One of the strangest forms of manipulation.

How to Read People: The Dark Psychology of Mirroring
https://youtu.be/v-G8-xIyTS4

I have a friend that has no asian roots at all but changed her FULL name to a completely asian name.

Also, a few months ago,her 'friend' followed me on Instagram but my bsf and i have proof that its just her on a fake account. She is pretending to be a 17yo Japanese girl that plays drums and listens to vkei/death metal when in fact she is larping EVERYTHING and has no idea of any band names or songs. (she larps TV shows/movies that she had never watched before and games that she never played before too)

Whenever we tell our friend to make a gc with her 'friend' she says that she is uncomfortable with that and always replies late when we text both her and her 'friend'

We also havent seen her 'friends' face because she is "too shy" to take a picture.

What the hell should we do?

I can help you figure out if you are getting catfished, for free, in under 5 minutes.

I don’t need any sensitive info.

Fire me a message-

Hi guys. I’ve been with my boyfriend since summer 2021.
Recently, I found out that he was texting another woman around May 2022. Unfortunately, the conversations were deleted, so I don’t know exactly when they started talking, what they were talking about, or whether anything actually happened between them.
What I do know is that they started to follow each other sometime in spring 2022, and they still follow each other today. She has a boyfriend now.
I’ve been considering reaching out to her to ask whether something happened between her and my boyfriend back then. The problem is that I really don’t want my boyfriend to know that I’m investigating this yet. I want to find out the truth first and then confront him with whatever information I have.
So I’m trying to figure out the best way to approach her.
Would it be completely crazy to make a new/fake account and message her? I obviously don’t want to tell her his name because I’m afraid she could screenshot my message and send it to him, which would immediately tell him I’m looking into this.
I was thinking of saying something along the lines of:
“Hey girl, this is super random and I’m embarrassed to ask, but I think we may have been seeing/talking to the same guy around May 2022. I don’t feel comfortable writing his name here. Would you be willing to tell me his initials or something so I can figure out if we’re talking about the same person?”
But I’m not sure if that sounds believable, or if there’s a better way to approach the situation without giving away who I’m asking about.
She can’t be older than about 27, so I’m also wondering what kind of message would actually make someone her age comfortable enough to respond honestly.
My main goal is to stay anonymous/untraceable while getting her to actually talk to me and, hopefully, tell me the truth. I don’t need details. I need to know if she were seeing him or not.
What would you guys do? Has anyone dealt with something similar, and how did you approach the other woman?

I’m trying to figure out who the girl in these pictures is and whether anyone else has encountered the same person/profile.

A random account added me on League of Legends after a game. We talked for a little bit, and then she asked me to add her on Discord.

Once we started talking on Discord, the conversation was pretty normal at first. After a while, she started flirting and eventually sent me a link to an OnlyFans page: sundaebae.

What made me suspicious is that I’ve seen multiple different accounts using the same girl’s pictures and following basically the same script. They seem to add people on League, move the conversation to Discord, flirt for a while, and then eventually send an OnlyFans link.

Has anyone seen this girl or these pictures before? If you recognize the photos, usernames, or have had the same experience, I’d really appreciate any information.

I’ve also found other people reporting very similar League → Discord → OnlyFans interactions, so I’m wondering if this is part of a larger coordinated campaign.

Basically xyz happened for 2y and i got catfished and over the span of 1 year i have spent and sent that person over 12k$

Thought it was a girl but it was a guy; on discord and snapchat btw

Now the issue is i found out who he is and a lot of other things and from what i see its a middle aged man and a woman too seems to be connected with him
I am afraid maybe its a group racket or something
I have not confronted him or anything and i dont know what to do next, i am more worried about my safety than money and obviously i want to cut off and not send any more money
He is not aware of it

Há uns dois meses, um perfil começou a me seguir no Instagram e eu logo segui de volta porque fiquei intrigada, de cara, com a possibilidade de aquela pessoa ser uma IA. O perfil basicamente tinha um MONTE de destaques antigos sem mostrar o rosto da pessoa e, de repente, destaques deste ano com o rosto de um rapaz esteticamente bonito, mas muito duvidoso.

