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.

Jux_ , krlyukav/Freepik (not the actual photo) Report

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 d**d two years later though but still, good times.

anon , bristekjegor/Freepik (not the actual photo) Report

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.

Lydious , Freepik (not the actual photo) Report

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.

the-crotch , Freepik (not the actual photo) Report

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.

ligamentary , EyeEm/Freepik (not the actual photo) Report

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.

jbuckeye10 , Freepik (not the actual photo) Report

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.

Hellguin , freepic.diller/Freepik (not the actual photo) Report

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.

theonlydidymus , pvproductions/Freepik (not the actual photo) Report

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.

michonne_impossible , yannamelissa/Freepik (not the actual photo) Report

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.

Arhia , pvproductions/Freepik (not the actual photo) Report

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).

doodledoo1 , pixel-shot.com/Freepik (not the actual photo) Report

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.

anon , Freepik (not the actual photo) Report

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.

r2bee2 , drobotdean/Freepik (not the actual photo) Report

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.

AddieBaddie , EyeEm/Freepik (not the actual photo) Report

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…

5arge , aldiozzz/Freepik (not the actual photo) Report

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.

GreenAdler17 , prostooleh/Freepik (not the actual photo) Report

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.

anon , lifestock/Freepik (not the actual photo) Report

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.

IFeelFineIFeelFine , Freepik (not the actual photo) Report

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.

mjolnir76 , rawpixel.com/Freepik (not the actual photo) Report

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.

anon , Freepik (not the actual photo) Report

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 k**led 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.

starmoon1 , Freepik (not the actual photo) Report

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.

anon , wavebreakmedia_micro/Freepik (not the actual photo) Report

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.

T_w_e_a_k , shurkin_son/Freepik (not the actual photo) Report

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.

January11_2015_1214a , vproductions/Freepik (not the actual photo) Report

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.

FearTheWeird , Freepik (not the actual photo) Report

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.

NumberOneNoodleFan27 , EyeEm/Freepik (not the actual photo) Report

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.

ramya92 , ASphotofamily/Freepik (not the actual photo) Report

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.

mookey57 , EyeEm/Freepik (not the actual photo) Report

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.

kattenbief , benzoix/Freepik (not the actual photo) Report

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.

RIPKellys , wirestock_creators/Freepik (not the actual photo) Report

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.

catfishthrowaway10 Report

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.

anon , drobotdean/ Freepik (not the actual photo) Report

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.

mn88mn Report

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.

chapstickdyke , fxquadro/Freepik (not the actual photo) Report

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.

Little_Bear716 Report

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.

axe_me_anything , Frolopiaton Palm/Freepik (not the actual photo) Report

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??

damp_s Report

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.

bubblesugarsocks Report

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.

AsthmaticNinja Report

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.

anonymous Report

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…

chudrozi , karlyukav/Freepik (not the actual photo) Report

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.

DunbarsPhoneNumber Report

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.

Cheekythrowaway221 Report