure what her end game was because she never got that far.
We became friends and started talking she told me she was a nursing student going to school back east but planned to move back to California after she finished. After a few months we seemed to be interested in each other and she said that she would be coming to visit friends in Cali that lived about 2 hours away and when she finished school she would try to get a nursing job in that town and maybe we could test the waters with each other.
She cancelled her visit because she had “too much school work” but stayed in touch. Things just started to bother me she talked like a young student most of the time but other times the way she phrased things just came off as odd to me and she was very reluctant to ever video chat or cam with me at all.
When my suspicion hit its peak I started investigating. I took her chat name and ran it through a social media search engine and it returned a MySpace page using the same name (yes this was many moons ago when MySpace was the s**t)
It turned out that this 22 year old nursing student was actually a 45 year old nurse in Massachusetts. I ran the pictures of “her” that she had sent me through messenger through reverse image searching and found them all to be professional shots of amateur models.
I messaged her real MySpace account asking her for an explanation and told her she could give it to me over messenger or maybe I’d come see her in person since her MySpace had pictures of her at work, at home, all of her personal s**t everywhere.
She deleted her messenger account, her Myspace, her email address, her account in the game we played, everything she vanished in less than 2 hours and I never heard from her again.
Not sure what her master plan was but she didn’t like being exposed. I emailed the head nurse where she worked with the whole story and lots of screenshots in case the patients she was talking about were real and asked the nurse if this was the type of professional behavior she expected from her staff. She emailed me back with just a thank you, an apology for what happened, and said she’d investigate but I never heard from her again either.
Image source: anon, wavebreakmedia_micro/Freepik (not the actual photo)
#22
I have a friend that ended up on the MTV show Catfish. He had moved to a new area and was using Plenty of Fish to meet girls. He met one and they started to talk all the time, but she didn’t want to meet up with him. They would video chat and she would always kind of hide her face a certain way, same with any photos.
One day she messaged him and asked if they could finally meet in person but on the show Catfish. He said yes, figured to hell with it might as well take a chance to be on TV. The two hosts (Nev and Max?) flew down and met up with him. He said they were really cool and they partied a bit and had fun. They made up a backstory for him, on the show they had him working at a butcher shop. He thought it was hilarious because he had never been a butcher in his life.
Anyways the day they met she revealed to him that she was transgender, previously a man. That part of the show was real, he met her for the first time on camera and had no idea that was the case. He was calm and nice about it, basically just wanted to know why she didn’t just come out and tell him that, that it wasn’t really his thing. He said being on the show was a cool experience though, made a little money.
Image source: T_w_e_a_k
#23
Met someone on OkCupid. He was moving from NYC to my city, said he was a surgeon. That was my first red flag. I wondered why a successful surgeon was on a free dating site.
We chatted for two weeks, but he didn’t want to talk on the phone. Red flag #2. At this point I assume he’s a fake.
He deleted his profile, saying he couldn’t wait to meet me in 3 weeks when he was scheduled to fly in for a weekend to find a condo. I reverse searched his picture and found another profile, same story, but it said he was moving to Phoenix. Red flag #3.
At this point, I know he’s fake but now I’m having fun making him think I’m totally hooked. He gave me bad med advice when I sprained my ankle, then told me he had a foot f****h and he would be making sure I would get daily pedicures when I quit my job and move in with him.
The weekend he was supposed to fly in, his current almost former boss “d**d” and he couldn’t make it. I sent him screenshots of his other profile and told him I knew all along and had just been f*****g with him.
Good times.
Image source: anon
#24
A few years later. It wasn’t anything serious, just this girl sending me pictures when I was 12-13 and I sent some back. I logged into my old email when I was around 16 and I looked up the email she used, and found out it was this older man who posted up his email asking for girls. He sent me another girls pictures. Piece of s**t.
Image source: chapstickdyke
#25
I met this Welsh girl on 4chan that was into a lot of the same bands as I was, liked the same comedians as I did and shared a lot of my political views. She was f*****g awesome, and we stayed up all night talking about anything and everything. We went on to spend a good 6-8 hours almost every single day talking pretty much constantly for the next 3 months – she was amazing – funny as f**k, had really interesting opinions on a lot of things, introduced me to a ton of new music & films and was just generally a really lovely person.
I was incredibly depressed at the time, and had just dropped out of college the year prior due to ever-increasing anxiety and an inability to function in public – she was the only person I had ever felt genuinely comfortable talking to and I was completely fascinated by her – I looked forward to waking up every day just because I enjoyed her company. We’d stay up all night talking and watching TV shows, and I had genuinely started to fall for her.
Then one night she says goodnight & we’ll talk tomorrow like normal, and I headed off to bed. The next day she didn’t come online. A few days went by and I hadn’t heard from her at all, and I started to get really worried. I started checking the news & obituaries in her town, but found nothing. I went a little bit mental at this point, and couldn’t eat or sleep properly for weeks on end – I had no idea what the f**k was going on – I genuinely thought I might have completely made the whole thing up, and that I was seriously mentally unwell. I thought of her and what could have possibly happened every single day – the anxiety and stress this caused me actually made me physically & mentally ill. This went on for months and I got worse, and worse – eventually leading to a full blown nervous breakdown.
Not going to go into details on that, but eventually I became functional again, and a few months down the line I decided to look into her a little further to see if I could figure out what had happened and get some closure – I came across a girl on a social media site whose pictures she had stolen and from there I began to unravel everything.
I am actually doing fairly well now and I feel a lot healthier than I have in a long, long time. It’s weird, but I still think of her from time to time, and despite knowing full well it was either a guy, or someone entirely different to the pictures, I still get quite sad knowing I’ll never get to talk to them again. And despite it really f*****g me up for a long time, I’m better for it. I just hope they’re doing okay, too.
Image source: IFeelFineIFeelFine
#26
I met someone through the Gossip Girl subreddit. We talked for a while and planned a weeklong trip to New York together. The week before the trip, they canceled, but I’d already dropped $400 on two tickets to Wicked on Broadway. Well, I went to New York for Wicked anyway. I found a fellow redditor who lived in NYC and gave her the second ticket for free. We saw the show, and she took me to an awesome restaurant around the corner from the Gershwin. Sure, I got catfished, but I made a new friend, ate good food, and saw Wicked on Broadway.
Image source: Hellguin
#27
I didn’t realize it at the time but looking back on it, I think my ‘runescape girlfriend’ who I mined a f**kton of ore for back in the day (RSC) wasn’t a girl at all.
Image source: anon, Freepik (not the actual photo)
#28
Not sure if it fits, but – irl I am a girl. For a while in WoW I pretended to be a man. I wanted to push rated bgs but got tired of b******t “O yeah girl, 100% carried and plz send n**es “. Removed people I was not close with from btag, name changed, set up voice changer. Close friends knew it’s me. One evening we play, everything is great. I am calling in my manly voice PS, MD, dispel of bop, etc. Suddenly my dog starts to bark. Rbg grp goes quiet for a moment. And someone says: OK either someone has T-Rex in the room or voice changer fail. I had to come clean about not being a dude.
Image source: AddieBaddie, EyeEm/Freepik (not the actual photo)
#29
I got catfished twice, long before the term even became a thing. Both times they were underage but led me to believe they were the same age I was.
The first time, it was a girl who sent me pictures of her older sister, who was around my age. When we finally met for our first date, I realized that she was not the girl from the pictures because she was barely 18 and was enormous compared to the girl I had pictures of. She was apologetic, and explained that she sent me pictures of her sister instead of herself for various reasons. The lie about her age was only a slight problem because she had just turned 18 days before so I wasn’t in any legal danger. We remained friends for years.
The second time was the last time I tried to meet a girl online. 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. Luckilly 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…
Image source: 5arge
#30
I was catfished while I was in high school- the whole event went on for about 3 years, so I’ll do my best to condense the story.
It started when my family moved overseas to Japan (my dad was in the Air Force). Not having many friends at first I turned to the internet and talking to people online. There was this super sketchy webcam chat room that a friend from where I lived previously had introduced me to. It was called Stickam, I believe, and every day after school I would log on, turn my webcam on, and just wait for people to talk to me. A lot of creeps, but I was 16 and liked the attention.
I met this guy named Adam and he had just sent me a chat. We would talk every day! Eventually we ditched talking on Stickam and switched to Skype and AIM messenger. We were friends on MySpace and I would talk to him every single day. We became really good friends and he would tell me that he loved me. I would always have my webcam on and he would just be talking, but no webcam. He claimed his mom took it away from him because she found out he was talking to strangers on the internet.