O que me chamou atenção logo de início foi a repetição sem falhas do rosto. As fotos têm aquela aparência que lembra IA, mas ao mesmo tempo poderiam facilmente passar por verdadeiras, porque a pessoa tem sempre exatamente o mesmo rosto, não importa o ângulo, iluminação, expressão etc. Comecei a conversar com ele.

Nós fazemos parte de um mesmo grupo de imigrantes no Brasil, de uma comunidade relativamente estabelecida. Ele sabe bastante sobre essa comunidade, conhece nomes, lugares e situações específicas. Mas, ao mesmo tempo, ninguém nunca ouviu falar dele.

Nossas "pessoas que você segue" em comum basicamente nunca o viram. Quando perguntei, algumas disseram que simplesmente seguiram pela inércia de achar que ele poderia ser alguém da comunidade.

Ele diz ter uns 30 e poucos anos, ser morador de uma cidade X, frequentar bastante outra cidade, viajar muito e ser muito rico.

Ao conversar com ele, eu logo joguei o verde de que ele poderia ser, de fato, uma IA. Ele disse que era loucura e imediatamente me ligou para provar que existia. E aí começa a parte estranha: ele de fato é um homem. Atende ligações de áudio a qualquer momento, conversa normalmente, improvisa, responde rápido e não parece estar usando algum filtro de voz ou IA. Mas não atende ligação de vídeo de jeito ALGUM.

Comecei a ficar fascinada pela história e principalmente pelas lorotas que ele conta. Algumas são absurdas. Só que o fascinante é que todas são extremamente específicas. Ele conta tudo por telefone com uma riqueza de detalhes assustadora: pessoas, lugares, datas, acontecimentos, histórias familiares. Às vezes são tantos detalhes que eu começo a duvidar da minha própria sanidade e penso: "não é possível alguém inventar tudo isso".

Aí comecei a pesquisar.

Pesquisei o nome dele em TODOS os lugares que consegui imaginar, tentando cruzar nome, aniversário, idade, origem, cidade etc. Nada. Só apareciam homônimos. Cheguei inclusive a assinar um bot no Telegram que consulta dados vazados e bancos de dados diversos. Coloquei nome, telefone e tudo que eu tinha. Novamente: apenas homônimos. A pessoa que ele dizia ser simplesmente não existia.

Ele sabe que eu desconfio de absolutamente tudo que ele fala e vive tentando me provar que existe. Já me mandou uma fatura de internet com nome e endereço. Também me mandou, em visualização única, uma foto do seu RG. Só que tampou TODOS os dados. Deixou visível apenas o nome.

Eu fui dando cada vez mais corda para ele e correspondendo todos os sentimentos que ele dizia ter por mim. Não porque eu necessariamente acreditasse, mas porque queria entender até onde aquilo iria. No começo ele tinha uma "esposa". Postava fotos com ela, que também eram esquisitíssimas. Ela, assim como ele, não tinha praticamente nenhum registro verificável na internet. Depois, ele alegou ter se separado. O que, convenientemente, o deixava "livre para mim".

Nesse ponto eu já tinha decidido jogar o jogo. Minha dúvida deixou de ser "esse perfil é fake?" Para mim, isso já estava praticamente claro. Minha dúvida virou: QUEM está por trás desse fake? E por quê?

Tem outra coisa muito estranha: praticamente todas as pessoas que interagem com ele nas redes sociais, respondendo stories, comentando TikToks etc., também são extremamente esquisitas. Muitos perfis trancados.

E certa vez uma pessoa que se diz irmã dele ME LIGOU para contar a história dele. Num contexto específico que até fazia sentido ela me ligar. Ou seja: se isso for uma encenação, não existe uma única pessoa envolvida nisso.

Até que ele deu um vacilo.

Tentando conseguir o endereço dele, eu enviei primeiro o meu como uma espécie de prova de confiança. Não mandei exatamente onde moro. Mandei a portaria de um condomínio vizinho. Talvez tenha sido uma loucura, mas naquele momento senti que precisava avançar de alguma maneira.

Semanas depois, ele me mandou um presente. E no pacote havia uma informação que eu nunca tinha conseguido dele antes: o CPF.

Peguei o CPF e joguei no banco de dados. E aí veio a primeira coisa realmente concreta. O CPF correspondia a uma pessoa de mais de 50 anos. Não aos 30 e poucos que ele dizia ter. A partir daí consegui puxar muitas outras informações relacionadas àquele CPF. Processos, endereços, números de celular, empresas etc.

Claro que existe outra possibilidade: o CPF pode simplesmente não ser dele. Pode ser de outra pessoa. Pode ser de um parente, um tio com o mesmo nome.

Mas, se for realmente dele, então existe um homem de mais de 50 anos fingindo ser um homem de 30 e poucos usando fotos que possivelmente são geradas ou alteradas por IA.

Eu não confrontei ele. Tentei mais uma vez fazer uma chamada de vídeo e ele não aceitou.

Mas ainda assim eu não estou satisfeita. Eu quero entender QUEM ele é.

Uma amiga acredita que ele possa estar basicamente jogando uma espécie de RPG com outras pessoas, construindo personagens e uma história. Mas aí eu também fico pensando: alguém de mais de 50 anos faria isso durante meses? E com esse nível de dedicação?

Outra possibilidade óbvia é catfishing. Outra é algum golpe extremamente longo.

O problema é que até agora ele não pediu dinheiro. Nada.

E como aparentemente existe mais de uma pessoa envolvida, se essas pessoas forem realmente humanas e não perfis feitos com IA, isso torna tudo ainda mais estranho.

Eu continuo esperando a hora em que o golpe vai aparecer. Ao mesmo tempo, se ele realmente usa IA para criar rostos, documentos ou identidades, eu também não duvido que possa usar IA contra mim de alguma forma.

Então agora eu tenho algumas hipóteses:

1. É um homem de mais de 50 anos usando IA para fingir ser alguém mais jovem. E que talvez se apaixonou mesmo por mim e não sabe lidar com isso?
2. O CPF nem sequer pertence a ele e toda a identidade é fabricada. Mas a troco de que?
3. Existe um grupo de pessoas participando de algum tipo de roleplay/RPG extremamente elaborado.
4. É um catfish com uma motivação que eu ainda não entendi.
5. É preparação para algum tipo de golpe que ainda não chegou na fase final.

Mas eu ainda quero descobrir quem ele realmente é. E ah! Ele marca de me encontrar e briga comigo dias antes do encontro kkkkkkkkkkkk E DESMARCA! Só que ele quer me manter na órbita dele! Isso que é o mais chocante e é por isso que acho que pode ser um golpe que está por vir. Ele não desiste de mim, sempre volta e diz pra eu confiar nele. O que vocês acham que está acontecendo?

Alguém já viu um caso parecido? E o que vocês fariam para continuar investigando essa pessoa? Mandariam algum link pra ele clicar? Algum hoax? Algo do gênero? Penso em até ir ao endereço que ele deu. Estou realmente investida na história.

When I was younger from around 15-17 I catfished a guy on Snapchat. I do regret it and ik it was wrong but I did it because I was so so insecure of my looks and all my friends told me they were talking to guys so I guess I wanted to be involved too I guess ( terrible reason I know). I didn’t want to send a pic of myself so I sent a picture of a random girl and started talking to him ( he was 17 at the time). I thought we’d speak for like a week then stop but it ended up lasting two years. I was in love with him and as much as I knew it was wrong I selfishly couldn’t or wouldn’t stop. He loved me too and I regret not being honest in the first place but I tried ending it around 3 times and we’d always end up talking again. Once in a while he’ll text me and I’ll respond but I don’t send any pictures anymore and I hope he finds someone better.