Adam ended up having a series of really unfortunate, even tragic, things happen to him. He got Leukemia, his mom was killed in a terrible accident, and his step father lost everything due to all of the overwhelming medical bills. It was so sad and I felt like I was the only good thing left in his life.
A year later my family and I left Japan and moved back to the United States. Adam and I stay in touch but it was definitely less than when I lived in Japan. We had several arguments where I would ask him to send me photos or webcam and he would always have an excuse. My friends started calling me out and telling me how he wasn’t real- but I was in a bit of denial.
During my senior year of high school I was applying to colleges and there was one that I really wanted to go to and it was in the state where he lived. What a great coincidence! I finally was going to be able to meet him! I made plans to travel there to visit the college, but also made plans to meet him. He was fully on board and we agreed on a day and said that once I was there we would agree on a time and place. The week I was visiting he completely ghosted me and I didn’t hear from him for about 3 weeks. I was so disappointed, but at this point angry.
He made contact and apologized, saying he got really sick and was hospitalized. I moved past it but started to distance myself. I ended up getting accepted to that university and now we were going to be literally in the same county. So once I moved and got settled into college I told him that I wanted to meet once and for all. I then got a very long and angry text message from his step dad saying to not come near Adam or I would be arrested. I decided to back off- not really believing any of it but the situation was getting really weird and I had a bad feeling.
That Christmas break I was back home with my sister watching the MTV show Catfish. One of their techniques to find fake profiles is to reverse google search images to see where else that image is on the internet. I did just that with his MySpace profile picture and found the profile of the real person. I messaged him laying everything out on the table, and his response was “for someone as smart as you I’m really surprised it took you this long to figure it out.”
I was so relieved to finally know the truth and have actual evidence! I knew he was lying to me for a really long time but I could never prove it and he always denied it. A few weeks later he ended up asking me if we could talk on skype for real. He said he wanted me to actually see him and know who he was. I agreed.
We Skyped for about 20 minutes. He was my age, just a little socially awkward and overweight. I asked about what was true and what was false- he seemed to be honest and admitted what he lied about, which were small things. He claims that his mother really did d** and he really did have leukemia. At the end he asked if we could still be friends, and I thanked him for finally coming clean, but said that we couldn’t be friends. He said that he never thought we would get so close and his little lie in the beginning turned into a huge lie that he couldn’t get himself out of- so he just kept going along with it.
For the next year he would send me a message on my birthday and holidays, I didn’t respond so the messages stopped.
I still think about Adam every now and then, and I hope he’s doing okay.
Image source: starmoon1
#31
One of my now very close friends pretended to be a woman in World of Warcraft. He joined my guild with his partner, who roped him into the whole “lets pretend to be girls” idea (we like to tease him by saying it was his idea the whole time). After a while, they broke up and his partner left the guild in a rather dramatic way.
After a few days, I get a message saying he needs to tell me something. He admits to being a guy. None of us were incredibly surprised, or really bothered for that matter. In fact, it was kinda hilarious and it meant that now he could finally talk with us in discord. It took a while to be able to refer to him as his real name, though. Still like to bring it up and lightly bully him for it, it’s great fun.
Image source: mookey57
#32
So, when MySpace was the popular social networking website, I decided to create a fake person. I had my own personal profile and within two years of being on it, I had about 140 or so friends. More than 75% were friends, co-workers, and family. The rest were random girls that added me.
One of my friends took a shirtless selfie right out of the pool and posted it. You would have thought he was the best looking guy in the world because girls were just eating it up.
At the time, I was having trouble getting dates. Just frustrated with it all, I found some guys profile who lived thousands of miles away(not even sure how I found it) He was very attractive, so I saved all of his pictures. I made this kick a*s profile, gave him a fake name and backstory and up it went. I had to go to work that afternoon(1pm-8pm).
So, I go to work, get back around 8:30pm. Grab something out of my fridge and realized I created that profile. I literally forgot about it. I logged in and in less than eight hours, this guy had 440 new friend requests and well over 200 messages. I put his age as 19 and he had women as old as 45 messaging him. One said that he could date her daughter, but wanted them two to fool around first. It was insane.
Within two days, this poor dude had close to 1,000 new friends. I could not keep up with the messages. I did message the guy’s real profile to let him know that if he was ever in the area, he could have his pick of women. He found it hilarious but said:
“Impressive…but…I’m gay.”
A few years ago, I tried something similar with Tinder. Made a fake Facebook account, used someone else’s pictures and downloaded a GPS changer and set it Winnipeg, Manitoba. Within a week, I had over 600 matches.
That’s all I have to contribute.
Edit: If you ever talked to an “Alex” on MySpace or a “Brett” on Tinder, that was me…Sorry…
Image source: chudrozi, karlyukav/Freepik (not the actual photo)
#33
Oh i was like 15 or so and MySpace was still totally a thing. I met this cute guy and we got along. Now this was about a year or two before the show Catfish was on TV. But long story short I got Catfished for a year. We traded pics but every time we went to video chat his camera was “broken” so I never saw his face live but like (god so cheesy) we played chess/checkers over messenger so I know SOMEONE was on the other side of a computer responding to me. We talked on the phone so much and talked of marriage. Every time he would come to meet me he’d get about halfway then something would happen; home emergency, he got arrested, car broke down, ect.
Then he ghosted me.
Back then I refused to believe I was so dumb to be Catfished and let myself believe someone cared about me like that (rough home life and depression f***s a kid up). Now I realize I was 100% Catfished. If I could find the person that did this to me I wouldn’t yell or scream at them. I would just ask them why they did it and tell them that I hope their life has improved since.
Image source: Little_Bear716
#34
This wasn’t cat-fishing in a dating way, but a different form.
We got a new puppy a few weeks ago. My fiance had been bothering me to get one for a while, and when she found a nice-looking labradoodle in a Facebook group for a decent price, I just said let’s go get her tomorrow.
It was a little strange, because the person who was the Facebook poster gave a number for somebody who lived in one town, but wanted us to meet her niece in another place on the other side of town because the main guy was delivering puppies somewhere else. Still a little weird, but we met the niece at a mall, the dog seemed great so we got her.
A few days later, we discovered she had fleas, so my fiance texted the original guy, no response, even with a few more texts. I started Googling the name of the original poster and looked at her profile (something I should have done in the first place), and realized it was a totally fake profile. In the Google search, we found a post warning about a guy in Rochester who ran puppy mills and would use fake names, including the original posters’ name. I found the guy’s real name and everything and wanted to go to the Humane Society, although we didn’t really have a specific complaint.
My fiance didn’t want to because the warning post said the guy would harass people and such. She was devastated that our puppy was from a mill, I was just really mad at myself for not doing any bit of back research. Luckily the pup is turning out to be great, so no harm done.
TL:DR: We got catfished by a puppy mill.
Image source: RIPKellys
#35
Back in Highschool I used to pretend to be a girl in Counter Strike: Source/ Early CSGO just to get free skins. It started off as a joke to troll people but some of the guys that I would play with REALLY wanted to get to know me. Most knew it was a troll but there are a good amount of guys out there that didn’t question me for being mic-less and took their chances of me being a girl.
At first I told them off the bat I was just some dude they’re flirting with and I eventually wanted to see how far I can take it. I made them pity me by telling them it was my birthday but I was just going to play CS all day since my family was too broke to do something for me. After they bought me skins I would block and report them for s**ual harassment just because. It didn’t last very long but I learned most guys are complete a******s to girls when they’re anonymous.
Image source: axe_me_anything, Frolopiaton Palm/Freepik (not the actual photo)
#36
I got catfished twice, once on OKCupid and once on Plenty of Fish.
The first time, the girl was completely different from the pictures. Different hair, different face, different teeth, different eyes, but no more or less attractive. She had clearly been the person I was talking to, and I never drew attention to the fact that she had clearly used someone else’s photos. She didn’t either. It was a pretty good date, but I didn’t want to encourage false advertising, so there was no second date.
The second time, it was clearly someone who had used every single trick in the book to seem half the weight that she was. High-angle photos, old photos, she listed several sports (that I participate in) as her hobbies, and then on the date, she was easily a hundred and fifty pounds bigger than she appeared in any of the photos. I’m usually ok with bigger women, but I draw the line at “I can’t pick you up without throwing my back out”. It’s just personal preference. Like the first one though, I really don’t like false advertising, and made sure to include at least one less-flattering photo of myself on my profile so nobody would be surprised. She was a really nice lady, so I felt obligated to let her make the choice to not go out again by telling her that I wasn’t really looking for a long-term relationship at the moment, and that if she was down for something more casual, that was fine with me. She wasn’t, and we never talked again.