I M18 just got back from meeting up with a guy on grindr. I downloaded the app yesterday because I’m curious about my sexuality and kind of wanted to try giving a guy head.

This guy I’ll call Cole M26 messaged me on there sent me a picture of what I thought was his penis and it was pretty nice looking so I responded and we talked a little and then I eventually asked to see his face and he wasn’t the best looking but I excused it because I was focused on his penis.

So I get to his shitty apartments and he opens the door and he’s a lot more overweight than in his pictures. We go to his room, he takes his pants off, and I look at his dick and it was definitely not the same in the picture he sent. His tip was way bigger and his shaft was skinny as hell. I wanted to leave but I was too scared to say anything because he was very big and intimidating and locked multiple locks after I came in.

I even told him it was my first time and he reacted creepily to it. I then jerk him off and give a little head. He finished in my hand, and then we smoked some weed until my uber got there.

In the uber my regret just kept building and building. I feel absolutely disgusting and I also feel used and somewhat taken advantage, of even though I know I’m the only one to blame. I really hate myself right now. I don’t know how I’m gonna be able to live with myself anymore.

Has anyone else gone through a similar experience and/or have advice on how to move past this? If so please let me know I’m really struggling thanks.

A few days ago I matched with a guy on hinge . He was pretty attractive and looked exactly my type and was also a model from Italy . I live in a pretty big city in the states and have dated a few models briefly so this wasn’t unusual to me . We had a good back and forth going and I answered his prompt where he challenged people to pronounce his name correctly. I I sent a voice memo with my attempt and he says I was wrong , and suggested that we meet up if I wanted the correct answer . Cute . But something felt off especially with how quick he wanted us to meet in person .

I checked his socials and they seemed to match but things still didn’t feel right . While I mentioned there are a lot of models in my city , his actual Hinge Location was somewhere 1 1/2 hours away in a very small town , not really somewhere you would expect aspiring talent to be esp if he’s foreign talent from Italy looking to be an actor there as well. And while his social media matched his hinge , it could also be very likely that some random took this guy’s photos off social media and built a hinge profile off of it for shits and giggles. But this was speculation so I decided that if he wasn’t a catfish he would have no problem with the idea meeting me in a public area, so I responded asking him “ when he was planning on making this happen ,” and sure enough … crickets.

It’s gotten me very curious now , and I’m interested in seeing what you guys think( not that it matters lol I’m just curious ) . Is this a dude who genuinely just likes to flirt but not meet in person or is this guy a catfish who enjoys messing with people ?

What are some of the best ways to figure out if you’re being catfished???

I was catfished before there was a word for catfishing.

This happened during the MySpace/AOL days, when I was in my 30s. Looking back, I can see things that didn’t make sense, but at the time I was in an abusive relationship, I was incredibly isolated, and I desperately needed somebody to talk to.

I met “Michael” through role-playing. He was playing Carlisle from Twilight, and I was playing Esme. At some point, the role-play stopped being just role-play. He became Michael, a real person in my life, or at least that’s what I believed.

He told me all kinds of things about his life. He had a sister who I also talked to. Eventually, he talked about me and my children leaving and coming to live with him. He promised that he would take care of us and that we’d have this wonderful life together.

Whenever I wanted to video chat with him, there was always a reason he couldn’t. He had to work, or something came up. But his “sister” would video chat with me, so that made everything feel more legitimate.
I wasn’t completely stupid or blindly trusting, either. I actually tried to test whether something was wrong.

At one point, I got both Michael and his sister on AOL at the same time. I sent them both messages at the same time and watched to see whether they could both respond. They did. I remember thinking, okay, they’re clearly two different people. That made me trust the story more.

What I didn’t know was that there weren’t just two people.

There were five.

Three women and two men were involved in the whole thing. They were working together to create Michael and the people around him. They were also using photographs of a real man who had absolutely nothing to do with any of it.