Image source: DunbarsPhoneNumber
#37
Back in 2005, when I was about 19, I (male) met a woman online on IRC, on a channel where people used to play Uno a lot. She was from Louisiana (I’m from Eastern Europe), and she was about 15 years older than me. We hit it off.
Her name was Amanda, she was blonde and very pretty, but she was in a pretty bad way in life. She was living with her elderly mother, mostly off welfare and occasional part time jobs. They were mostly broke and when they did get money, her in-and-out-of-jail d**dbeat brother would use it for d***s.
I spent many nights talking to Amanda; we were in love. We were very, very compatible. I was going through university and we were dreaming of and planning to meet up in the future, get married, and possibly adopt children (since she was/would be too old to have them by then). We talked daily, sometimes over the phone but mostly over text. We played games, we watched movies together, etc. For Christmas she sent me a package with a few bits and pieces that I thought was sweet, and also with one of her worn t-shirts, that still smelled like her perfume.
Every now and then, Amanda would drop off the grid. She’d vanish for about ~a day, and I’d worry (since the area where she lived was supposed to be pretty unsafe), and I’d call her, and she would eventually answer and say that her phone was d**d, or her car’s battery had d**d, or she had to go bail her brother out of jail, or whatever. Ok, no big deal, it didn’t happen too often anyway.
Then, one time, she disappeared for a day. Then for another day. I tried calling her phone over and over again to no avail. Eventually, I tracked down what would be their landline, and called it. Her mother picked up (I had never spoken to her before but had heard her voice in the background). When I introduced myself, her mother handed the phone to one of Amanda’s friends, Danielle. She informed me that Amanda had overd**ed on sleeping pills and alcohol and was in a coma in the hospital. She told me she wasn’t likely to ever recover or wake up again.
She also informed me that Amanda was, in fact, not 15 but 20 years older than me. And that she was a homosexual man named Robert. And then a day or so later she called me back to tell me (s)he had passed away. We had been “together” for almost 2 years at that point.
Later, I managed to track down one of her (/his) ex-boyfriends, and I spoke to him for over 2 hours on the phone. He was very nice, and he more or less confirmed to me that about 95% of the things Amanda had told me about herself, her life and so on were, in fact, true. It was really just the name and the gender that was off.
Needless to say, this realization put certain things into perspective: Amanda’s almost furious c*****e in the defense of homosexuals, her repeated attempts to break up with me because “it’s never going to work out”, and her general feeling of hopelessness.
Image source: catfishthrowaway10
#38
Didn’t date (she was in america I live in the UK) but was texting a lass for a couple of months and She used pictures of a petite white girl, turns out she was an obese African american girl. Personality wise she was great and we got on well and I probably could have continued talking to her if he hadn’t done that. I guess it was a trust thing? Only worked it out because I watched an episode of Catfish and reverse searched her pictures for bants. Turns out the pictures were from a girl in her school the reverse search put them to her FB account with a different name to the one she used for me. I messaged the lass saying her pictures had been used by a classmate, got a response like 4 years later. God growing up in a rural area led you to do s**t like talk to strangers online… why wasn’t I just f**ping at night??
Image source: damp_s
#39
I was talking to a girl I met on Tinder and while I have on my profile that I’m not interested in being anyone’s third, she kept talking about the guy she was currently seeing and how hot he was and didn’t I want to f**k him with her? I eventually found her facebook and his and his was a real facebook while hers consisted of two really fake looking photos and no actual information. So it became apparent at that point it was the guy just trying to get bi girls to s*xt with him.
Image source: bubblesugarsocks
#40
I talked to this guy, Sean, for months, probably close to a year. Then poof, gone. It sucked but oh well.
Six months later start talking to another guy with the same unusual middle name. He turns out to be Seans ex-boyfriend and about 80% of the stuff I knew about Sean was actually about him. He broke up with Sean six months before and took his phone back and thats why he dissappeared.
TL:DR Met the real-life inspiration for the persona I was catfished with.
Image source: mn88mn
#41
My 72-year-old great aunt has a profile on Plenty of Fish posing as a 72-year-old male so she can scope out her competition.
Image source: shepdaddy, shurkin_son/Freepik (not the actual photo)
#42
There was a guy who was friending girls in my high school and sending creepy DMs. A buddy of mine decided to make a fake profile to f**k with him. It took less than 24 hours for ‘her’ to get a friend request. We spent about 10 minutes chatting before the guy asked for a n*p pic. We were going to call it off then, but I whipped out my n**ple and took a pic (I’m a dude, and a pretty hairy one at that). We sent the pic, and the dude started talking about how hot it was. We stopped after that, mostly because we were laughing too hard.
Image source: AsthmaticNinja
#43
I catfished people to get them to buy me Steam games. I have $600 worth of Steam games now.
Image source: megavoir, EyeEm/Freepik (not the actual photo)
#44
I discovered my friend was a catfish when he became someone else’s catfish-ee. I used to go on online message boards when I was in high school, and became friends with a user who said he was a 21-year-old cop from LA. We became gamer friends and played a lot of multiplayer games together.
A few years later, another user from the message board created an instant messenger account pretending to be a girl. They added a ton of people from the board, trying to troll them. For some reason, my friend fell for it and flirted pretty heavily with this ‘girl’ until the catfisher went back to the forum and spilled the beans. It was revealed that my friend, who should have been a now-25-year-old cop from LA, was actually a 20-year-old guy from Canada. He was only 16 when we first started chatting! I guess he was pretty embarrassed, because he went completely dark.
He disappeared from the servers, never popped online, never logged back into the forums. I was fooled for a good four years, but honestly, I didn’t care that much. He was a fun guy to play and chat with.
Image source: anonymous
#45
Not sure if this counts, but when I was eight, I created a FaceBook account as Oprah. I only knew who she was through Drake & Josh, so I figured she was just some inspirational woman. I would post cheesy quotes all day and play games (basically every white girl on FaceBook now). I somehow ended up with thousands of followers, and people flooding my inbox with messages of love and admiration. One girl even asked for an address to send brownies to. I received a few poems.
This was before catfishing was really a thing, remember, so it’s not too shocking that so many people fell for it. Hell, I myself fell for a fake Justin Bieber account at the same time, lol.
So, yeah. Eventually my mom found out and I was banned from using the computer (unless it was at school) until seventh grade.
#46
I unintentionally catfished a guy online *years* ago. He was young and lonely, and just desperately wanted to hang out with a girl in an online game, so I figured I’d try to cheer him up and approached him on a female character. My teenage mind didn’t realize that this was probably a bad idea at the time, because the guy became super clingy and even wanted a relationship at one point.
Weird thing is, he seemed to value having a female friend to talk to a lot and it actually seemed to help him to some extent, and he started talking to real girls more often. When it looked like he was “outgrowing” the person he thought I was (probably because I was trying to keep him in check with his romantic advances), he ended up reaching out to a girl in the same game and they really hit it off. I don’t know much of what happened after that, but I know that they got on really well.
So, me just trying to cheer a dude up in an awkward way snowballed and went in some really unpleasant directions before he finally realized he could talk to girls, did so, and found someone he liked. Still have no idea to this day if making him think he had a female friend on there helped, but it’s well in the past now (10+ years). Plus my intention was never to lead the guy on, I just wanted to try and make him feel better in what my at-the-time teenage mind thought would work. I hope that he’s doing well today and has found someone who makes him happy.
Image source: UPRC, Freepik (not the actual photo)
#47
It’d be an attempted catfishing in this case.
I got a Facebook friend request from some random girl I don’t know. I send a message asking “Sorry, I don’t think I know you. Have we met before?”. She responds saying something along the lines of “No, I just think you’re cute.” I was flattered, but didn’t respond past that point and declined the request because I have a girlfriend.
A couple months later, I’m unsure how the subject came up, but I told my girlfriend about this random girl who added me a while back. She responded with “Yeah that was me.” then proceeded to log into the account to prove it. She was testing my loyalty and I apparently passed.
Image source: anon, Drazen Zigic/Freepik (not the actual photo)
#48
Super honest answer from someone one who has catfished a number of guys throughout the years by pretending to be female.
I don’t do it with the intention of trolling or tricking or hurting anyone. The short answer is that I do it because I wish I was a girl and the internet is my only viable outlet for that. If I didn’t have that outlet I would f*****g explode.
When I’m online pretending it’s the only time in my life that the constant dissonance I feel goes away. Its the only time i feel comfortable in a lifetime of feeling uncomfortable in my body. I’m more confident, outspoken and more real than I ever am in real life. I need to do it.
It could also be an attention thing. As a guy in real life I’ve always been incredibly attention starved, from early elementary school to now, I’ve always felt invisible. As a girl, people actually want to talk to me and notice me. It’s a shame that it’s just online, but again, its my only option.