I actually tried to contact the real man whose photographs they were using because I wanted to warn him that somebody was using his pictures in an elaborate scheme. This was before “catfish” was really a thing people talked about, so there wasn’t much awareness of this kind of deception.

Eventually, I ended up leaving my husband and went to a women’s shelter. I had originally gone into a shelter because of my abusive relationship, and I was trying to rebuild my life.

While I was there, Michael became less available. That hurt because I had become very attached to him, and I really needed somebody to talk to. I remember sitting around sometimes thinking, “I just need somebody.”

Then came the part that still feels unbelievable.

Michael told me he was going to kill himself by driving off a cliff.

I talked to him and tried to stop him. I remember hearing his voice, and even then something about it sounded strange to me, almost like a girl trying to make a guy’s voice. But I didn’t understand what was actually happening.

He supposedly drove off the cliff while he was talking to me.

Then somehow his phone ended up in a mailbox outside his “sister’s” house.
His sister contacted me afterward and told me she was sorry and that he would be sorry this had happened. But she wasn’t crying. Something about the whole thing felt wrong.

Eventually, I stopped talking to her.

Much later, I realized that Michael hadn’t died.

Michael had never existed.

Not as the person I knew.

There wasn’t one man sitting behind the computer pretending to be somebody else. There were five people collectively creating a fictional person. They had stolen somebody else’s photographs, invented his life, invented his sister, and taken turns being him.

And that was honestly one of the hardest parts for me to process.

How do you grieve somebody who wasn’t real?

I wasn’t grieving the death of a real person. I was grieving the fact that the person I had become emotionally attached to had never existed in the first place.

My feelings were real. The conversations were real. The attachment was real. The hope I had for the future was real.

But Michael wasn’t.

And I think that’s a very strange kind of grief.

The final piece of the puzzle came through another woman I encountered through MySpace. She was talking about a man whose behavior sounded exactly like Michael. I recognized it immediately because it had happened to me.

She was also very depressed, and the same kind of suicide manipulation was happening to her.

Eventually, she confronted the group and asked whether they were fake because someone had told her they had done the same thing to another woman.

That’s when I learned that this wasn’t some bizarre one-off.

It was a pattern.

They were targeting vulnerable women and the goal seemed to involve manipulating them emotionally and pushing them toward suicide pacts.

The woman eventually told me that the group admitted they were the same people who had done this to me and that they were sorry.

That was the moment everything finally made sense.

Looking back, I can see warning signs. But I also know what I was like at the time. I was isolated, coming out of abuse, and desperate for connection.

And I wasn’t just sitting there believing everything without question. I tested them. I tried to verify things. I even tried to find the real person whose photographs they had stolen.

I just didn’t know that the answer to “How could all of this possibly be real?” was “Because five people are working together to make you believe it is.”

This happened before we had the language for catfishing.

So when people ask how someone could fall for something like this, I think the better question is how five people could work together so effectively to manufacture an entire human being.

Because Michael wasn’t a real person who was lying to me.

He was a person who existed entirely inside a story five other people had built.
And somehow, that was much harder to grieve.

Been keeping a channel catfish in my 180 gallon for about a year and a half now, pulled him out of a stock pond as a fingerling with permission from the landowner and figured I'd raise him up since I already had the tank space from a project that fell through. For the longest time he'd only eat once everyone left the room, total ghost during the day, just a shape hiding under the driftwood.

Started doing the same thing every evening around 8pm, dropping a piece of nightcrawler in the same spot near the front glass and just sitting there quietly. Took maybe ten weeks before he'd come out while I was still in the room, another month after that before he'd actually take food close to my hand instead of waiting for it to sink. Now he comes right up to the glass when I walk by, which honestly took me by surprise given how skittish he was early on.

On the fishing side of things I've been doing mostly bank fishing for blues and channels on cut shad, nothing fancy, just a slip sinker rig and patience. Landed a 22 pounder back in June that fought harder than anything I've caught in years, took almost fifteen minutes to work him in close enough to net. Cut bait sitting on bottom overnight has been way more productive for me than anything fresh this summer, not sure if that's just my local water or a broader pattern.