I should mention I don’t pretend to actually have relationships with anyone, I keep it to just friends and try to temper their expectations the best I can. I realize it’s deceitful, but it’s all I’ve got. This is one situation where I need to put myself first.
Image source: Cheekythrowaway221
#49
I was talking to this girl, initially from Twitter, who was easily a 9/10, one of the hottest girls I’ve ever seen. That was my first clue because the odds of her instantly going for an average guy like myself, whom she had never met, were very slim, especially as she had a fair few followers showing interest.
Eventually there were loads of inconsistencies in the stuff she told me about herself. She was way too clingy for someone I had never met. I just put that down to me being ‘different’ (i.e not reciprocating any feelings, never even telling her how hot she was etc.)
She wanted to meet with me but I decided against it after speaking to a friend who knew her in real life and he told me she had a long-term boyfriend (despite her not having much experience with guys, according to her.) I then started hearing rumours that she had two accounts on facebook and one of them – the one that added me – could be a fake/decoy etc. After that, I figured it was too much of a hassle to keep up with, there were so many signs to avoid her, so I cut off all contact.
Funnily enough, I read a blog post (link at the bottom) a few years later from the real girl who said that this girl had been impersonating her for the past ten years, had been leading guys on etc and went really far with her charade to the point where she seemed mentally unstable. So bullet dodged I guess.
**EDIT**: I figured I’ll say a bit more since this post is gaining traction. What I should clarify (I’ve done so in the replies but it’ll be more visible here) is that this girl was not just using someone else’s pictures, she was using the girl’s life. She pretended to be the exact same girl in the picture and used her first name, her friend’s names, her life story, everything. So, in essence, anyone would think they were talking to the real girl and could tell the real girl everything about her, even though they didn’t actually know her. She made fake facebooks of loads of her friends, used to post pictures (taking them off the real girl’s facebook) and tag the fake profiles of these friends in, leaving comments. Arguably, this was identity fraud more than catfishing but the blog post stated that the catfish apologised and acknowledged she was crazy, she just didn’t know how to stop and only did it all because she ‘enjoyed the fake life more than her own’. And she never did stop until that blog post came out.
Image source: SenorButtmunch
#50
Saw a guy (Red Fish) with a cute profile picture on grindr. Messaged him on the app, never expected a response. He replied really quickly, and was really eager to chat. He sent two pictures of his body, but I noticed that his hands were a lot bigger in one. I ignored it because my p***s was thinking, but then a random stranger (Catfish) messaged me on grindr claiming to be Red fish’s friend, how they were really close and go to the same college. I responded, politely, just making conversation.
Red Fish then messaged me later that night, asking how I found Catfish. I said he was alright, but I already knew the deal, so I just played along. I just wanted to see how long he could keep this up. I took a screenshot of the profile picture from Red fish’s account and google image searched it, and it was on a ton of tumblrs. After a few days of talking to the “both of them”, and Red Fish basically talking about Catfish the whole time, Red Fish’s account blocked me. So I messaged Catfish to say “hey what’s up with Red Fish, why did he block me”. Catfish says he knows nothing about that and says he’ll ask, then comes back and says Red Fish won’t tell him why. Right then I just reply “One fish two fish, red fish cat fish”. (Lame I know, but I really like Dr Suess).
Catfish then types one mother of a story of how he’s shocked that I would even think he would do that to someone, and that he would never because he’s been a victim of catfishing before, to the extent of someone stalking him and having to take out a restraining order (I don’t believe it for a second because Catfish is fat and not very attractive in general, sorry if I sound judgmental).
I then told him how I googled the profile picture, and he confessed to all of it. He kept making some excuse about how he was “tired of being on the sidelines” and he just wanted to “not be ignored”. The whole time he just kept making excuses for his behaviour, not once feeling like he had done something wrong.
Image source: anon
#51
My best friends father found out when my friend told him. He was in love, but “her” photos were too perfect so my friend got some proof together and broke the news to him. He took it well.
I was catfished on a dating site. She was way too hot to be talking to me and sure enough, “she” was a model in a relationship. Bummer.
Image source: StaciaMarine
#52
Dated this woman for a few months who claimed she was a doctor; I thought ‘cool’ and just went with it. I caught on by her continually talking about how she was going to buy a car (she had claimed she sold her car before moving), claiming she was going to buy me random things, claiming she was going to take me to Vegas, etc; and never delivering on anything. I had suspicions for a while but what finally provided evidence was looking her up in medical registries (she wasn’t listed anywhere). I confronted her and she kept trying to make lame excuses for anything I asked about; haven’t talked to her since.
Image source: timmaywi
#53
Well … I catfished a girl once. Does that count?
It was probably the most evil thing I’ve ever done. I was young at the time and extremely lonely, and a broke college student. She was sweet and loving and made me feel like my life was worth living. We met in a Napster chat room. Yeah, you read that right. We just started chatting and immediately hit it off. At the time, I’d never even used AIM or ICQ, or any IM program. I made an account just so I could keep chatting with her. She filled a massive hole in my life and made me feel that at least somebody cared. But to keep her interest, I had to invent this wealthy, interesting persona—who lived in Manhattan, NYC. Over time, the lies just kept getting ever more elaborate, and absurd. This went on for months! I still feel a huge amount of remorse about the whole episode to this day. Eventually I felt compelled to tell her the truth. (By that point, she had already figured it out on her own and was just waiting for me to fess up. Except, at the time, I didn’t know it.)
We used to chat in the mornings, before either of us had to go off to our respective days. One morning in, I want to say November/December 2001, I finally told her the truth about me, in complete detail. I even got a cam so she could see me, and hear me talk IRL, so she’d be able to see and hear and verify everything and know that I didn’t want to lie to her anymore about anything.
I think she realized how sorry I was and that I never meant to hurt her. She forgave me, almost immediately. Although, I know I still hurt her. We became even closer friends after I told her the truth and stayed that way for years. We started regularly chatting on cam. I even visited her, in Dec. 2002. Eventually we lost contact. Years later, we reconnected on Facebook. And then lost contact again, when I finally ditched Facebook.
Wherever you are, C.S.S., I hope you’re happy and well.
Image source: GaiusMagnus
#54
I had a friend back in highschool who was, told us this story a week after it happened at a graduation party.
So he had been chatting with this girl from Florida for 3 years. Decides to finally go and visit her for a week after our highschool graduation.
So he takes a plane down and she was going to pick him up at the airport. He arrives and instead is greeted by her mother who says her daughter is waiting for him back at the house. So he gets his bags and heads for the car with her. Notices a guy sitting in the backseat around his age, funny he didnt remember anything about her having a brother. he starts getting a little weirded out at this point.
They finally arrive at the house. No girl in sight. He gets angry and has the “mother” spill the beans. Turns out this lady was using her nieces pictures to talk with him. How he didnt realize sooner I dont know. Maybe they never talked on the phone or maybe her voice sounded young.
Anyways, he immediately left this lady and her son and spent the night at a hotel and had his parents pay for a plane ticket back home the next day.
Image source: ReasonOVERFaith
#55
I was in my early 20s at the time and met a girl on one of the chat boards… she was 19 or so and was attractive. She had several pictures available all of which were candid shots and none of the stereotypical “model-like” photos so I tended to believe it was legit.
After a while we started talking on the phone and it progressed into a casual relationship and inevitably led to many discussions about s*x and fantasies and even borderline phone s*x. The thing is she lived in the same city as me so after a month or so I was saying – hey we need to meet or this isn’t going anywhere.
She finally gives me her address and tells me to come over the next day. I show up and it is this VERY sketchy part of town. It is near the penitentiary and the house probably should have been condemned a few years prior. I start to realize this is a bad idea but I wanted to see it through, and there was a girl about the same age sitting out front of the house. She knew who I was and said she was the girl’s friend and that she would be back soon so we should just wait for her. This “other girl” was nice enough but was very overweight – she probably had an extra 40lbs on her frame and didn’t resemble the girl in the photos at all.
Well soon enough she gets me into the house and up into the bedroom and she is talking to me like she is my friend and knows me etc. etc. I think she was trying to make a move on me but the entire time I was in horror due to this house. I mean the place was disgusting – there was garbage everywhere, the bed was just a stained mattress with a partial sheet covering part of it. There was no place to sit aside from the floor, the place smelled like old ashtrays and in the middle of summer there was no AC so it was stuffy and hot.
However I still didn’t think it was the same girl because I just didn’t recognize the voice as being the same. Eventually it became clear the girl I was expecting wasn’t going to show, so I said goodbye and left. Then she contacted me on the phone later and had some sad excuses. She then went out of her way to tell me to not get her confused with “her friend” because their voices sound a lot alike – and then she made a little comment about her friend being overweight to which I responded like “yea she was a fattie” and she tried to brush it off but you could tell she was offended.
Eventually I figured things out and she denied it but we stopped talking. A few months goes by and she contacts me and says she is dating some guy I suppose in an attempt to make me jealous (I wasn’t). Then a month or so later she calls me to tell me she is pregnant and had all this drama – I just stopped answering her calls and her emails were just more excuses trying to explain why we never met. The whole thing was just odd and I can’t believe it took me so long to see the warning signs.
A few years later the house she was living in was torn down by the city and it is now an empty lot. I have no idea what ever happened to her.
Image source: Xynomite
#56
Well.. My stupid story. I met this girl on world of Warcraft back in vanilla days. We rped together. Quested. What not. Well. She gave her number. Her name was “Alex”. So off and on we talked. Then we kinda just stopped. But last year we started talking again.
Well I was interested of course.
So after a year of us kinda dating. She was sending pics of who I thought was her. Boy was I wrong. So me being a dude. I ask for n**es. She sends me pics of some random girl online. Go figure. I was like, okay she is nervous.
Well then I was scrolling on instagram and saw a picture that sent me. It’s some instagram famous girl. I felt f*****g stupid. I called her out. She fought it. I fought harder. She finally gave up. Her name wasn’t even Alex. Looked like a troll too. I was planning on paying for her to see me a few weeks from then.
So yeah. Jordan, if you read this. F**k you.
Image source: Loisteres
#57
It wasn’t me but my best friend who was being catfished, we were hanging out and he told my about this guy he had been talking to for a while and was now dating, he told me this long ridiculously convoluted story about his boyfriend’s life and then he told me that he had never listened to his voice, that gave me a pretty bad feeling.
After some Google image searching we discovered that my buddy’s boyfriend was fake, and so were about half a dozen of other people that we’re somehow related to him.
It was pretty crazy, the amount of detail that whoever was catfishing my friend put into the farce was astounding, good thing is that I got my friend out of there in time.
Image source: Banen
#58
Back in the MySpace days, I ended up getting close with a beautiful girl that I thought was known by mutual friends. We talked every day, all day and then she told me she had feelings. I would’ve dropped everything to be with this girl.
Then I get a message from a girl, who was the actual girl whose pictures had been stolen, holding proof that the person I’d been talking to was lying.
The actual girl was sweet and sympathetic but obviously wasn’t interested. It was tough at first because I felt a bond with her that didn’t actually exist.
Confronted the catfisher and she eventually owned up, sent real pictures and said that everything else was real, the feelings and whatnot. She wasn’t unattractive either, so if she’d have just been honest, who knows. But I couldn’t get past that and cut contact.
Image source: anon
#59
The first time, I was about 13-14 thinking that I met a 18 year old girl in an online game. She said she was from a major city near me and that made me excited, there was some dirty talk involved, as I said I was 18 as well, so I guess I was a catfish too in that sense.
Anyway I eventually came clean that I was younger than I said and the person cut off contact entirely with me, so at least they weren’t a pedophile. I remember telling them I was 14 and they freaked the f**k out and said what we were doing wasn’t right and all that jazz.
The photos I saw of ‘her’ were only professional model photos that were being uploaded to s photobucket account and there was only like 7 photos. But being young I didn’t clue in.
But I DID clue in to this girl who (same game, probably a year after the first) I met and we started talking for a while and I asked for a photo and she told me to Google “cute brunette girl” and that she was the girl in the fourth photo. And I went “yeah bulllllls**iiiiiiiit”
But the other time I was actually catfished…I was catfished pretty hard. I was about 16, met a girl in that game, and I should mention that at this stage in my life a friend and I would purposefully find people in that game who were looking to sext, and bring them somewhere private. We would do a little sext foreplay and then suddenly say things like “AND THEN I TAKE A BIG S**T ON YOUR FACE AND LICK IT OFF” and we both thought it was funny.
Anyway. I only did this one night, and most people would leave immediately and mute me. But one person actually just started laughing after I did it and said I was funny and then we just started talking. We talked for f*****g HOURS that night. And then we started talking for hours a week…and then hours a day…everyday…for an entire summer. And then school started and she quit the game so what did I do? I gave her my email address and we would send thousands of long emails about what we did that day. It even got to the point where I opened up an account on some like messaging app on my phone so we could text all day and not get slammed with international charges. I think the app was eBuddy? Kinda like MSN but for phones.
Anyway we had been talking for about a year and a half and I had shown her photos of myself, but she never sent me anything in return despite me asking.
And I remember thinking while reading her emails “Wow, this girl is a stereotypical white girl. Jesus.”
She talked about how she was from Florida, and how she was nervous for prom, and her dad was loaded, and all things like that. My friend (the one with the sext “prank” if you would call it that. He was an online friend too, still is) kept trying to tell me that she’s probably a pedophile and all that jazz. But I didn’t want to believe him, and kept talking to her more and more. I even let her GOOGLE MAP my address. She didn’t even ask, I just told her because after talking to someone everyday for hours at a time as a teenager, you start to open up to people.
I finally got to see a photo of her, one, at her prom, and she was all dressed up and looked so happy. She wasn’t unrealistically pretty, she kinda had a pointy chin, but she was finally a REAL person. She had a face so I finally could picture who I was talking. I was ecstatic that she was a normal looking person that I can confidently say I thought she was absolutely beautiful – even with a pointy chin.
It was just nice to have someone I could really open up to and be myself – because nobody in the “real world” new that I played these types of games or that I had online friends. It was like I was living a double life and I felt that if my highschool knew what I was doing at night and who I was talking to all the time, I would have had the s**t bullied out of me.
Anyway, now we’ve been talking for like 2 years and were both starting college and super pumped. It was like 4am and we had been talking for hours. And then I realized…she said she was a year younger than me. How could she be starting college at the same time as me? She should only be going into grade 12, not college!
And that’s when it clicked that Sarah wasn’t who she said she was. I messaged her saying something like “oh my god. Sam (my friend) was right. You are a pe**phile.” and she tried saying she wasnt. But i said how ive only seen one photo of her, how shes a stereotypical teenage girl to the point it seems fake, and how she was ALWAYS available to chat/email at any time of the day. And then I blocked her before she had time to explain.
And I swear to GOD not TEN MINUTES after I blocked her I get a phone call from a Florida number and I think “oh s**t. Oh f*****g s**t.” So I pick it up and there’s this silence at first, THEN CREEPY A*S LAUGHTER ON THE OTHER END. I HUNG UP AND LOCKED MYSELF IN MY ROOM.
This person knew where I lived and all this intimate stuff about me and my family and now they’re calling me to harrass me. I legitimately felt like I had f****d up and my family and I were in serious danger.
I debated telling my parents everything but decided against it.
About a year or so later I send an email to her (I think her email was like sarahrocksxoxoxo. Pretty stereotypical.) And I just said “so why did you do it?”
About three weeks later I get an email back from her explaining EVERYTHING. She said it started off as a white lie because she didn’t think we would have continued to talk, but it just started snkwballing on her because she really did enjoy talking to me but she was just scared to own up to the truth.
She was not a pe**phile, her dad was loaded, and she really was from Florida. The girl in the photo was her friend from school. She was just a year younger than she said she was, so 2 years younger than me. She also was not the girl in the photo. I made her send me photos of her holding up a variety of messages on a piece of paper while posing in specific ways, so I would KNOW it was legit.
We caught up for a little after that, but haven’t talked in about two years now. Sometimes I wonder what she’s up to. But I think me talking to her brings uncomfortable memories of her past.
And I learned my lesson after that. I don’t f**k with people online anymore – or tell any personal stories of mine to strangers online because that would just be STUPID. Right?
Image source: NotVeryGoodAtStuff
#60
Never been catfished myself (as far as I’m aware), but I’ve catfished a lot of people; more than I can count.
To give it some backstory, I was a freshman in high school with no hobbies or social life. So, naturally, I did what any socially anxious kid with no idea how to get a life would do – I started talking to people. Good idea. I did it on Omegle. Bad idea. I managed to meet a few good conversational partners in between the “asl”, but I was always too anxious to tell them about my real life as a loser high schooler with no real talents or skills, so I made up a fake persona. Instead of being me, I was… pretty much the same person, except five years older, a college student, and with redeeming qualities. And genderswapped, because people are more willing to talk to a female college student than to a male high schooler. I kept the fraud going for most of freshman year and into my late sophomore year of high school. I met a lot of people – too many to count – and kept in contact with several of them to this day. I haven’t told any of them about my deception for several reasons:
1. As far as I’m aware, none of them have figured it out. I’ve gotten sloppy on some things, but overall I’ve been able to cover my tracks. I’ve never sent out a picture of “me”. The closest I’ve gotten to is a pre-recorded voice message. I’ve usually came up with excuses as to explain any conflicts (For example: “Your voice is pretty deep for a woman.” “It’s because of my Welsh accent.”)