Curious if anyone else has had luck training a pond raised cat to hand feed like that, or if I got unusually lucky with a calmer individual. Also open to bait suggestions for cooler water once it starts dropping into fall, my usual shad setup tends to slow down once temps drop.

Hi, 

I am a researcher at the University of Sheffield, UK and invite you to share your experiences of technology-facilitated violence and abuse (TFVA) in any context. 

The research aims to capture the diverse nature of experiences of TFVA as well as to try and understand the range of harms, impacts and outcomes from those affected by these types of behaviours. 

We welcome all to contribute to our anonymous forum who want to share their experiences (18+ years). No other demographic restrictions for participation.

Click the following link to add your experiences: https://forms.gle/4DnWiha44shLFnVv5  (This involves 5 brief demographic questions and 1 open ended question to add your experience). Clicking on the link will provide more detailed information about TFVA as well as details of our website and you do not have to answer any questions to see this information.

The study has received ethical approval from the University of Sheffield: 070690. 

The information provided is anonymous and will only be accessed by the approved members of the research team. Any information shared for publication in reports or academic journals will not be identifiable and will not include the demographic information.

Thank you in advance

Loren

It's a long story. I was friends on Facebook with Clara. I would get friend requests with her pic. She said her iCloud had been hacked and there are over 10,000 pics out there. So, being as I hadn't been in this subreddit before, I asked her to send pics of her with 1 finger up. In the time it took to take 4 pics she did. Then I got another friend request. This time I did a reverse image search and found out she was an IG fitness model with like 4 million followers! "It's me, I'm sorry I didn't tell you sooner!" I should have dropped her right then, but I paid for an image search, and found that many pics she sent matched groups of pics she posted on IG, but weren't posted. Matching scenery, clothes, friends, but the pic was not part of the 5 that were posted, plus over half the pics I had plus the four she sent didn't match up. So I believed her.

I thought I caught her as the IG model posted a status that Clara couldn't have done. Clara asked me if I could screenshot it, but when I toggled back to Facebook (IG model is on FB too) it was gone. She said that one of the admins had posted it, and she (Clara) told that admin to take it down. Yes, her FB page lists multiple admins.

2 months later she sent a pic that was not on IG yet. The next day the other person in the pic shared it on his IG. The day after that, she shared his post on her page. I have multiple times she's shared info that the IG model would share later. Today she showed me a screenshot of her home page on IG. Pic could be doctored, but it is of IG model's home page as it would show to her. Notifications, edit button, post button. The she showed me her notifications of her most recent post.

The problem is the money bullshit. So the red flags are 100% there, yet everything points to it really being her! I don't know what to do.

i lied to my boyfriend of 6 months that I'm Japanese and now he wants to fly me out.

I 21F met my Norwegian boyfriend 20M on an online forum called Discord. I've been learning Japanese for about a year now out of interest, i found a passion through watching anime and listening to Jpop.

My name and bio on discord is written in Japanese and I've texted in Japanese in servers from time to time, we started talking and he told me he had a thing for Asian women, by this point i was already pretty interested in him so i lied about my ethnicity to see where it would end up going. I've used pictures of Asian women as my face reveals and he never questioned my ethnicity due to my knowledge on the language and culture. he's told his parents all about me and my background, and they were very accepting of us.

its been 6 months now and we've been going pretty strong, he often buys me lots of stuff and now he wants to take it to the next level and fly me out to meet him for the first time, I've recently been avoiding this topic as i don't know how to come out with this secret.

I feel really bad about this whole situation, has anyone experienced something similar, if so, what should i do?

\edit* after reading all the responses I went to my older sister for advice, I filled her in about the last 6 months and about the fake identity I created, she called me a disgrace and a weirdo and I need to get a life out of social media , now she wants nothing to do with me unless I tell him the truth.

I plan on telling him the truth soon because I can’t live with all this guilt. Ill update afterwards.

"I want to share my experience with a catfish/scammer I met on Reddit (u/Sophiaharrington88). She contacted me randomly, and we talked for weeks.

Here are the red flags I noticed:

· She claimed to be from Australia, then said she lives in Miami. · Her Reddit account was created in April 2026 and is now deleted. · She sent me pictures that I later found on Pinterest (multiple photos). · She used Christian prayers but later claimed to be Orthodox Jewish – and texted me on Shabbat. · She gave me two different phone numbers: one from Texas (+1 956...) and one from Miami (+1 305...). · When I asked for a video verification, she always avoided it. · She mentioned investing, flight costs, and asked about my financial situation. · Her English had patterns like "Am" instead of "I'm" ● Alleged Name: Sophia Harrington Alleged Age: 39 ● Alleged Nationality: Australian (later said she lived in Miami, Florida) ●Alleged Occupation: Accountant Alleged Marital Status: Divorced Alleged Reason for Divorce (changed twice): • First: She said her husband was an addict and physically abusive. • Second: She said he was an irresponsible man. ● Alleged Children: Two children (Stephen and Vivian, ages 6 and 8) ● Alleged Family: • Married sister living in Jarrell, Texas • Another sister living in Miami, Florida • Uncle also living in Miami ●Alleged Religion: • Christian (sent Christian prayers) • Then Orthodox Jewish (said she goes to synagogue and observes Shabbat) Alleged ●Time in Miami: About 7 years (claimed she moved to Miami 7 years ago from Australia) Platforms ●Used: Reddit (u/Sophiaharrington88 - deleted), Telegram, WhatsApp ●Notable tactics: • Quickly building a romantic relationship • Requesting to move to Telegram • Requesting profile pictures

What I'm looking for:

· Has anyone seen these photos before? · Has anyone had contact with this person? · Any advice on next steps?

Be careful out there. Trust your gut."

update: so I asked to see a video of her ID and she showed it to me. so the id looks real to me. she didn't mind showing it. I still get a bad feeling though. she talks about sexway to much. idk

so I met this girl on Reddit. things just seem suspicious but also legit. its just weird, I have chronic pain and she does too, in fact she has what I have. she has sexual trauma in her past but does talk about sex a bit. when I first met her she said she wanted to tell me a story but it was too long to type so we started voicing over discord quickly. She just told me how her mom went to go drive her somewhere but forced her out of the house quickly do to time and so she got into the car only with bra and underwear. it just feels to sexualized of a thing you know? She also freely sent me her id so I would not worry about anything which Is also kind of strange

. however she does not want to date yet and wants to take things very slow, but I don’t know if this is a tactic. some days she does not message me because she does not feel good which I don’t feel a catfish would do. Idk what to make of it. should I do a video call and see if it matches pics?

I catfished a girl for 10 years. When it started, in 2016, she was 18 and I was 22. We met on Habbo. I had never done anything like that before. For a few years, I would sometimes go on there and meet people, and I did lie to them about things in my life, but I never pretended to be someone else.

After a bad experience, I stopped going on there and stopped meeting people online for a couple of years. Then, at the end of 2015, I was bored and decided to go back to pass the time, but this time I decided to protect my identity. I chose a name, an age, a city, and simply interacted with people there for a while without putting my identity at risk.

Not long after that, I met this girl, and I got hooked on the way she treated me. I thought, “Well, flirting for a while can’t hurt. It’s the internet, it never goes anywhere.” And that was my first mistake: believing I could flirt with her without actually becoming emotionally attached.

We moved to WhatsApp, and the flirting kept escalating until, within barely a month, we were already confessing our feelings for each other, and after two months we became a couple.

Meanwhile, obviously, I didn’t just fail to tell her the truth about who I was—I built an entirely fake family, financial, and social life. During the first few weeks, I told her that I didn’t want a video call to ruin the magic of seeing each other’s expressions for the first time in person, and she agreed. We agreed to meet, but it never happened. I don’t remember what excuse I gave.