2. I’m afraid that if I tell any of the people whom I have deceived, it’ll mentally scar them for life and they’ll be afraid to trust anyone ever again. I know I’m afraid to trust people (karmic payback, if you will). After all, if your friend for 3-4 years whom you have poured your innermost feelings into has just told you that she has lied about pretty much every detail about her personal life – name, age, gender, occupation – has been nothing short of a mirage. It’s nothing short of traumatic.
3. I’m afraid to lose them. Most of the people I’ve deceived are genuinely good people, and that’s why I hate myself every day for what I’ve done. But the thing is, I’m afraid that if I tell them about my duplicity, they will never want to speak to me again. Honestly, I wouldn’t be surprised or blame them, but like I said earlier, I’m socially anxious (I believe I have avoidant personality disorder, but I’ve never consulted a professional so take this with a grain of salt) and have no social life. 4 of my 5 best friends are people I’ve lied to about even the most basic aspects of my life. I’ve been at a phase of my life where I’ve had no friends and no one to confide in, and it is nothing short of misery and hell.
Well, that’s my story. This is the first time in the four year span I’ve been a catfish that I have ever told a soul, or even done as little as writing it down. It feels good to get this off my chest, even if it is just grammatically incorrect rambling in an AskReddit thread.
Image source: Catfish_Alternate
#61
She pulled up to the date 200 lbs heavier than she claimed. Like had difficulty getting out of her car. We watched a movie and then when I said goodnight, she said it was unfair for her to have driven an hour for a date and not let her stay at my place.
I’m not good at saying no.
Image source: 458MAG
#62
I joined an online pregnancy support forum for women who were all due to give birth in the same month. We got catfished more than once. Women would steal ultrasound pictures and pass them off as their own, and then eventually they would suffer a “loss” and revel in all the sympathy they received. It was not just done with pregnancy, but also with some of the groups related to post-pregnancy, early childhood forums. It got to the point where anyone who lost a child during pregnancy or afterwards was suspected of faking it until a thorough search made it seem likely that pictures were not stolen from someone else.
Image source: gwenever
#63
I watched a girl in high school catfish her “best friend” into thinking she was dating some 22 year-old struggling father.
She had found someone’s senior photos on some photography website in California and found the kid on FB, so she had access to all these photos of some kid who had zero idea. She would consistently text and message her friend as that guy pretty much every day. Her excuse was that she was concerned for her friend’s online dating and figured she was safer thinking she was dating someone. I have no idea what happened with that because that girl and I stopped talking after she began to f**k with my life.
I can’t imagine that they are friends anymore, because her friend was really into their fake relationship. Apparently they were already exchanging “I love you”s. Her friend was a bigger girl who had really bad self esteem issues, so I honestly can’t imagine her wanting anything to do with that girl after she found out… if she ever found out.
Image source: CrackPipeQueen
#64
On tinder while on a holiday in a new city. He lied about his age and ethnicity. He said he was white, he only had one blurry photo. He was super nice when we were talking, we met up and he was indian. I dont care alot about ethnicity, he was cool when we were talking so I still went with it, just kinda confused as to why he would lie about it.
We were driving around and the whole time he was so d**n creepy. He asked if I was alone visiting the city, what time I’m leaving, even my room nunber, etc. I got creeped out and told him to bring me back to the hotel.
Instead he pulled up into an abandoned parking lot and his hand started inching up my thigh and I had a breakdown and told him I want to go back to the hotel RIGHT NOW, I got aggressive and after a bit of me almost-crying and kinda yelling because I was so scared, he finally started driving me back.
Days later a guy messaged me on instagram, its him. I looked through his photos and there’s no way this guy was 19. I bought it up and he said no, he’s 25. He just shaved his beard before meeting me and he looked way younger. I told him he’s f*****g creepy and blocked him. I was 18, ugh.
Image source: anon
#65
I kinda did back in the mid-2000’s. I was talking to this gorgeous woman (shoulda been my first clue). She looked like a dreamboat. She mentioned early on she was an orphan and traveling through Africa. We messaged each other back for several weeks. Then she sent me this long email about how she was stranded in Africa and her money/passport was stolen and she needed money wired to her post haste. Then everything dawned on me: the gorgeous woman, the poor English, the tropical background in her pictures, etc. I was being played. I sent her a “f**k off” message and that was it for me.
Image source: casino_night
#66
I’ve been catfished by a friend. Just messaged me out the blue pretending to be a friend of a friend, we got chatting, seemed nice enough, then quickly escalated into trying to get me to send nudes.
Alarm bells started ringing when details kept changing, really bloody obvious details such as where he lived. I eventually worked out what was going on when the daft a**e was messaging me when we were sat at the same table in the pub.
Really weird, and really stupid. If he really was that desperate to get a pic of my d**k he could have just asked. That would have infinitely less weird than cooking up a whole fake persona.
Image source: jakegils
#67
When I was 10, I went on Neopets and pretended to be a 25-year-old woman with three adopted kids. Am I the original catfish?
Image source: neverbuythesun
#68
My first job out of college, I worked for an advertising/production company. Basically, if someone wrote a book, we would help them leverage that into a greater media presence. We might produce a TV show, a radio show, or anything like that. One of our clients was trying to create a s*x advice show, and he wanted some out-there callers. In an effort to get real people to call in, my boss decided we should create accounts on various swinger websites. My boss didn’t want to be bothered getting people to call in. Since I was on the lowest rung, my boss gave me a bunch of scantily clad pictures of herself, and told me to pretend to be her on these websites to try to get people to call into our show.
Image source: spilgrim16
#69
An Aussie girl catfished the HELL outta me. (We’re both women.) Met her in a Yahoo chatroom in 1999 (?) … somewhere around then. She claimed to work in tech for Radio Shack and surf frequently outside of work.
Cool.
I lived in Georgia at the time, so we’re all the way across the world from one another. At any rate, she’d actually buy calling cards to call me after we hit it off online. That in and of itself HAD to be $$$.
She tells me she has “friends in Tennessee” which, in case you’re not in the US, is the state above where I was. She said she was gonna visit them soon. Oh, cool! Swing by and see me!
In the meantime, we’d send one another scanned pics (lol). Mine were of me, of course, and though I wasn’t a 10, I was aiiight. Hers? Same deal. Not some catalog-model cutout, but definitely cute. I distinctly remember one in which she was on a couch with a dog. She had sandy-blonde hair, light eyes, a tan/surfer-skin look, and had her arms around fit, folded legs. Very cute pose. Totally normal 20-year-old look. The other pics she sent were definitely of the same girl, but weren’t as clear … mostly pics of the girl at parties/gatherings where many people were in attendance. Come to think, it didn’t appear the girl knew she was being photographed. (Omfg, shudder.)
We continue to talk each night and she keeps dropping these hints that I only picked up in hindsight:
“Do you like me for my looks or my personality?”
“What if I were a lot fatter in real life?”
“What if it turned out I was Asian?” (This became a running joke because I’m half-Asian and confided that I wasn’t attracted to Asian women because they all remind me of my Mom and sisters. Whatever.)
I thought these were all superficiality “tests” and answered them accordingly: “Oh, I like you for YOU. We’ve been talking for awhile now so none of it would matter.”
From there, her “I’ll be visiting my TN friends in 3 months” ended up “Turns out, I’ll be there in two weeks.” Then it’s, “I changed my flight to a week.”
Omg. I was so f****n’ stoked. I splurged and booked a waterfront hotel on the southern GA coast and had a romantic (bow chicka-wow wow) weekend planned. My Aussie surfer-girl was gonna come and stay with me! Her accent! Her cute face/figure! Her everything!
Ugh.
The day comes.
She shows up … calls my phone … says, “I’m outside your house, I think.” I’m so nervous I’m about to PUKE, but I pull it together. I’m dressed to k**l, my friends, and my hair is curled to perfection. Light makeup, natural look, straight back, chin up, b***s out, it’s showtime.
She’s parking in the street for some reason, so I usher her toward my driveway. I can’t see into the car (sunlight), but it’s the green rented Camry she told me she’d “hired.” As soon as she turns to head into my driveway, I get dizzy.