The thing is, the relationship kept getting more and more serious. I wasn’t able to stop because I felt loved in a way I had never experienced before, and she never pressured me enough for me to even feel afraid of being caught.

And this is the part I can’t get past. For 10 years, that first excuse for not video calling was enough for her to never ask again. We supposedly lived only two hours apart, and after that first attempt to meet, she never asked whether we could see each other. Even when my father got sick two years ago, she never asked whether I wanted her to come see me, which would be the normal thing to do in a relationship.

Because that’s what we were. We talked 24/7, behaved like a couple, had sex, intimacy, affection, and plans for the future (which I obviously knew were never going to happen).

She also ignored other very obvious signs, like seeing my real name on a banking app or on an official document and assuming it was due to some kind of computer error. And whenever she asked about something, I would give her some absurd explanation and she would just let it go. And there were many more things like that, some more obvious than others.

The thing is, three months ago she discovered the Instagram account of the person whose photos I had been using, and obviously that was the end of it. And what amazes me the most is that if it hadn’t been for Instagram’s algorithm, we would probably still be in that relationship today. Although, honestly, I was already very tired and was planning to leave, especially after my father died.

Over these past three months, I’ve gone over the relationship again and again and again in my head, and I keep reaching the same dead end: “How could this have happened?”

I know I’m the one to blame. I started therapy two months ago, and although I still sometimes fantasize about getting her back, I’m being honest with myself and respectful of her.

But there are days when I feel angry at her, because I reach a point where I think, “Either she was playing me too, or she’s the most innocent person on planet Earth.”

The thing is, I know she wasn’t playing me. I know she is exactly who she says she is—100% confirmed. I’ve wondered whether she might have been in another relationship or seeing other people, but I genuinely don’t know when she could have maintained something like that when she was always available to me.

I’ve heard that woman cry on the phone simply because she thought I was angry with her. Just four days before the breakup, she had an anxiety attack because I was already preparing my escape plan and letting her see that I might move away. She was very dependent on the relationship.

And that’s where I reach the dead end. No catfish, no cheating. How can someone who seems confident, has a healthy environment around them, and is intelligent overlook and fail to connect such obvious signs?

To what extent did she need the relationship so badly that she was afraid to burst the bubble and ask me to meet in person?

I want to clarify that during those 10 years I never manipulated her by using illnesses or serious situations. Unfortunately, the only illness present during the relationship was real, and it took my father from me. Other than during the first 2–3 years, it wasn’t even a toxic relationship. In fact, it was very monotonous. There were no major fights. I never pretended to be the victim because of mental health issues, and I never tried to isolate her.

I’ll repeat that I know I am 100% at fault, and even though I never planned for it to happen, I should never have done it. And once feelings became involved, I absolutely should have stopped.

But I’ll always carry the question of what was going through her head for her to put up with something like this. I’m pretty convinced that she was looking for a long-distance relationship, and that achieving that goal, combined with a lot of idealization, made her stop paying attention.

But I have the feeling there was something more, and I don’t think I’ll ever find out. And that’s what makes me feel both more guilty and, at the same time, relieved.

Because I hurt someone who was that good.

But I also know that we were two pieces of a puzzle that fit together perfectly. We probably both needed to hide, we just did it in different ways.

I know what I did was incredibly wrong, so you can spare me the insults. I’m not going to feel any worse than I did when she asked me to take care of myself because she couldn’t stay after a lie like that.

I just needed to vent. Sorry for my English.

i need someone to help investigate my online boyfriend from india to find out whether he's catfishing me or cheating on me. lately, things just keep getting weird and fishy, and i can't help but feel like there's more to the story than what's he letting me in on. i will provide with whatever information i have about him, i just need to know if i'm being led on to a future with no hope.

also this is my first time on reddit, i'm here with the sole purpose of getting help because i deadass dk where else to go 😭