She’s enormous and … Asian. Now listen: I have NO issues with either of those things. Be whatever, but at least be honest. Dude. F****n’ hell. Now I really WAS sick, but my brain kept telling me, “This isn’t it. Just hang on. This is a joke.”I *literally* was hoping/praying that this was a practical joke … that the REAL Julia was gonna come around the corner going, “Just kiddiiiiing! I brought a friend to fool you!” But as soon as the girl got out, she said, “Well? Give us a hug!”
And it was that voice. The one from the phone. The one all along. This was it.
I couldn’t hide my disdain. I tried, but I just couldn’t. I stood there as she hugged me and tried not to cry. What the F**K was I gonna do?
The next few hours are a daze. She brought her stuff into my room as I played a PC game, unable to look at her. When she sat on my bed, it made this awful creak and I wanted to knock her off it. (Sorry, but this felt like a complete stranger and a sociopath.) My doorbell rang and I told her to stay put. I knew it was my best friend Jon. When I opened the door, I’ll never forget his smile and arms out in a “She’s here! Hug me! She made it!” (He was a big, gay, happy guy.) I fell into his arms and started crying. He was like, “Whoa whoa, shhhhhh.” He shut the door behind me and helped me clean my face up as I (through tears) told him she was a fraud … that I didn’t know WHO the f**k was in my room.
Long story boring, she ended up going to a party with me (I didn’t even tell her about the hotel on Tybee Island). She pretty much ditched me after I told her I wasn’t attracted to her and felt lied to. (She actually got mad at ME for that … said I wasn’t much to look at myself. LoL. Ok. Good. Then don’t look.) She hooked up with some guys … SOME guys, yes … and told me the next day that her friends in TN got into a car accident … one was in a coma, so she had to go asap.
Omfg, yes. Gtfo my apartment.
We never spoke again. “SurferFlip.” The Flip was for Filipino. I was supposed to know that. People, right?
Image source: WaffleHouseNeedsWiFi
#70
Sort of.
They were just *much* younger pictures of them. Still them, just in much better shape. I chose to just be cool about it, enjoy our drinks, and then excused myself. It was just a Tinder date, no pressure or anything.
Image source: JohnyUtah_
#71
I got kinda catfished once. I was in the military at the time and had a profile on match.com or plentyoffish. This pretty girl and I start talking and hit it off. All her pictures were from the neck line up so that should have been a flag. But her profile description had her listed as athletic/average so I didn’t pay much mind. I was like 150 pounds of muscle at the time in the military so I was quite fit.
We met at a bowling alley for our date and she was huge. At least 300+ pounds. Very beautiful face, but was quite obese. I’m a pretty nice guy so I went along with the date and did have an okay time. It got kinda weird and cringy by the end of the evening though. I was open and honest with her that I felt a little duped and that in order for a relationship to work there has to be a mutual attraction; and that I don’t have one with her. In the parking lot she asked for a hug and like wouldn’t let go of me in a “cute way.” When I’d try pulling away she would squeeze me in tigher and nuzzle her head under my chin. She kept demanding that I set another time and date for us to meet before she would let me go. It was getting pretty awkward. She hit me up a few more times demanding a second date and accusing me of fat shaming. I like thicc girls, but I’m just not attracted to someone that large. She was scamming guys saying that she was average body type probably hoping some Marine would be desperate enough to f**k her.
Image source: wanderinhebrew
#72
I was being groomed by person. I was 11 and extremely depressed/s******l, and the feedback i got when older man saw me naked was the only positive feedback i got from adults during that time. person a would tell me that if i lied and told people i was 18, even more people would talk to me and praise me. So i did catfish people, it was partially my fault since i knew it was wrong, but i was also very desperate and being coached by the “love of my life”.
Image source: chihinhin
#73
I had a friend I met when I moved out of state to be with a girl I was dating, who did this. He would play MapleStory, and he’d created a whole persona using one of his highschool friend’s pics. I think he named her Kaori or something like that. It was a japanese girl, and he had a ton of friends online who knew him by this name.
I thought it was a joke, and a bit funny, if not taking things a bit too far, but then I was talking to a coworker about it, and she told me it was incredibly creepy and not ok at all. Especially since he was using pics of a girl he actually knew who lived in the same area. So I told him he should cut it out, and stop being a creep.
He got defensive about it, and said it was all in good fun. Eventually I stopped talking to him for other reasons, but I’m sure he’s still doing it. Pretty pathetic in retrospect. Last I heard he was on a trip to Japan.
Image source: anon
#74
I got catfished all the time in high school by people on imvu, myspace, etc. I was like 13 or 14 and very naive/lonely. I always figured it out before getting too far in and I got REALLY good at spotting fakes a mile away. The only ones that ever really tricked me were the ones who were just pretending to be someone else because they weren’t comfortable in their own skin. There was no romantic or s**ual end game they just wanted attention that they felt they could only get from pretending to be these super attractive people. It was pitiful yes but I can see why a lot of them did it. You have to be pretty naive in 2018 to fall for this kinda stuff as there are so many resources and easily spotted red flags that i’m not sure why anyone would even try.
Image source: hunnerr
#75
I did the catfishing. When I was 13-14, the internet was fresh and new.
My friend and I went on a prison penpal website, found guys and talked dirty to them as 13 year old girls. Really we were 13 year old boys.
About a week or so would go by and we would switch it by saying ‘actually I’m a guy and you’re gay and we told the police lolz’.
So I don’t really know why we did that but it k**led an afternoon or so I guess.
Image source: Cockwombles
#76
I sorta catfished my first boyfriend. I was 13 and in love with him. I live in Wisconsin and he lived in the UP just across the border in Iron Mountain, Michigan. I forgot his name, James maybe? Adam? Idk.
Anyway, we met in some chatroom and were instantly talking on the phone for hours. Like, hours at a time saying nothing just hanging out. It felt wonderful. He would send me pictures and I didn’t have a way to send him anything as I didn’t have a cellphone or a webcam. I had to go to my grandpa’s house to use his webcam but it was horrible and legit barely worked ever.
I never described myself to him but when he would ask, I wouldn’t inform him that I was fat. I didn’t want to get hurt and he was so nice about everything else, I didn’t want to ruin that. At the fragile age and what I was going through at the time, I couldn’t handle that.
Eventually, my grandpa upgraded his webcam and I let my boyfriend know. He had one already and was waiting for me in MSN messenger when I logged in. Literally two seconds after I turned the cam on, he logged off and blocked me. He always called me so I didn’t have his number and I never heard from him again.
Image source: danetrain05
#77
I didn’t catfish people in the sense where I led them on for months, if not more and got into a “relationship” with them. But I did put up a fake profile on a few dating sites, posing as a hot guy. I just wanted to see what it was like to be attractive and to see if it was me beyond my lack of looks, that garnered few responses or if I could be the same dude, but “hot” and get attention.
It should come as no surprise, it worked. Being a hot dude, but making lame jokes, being somewhat sexual in my approach, not having my life together, and just not having much beyond being attractive still had people jumping through hoops for me.
I don’t regret it necessarily, it was a fun, if not deceitful experience. But I do feel bad for the people I lied to, I do understand it was sketchy and a s*****g thing to do.
Image source: Crissxfire
#78
My ex-girlfriend tried catfishing me to test me. It took me about 30 seconds of looking through the profile before I realized that the name was her name backwards. The craziest thing is that she really thought it would work. That girl was bonkers.
Image source: lincunguns
#79
About 10 years ago I started chatting with a guy in one of the Yahoo chatrooms. We had only been chatting for a few weeks when suddenly he disappeared offline for about 2 weeks. I was so worried but then his “sister” contacted me and told me he’d been in a terrible motorcycle accident. He was in ICU, but “she” kept in touch with me to let me know how he was. After about a month, he got back online and we talked every day. We traded pics and eventually I got on webcam to say hi. He couldn’t do the same because of some issues with his computer. We talked like this for nearly 3 years. It was around this time that I realized his “sister” was actually him. It didn’t matter though. I was besotted with him and I mean totally head over heels. Then one day he just disappeared. His profile was deleted, all his accounts were gone and I have not heard a single word from him since. I still have absolutely no idea who he/she really was and it messed up for a long time. I still think about at times. I would do anything to know the truth.
Image source: Mistress_Auri
#80
I was probably 19. Very bad with women, very into roleplaying on things called MUXes (think a roleplay-centric, all text MMO).
Met a girl on one of the MUXes, she was a senior in high school. I had just graduated, and we started hanging out online, which went to “let’s call and talk about the plots we’re running/in” which became “I love you” in a couple of weeks.
There was a lot of fun. I scanned my junk, she scanned hers, we sent it to each other. We’d sit on the phone and laugh about stuff until like 3AM, or whenever her dad would come in and tell her to hang up.
She’s the first girl I ever had phone s*x with. I still get a weird tingle when I see girls in videos using the bathtub to m**turbate. This is all before camera phones, so all I had to go on was my imagination.
Well, calls start slowing down. Then the letters stopped getting responded to. Eventually she just stopped talking to me altogether.
About then I started putting the pieces together. How her pictures were always like…some girl in a crowd. Or some girl’s school photos. Or how all my mail came back “RETURN TO SENDER” until she gave me a new, completely different address. The signs were all there, I was just willfully ignoring them.
I think there probably was some feelings on her end. My theory is that she was a lot younger than she was claiming, and I was talking a lot of nonsense about her moving to my state so we could be together. I think she got scared, or her parents found out she was talking to an older man, and she cut contact.
The romance seemed two-directional…I liked making her laugh and making silly plans with her, she seemed to genuinely enjoy my humor and company (but, again, she was telling me she was 17, and how hard is it to NOT laugh at 17 sometimes?).
So, if your name is Rashni, or if you pretended to be a girl named Rashni in like 2000, no hard feelings. Thanks for laying the groundwork and making my current relationship (which has a temporary long-distance aspect) a lot easier. And whenever I think about our imaginary son, Spaghetti Bucket, I smile and wish you well.
Image source: JakeRidesAgain
#81
He claimed to be a U.S. Marine, yet had an extravagant amount of free time to play MMORPGs.
Someone here on Reddit offered to run his name through the USMC database, and he didn’t exist. (Well, someone by his name did, but they had been discharged in 1958 or something, whereas this guy claimed to be 21.)
Good old stolen valor.
Image source: radiumcandy
#82
So when I was a freshman in high school, I was big into neopets and had a clique I ran with on the boards and we chatted off site as well. Two of those people were Shelby and Adam, same age as myself more or less, and dating. Adam had a sister, Kelsey I think? Who was also in the clique.
Well it came to pass, as internet relationships do, that Shelby and Adam broke up, and Adam and I started talking/”dating”. Shelby gave us her blessing. We shared pics, he was typical emo looking kid which 14 year old me loved. We talked on the phone only once or twice, I was very shy about it so didn’t mind the lack of voice communication. At one point he sent me a YouTube video of him and his friends, there wasn’t much talking and it was all pretty muffled…and it sounded like they were all speaking German.
Adam and I broke up, and it was after that the big reveal came- there was no Adam, Kelsey had made him up and been posing as him all along. I asked Shelby about it, and apparently she had found out when they had broken up too but Kelsey had made her promise not to tell. Gee, thanks.
tl;dr neopets is for good clean fun, not dating.
Image source: heybrudder
#83
Ok so I actually had this happen to be recently. I was using a dating app and started talking to this girl. She had 5 photos on there, 2 of her and 3 group photos. Nothing surprising for a girl on a dating site. We agreed to grab coffee and I arrived early and sat outside and this girl walks up to me and says hello. Introduced herself as the girl I was meeting but did not look ANYTHING like her.
Something was familiar about her but I couldn’t go and take out my phone to check so I went ahead. We ordered coffee and I thought about making a break for it right there when she went and put sugar in it but decided to stay. Start talking and we pick up on the conversations we were having online but after about half a cup I had enough and it wasn’t going anywhere so I made up some BS excuse and left.
Back in my car I open up my phone to look at her profile again and figure out why she looked familiar. She was in the photos. She was one of the girls in the group, but she was using her friend as the main photo… very weird. Sad part was is that she wasn’t terrible looking (boring though) but not as good looking as her friend. Girl was probably all kinds of crazy or something.
Image source: anon
#84
My husband was catfished before he and I started dating. He had met a girl on myspace who was very hot and he agreed to meet up with her at the mall one day. I guess he described his car or something because she met him out in the parking lot and hopped in the truck and introduced herself and he thought it was a joke.
She either used VERY flattering angles or else the pictures that she’d posted weren’t even her. It’s important to understand that my husband doesn’t expect women to be solid ten swimsuit models. I mean if you’re clean and mostly fit he’ll probably consider you to be moderately attractive. But for this girl he couldn’t find one redeeming quality physically. She was grotesque and apparently really weird and quite stupid as well.
Still, my husband being who he is, he didn’t want to hurt her feelings. He walked around the mall with her for about 30 minutes before he texted a friend to call him and then made up some frantic story about his friend’s car being stolen and needing to go pick him up. He apologized profusely but blocked her myspace the second he got home and never tried to date anyone online again. I teased him for awhile (we were friends back then) and told him she might end up being really nice if he gave her a chance but he wasn’t interested. He still feels bad for being “shallow” but eh… I snagged him awhile later so I’m not too worried about it.
Image source: thethirdriver
#85
I had three female room mates when I was in my mid 20’s I’m male 47 now. These women were far from attractive and extremely petty/bitter/nasty women. I wished I’d have known that before I moved in, but I have a whole reddit story about that year of hell. I will write it down someday.
Anyway, this was during the AOL IM thing and they would hold the phone hostage for hours while they “chatted with hot guys”
One was 25 and looked 60. I swear to god she just had this aged face and the voice of a 60 year old that smoked marlboros her whole life.
The second was just plain ugly, with the personality to match She was also very b****y and mean. She moved in after I did and was not on lease and did not pay rent, which is another story.
The third was very attractive….in high school. then she was about 24 and gained about 100 pounds, but still thought she was attractive to guys.
They spent all day on a chat site with these guys they met. They talked them into meeting them at a local bar for a drink. They were excited and I was genuinely happy for them. I asked if they needed me to go in case they were not what they said they were. The nasty room mate screamed at me saying I don’t know what I’m talking about and I wouldn’t understand because I was a loser. “Well, ok, I’m going out, have fun”, I said. I went to take a shower.
About 45 minutes later they returned home dejected. I asked what was wrong and the nasty one actually apologized to me. She went on to say that the pics they showed were not them. In fact, one was really old, the other really ugly, and the third really fat.
It was their prefect match, yet they couldn’t face that reality. They allowed these guys to buy them a drink and then left. These guys drove 3 hours to meet them and they left them, their perfect matches, at the bar.
I offered my sympathy, and left before I burst out laughing.
Image source: Luder714
#86
I was 15ish and started talking to a guy from another small town near by. This is back in the ICQ days…
My mom had to go there for business so I thought I would tag along to see my friend and meet this cute guy.
Chatting with my friend about going to meet him and asked if she would go with me… She was down until I told her his name. She started laughing so hard and grabbed one of her year books.
He was the grossest looking dude ever. A baby neck beard. Turns out he had sent me a photo of one of their classmates. My friend said he doesn’t bathe and smells awful and was a total a*****e.
We logged onto my ICQ and called him out on it. He harassed me online from several accounts for months. He also was threatening my friend for ruining things with me.
Good times. Good times.
Image source: ErinbutnotTHATone
#87
Between 1997 and 2000 it had happened to me several times. In the 90s it was more because not a lot of people had uploaded pics of themselves, which was sorta understandable, so you really relied more on them describing themselves. “What actress do you look like?” etc… In 2000 one woman sent me a pic of her in San Diego. Long hair and sunglasses, not a lot of details. The pic looked like it was about 5 years old, but whatever. I went to meet her and it turns out that pic was more like 15 years old since she was closer to 45 than 30 (as she claimed).
Image source: IndioFromChino
#88
I remember this girl in warcraft where there was something fishy about her story.
she was the leader of our guild, she lived with her sister in law in Mauritius …. we actually used to speak on vent and skype, and only ever saw a couple of pictures of her. she was/is adorably cute, but they were very very private because of past issues..
the person i had alarm bells ringing was the sister in law. supposably a model on the island, she got in trouble when someone posted video of her doing naughty things online. both were married but used to fool around with each other – one night they accidentally forgot to hang up the skype call and i heard it all. was quite amusing.
the sister though, i was never sure. she had a very “husky” voice and her story used to change all the time. we didnt talk much outside of guild stuff so alarm bells were ringing but i never had concrete proof.
anyways, the guild fell apart because of time zones. she was only really a friend but i often wonder with one of the ex guildies who still plays intermittently how much was real and how much was b******t.
Image source: tmofee
#89
I did it once. He had twice my age but seemed like 10yo and God knows where he lived. I lied about my age (I said I was 18, but I was 13), lied about my school (should’ve been at college with 18, but I wasn’t even at high school yet) and only told him everything 2 years after the first “chat”. He never spoke to me again. Thanks to God (?).
Image source: Dontknowwho8
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