These days, it’s pretty common to make friends with people online whom you’ve never met. Maybe you both joined the same Facebook group, or maybe you play the same online games. These friendships tend to be generally harmless, and sometimes they can even lead to great real-life connections. Other times… not so much.

Someone on Reddit recently asked people to share horror stories of meeting up with online friends… and boy, did people have some stuff to share!

1. Who is he/she?

Not a horror story, but definitely weird. At 13 years old, I went to a show where my male online friend was also supposed to go. Not a big show and I was with my father, don’t worry.

We were supposed to meet at one of the entrances, but he never showed up. When I asked him about it later, he said he must have been at the wrong entrance.

Over time we stopped talking for no reason really. A few years later, one of our mutual online friend told me she learned that the guy in question was actually a girl. I don’t care about the gender, the thing is that she wasn’t the one on any of the pictures she sent to us and our other friends, and her name wasn’t her real name, she totally invented another identity.

The worst part is that another of our friend even told us she got pregnant from “him”. I don’t know if she asked her to fake a pregnancy, or if it was her own idea, but that was really weird. Wonder what other thing she lied to us about.

2. Well, that took a turn!

We were friends online for years. We’d meet up every so often and when we started families we’d meet up and take the kids to the zoos or whatever. She wanted us to go on a cruise together, with our husbands and kids.

I made the comment towards the effect of “We can’t afford that”, and she went nuts. We shouldn’t have had kids if we can’t afford them, we shouldn’t have more children, our life sucks blah blah blah because I didn’t want to go on a goddamn cruise with her and her bratty ass kid.

Sounds like a nightmare.

3. This doesn’t sound like a very chill set up…

I don’t know if it’s a horror story, but it how I ended up where I live now. I played WoW for years with a pretty regular group, got to know them offline and at one point two of them, a couple, invited me to move across the country.

At the time I didn’t have anything tying me to where I was, so I packed up and moved. Got out here, moved in with my friends and everything seemed okay. My buddy was a long haul driver so he was always gone for days at a time. His girl would try to set me up multiple times with two of her friends at the same time (one in Minnesota).

I ended up having a hard time finding work for a while, finally got a job though and was putting some money away while helping watch their kids. Out of nowhere one day my buddy accuses me of trying to fool around with his girl. Nothing had ever happened, but I had noticed her spending more and more time in my room when he wasn’t there. I knew his history and his previous relationship had ended after she cheated with a friend of his.

He wouldn’t listen, so I got kicked out without any warning and they stole about $1k worth of my stuff and later moved.

Ultimately it all worked out for me. Got a good job here, wife, kids and then cut out the friend and the girl completely.

4. Learn your lessons…

I was friends with a bunch of people I met through an online game. After about 2 years, I decided to meet 2 of them. The 2 I was meeting were a long distance couple, one from one country and the other from mine. They had met many times and had spent 2 weeks together prior to meeting with me. We met in the city, said hi and hugged and did some touristy stuff, took their pictures etc etc.

But throughout the whole time, they weren’t really talking to me. At first, I put it down to anxiety as I was nervous too. But even after lunch, they were only talking to each other and I felt left out. I even took a sneaky video of them talking to each other and sent it a friend, who agreed it was odd.

When it was time for me to leave, I told them I had to go but I had a nice time, and they continued to chat to each other. I said it again but no response, so I started to walk away, until one of them said “Oh byeee”

I was really hurt. It was like they didn’t want me to be with them. I had spent a lot of money getting down, especially since at the time I didn’t have a job. When I got back, I stopped talking to them. The friend who I sent the video to sent a message to them asking why they were ignoring me, and they tried to turn it on me saying that I was the quiet one and that I was being rude to them, especially “leaving without saying goodbye”. I blocked them all on the game.

A few months go bye and one of them finds my social media and tries to reconnect. Starts off well, and then goes back to blaming me. Haven’t met anyone from the internet since.

5. Absolutely tragic

He and I were part of the same forum many, many years ago. He was dealing with his issues and I was dealing with mine. I think we both went there to escape, where people wouldn’t judge. Also, because we were bored.

I’m not quite sure when we got properly talking, I think it’s when he told a terrible joke about kipper ties. We used to share everything with each other, over MSN. I’d give him advice about his love life and he’d listen to all my fuck ups.

It took quite a few fuck ups before we eventually met up. I think I already knew we were in love but seeing him in person really cemented it. We decided to give it a go, even though we lived 300 miles away from each other.

We had a lot of ups and downs. I was distant, he lived with his ex girlfriend for a bit even though she didn’t have a job and couldn’t afford her half of the rent. The same ex gf who I’d given him advice on, who he had nicknamed trouble and liked to claim she was pregnant every so often.

We got over that, along with many other things, and finally moved in with each other. I thought our issues were gonna be solved when there was no distance between us. Ends up, we were just very different people who wanted very different things and the distance wasn’t gonna change that. We broke up after three and a half years together.

None of that’s the horror story. Not the way he treated me, not the fact he probably cheated on me, not that I wasn’t a priority and used to cry myself to sleep.

About a year and a half after breaking up, he gets back in touch and we talk like it was in the beginning, when we were friends. After a few weeks, he asked if I want to get back together. I said no. I told him that he’d broken my heart again.

The next day, I got a phone call from his work because I was still his emergency contact asking me if I knew where he was because he hasn’t turned up. The police got in touch too. The last phone call that day was from his mum, to let me know that he’d killed himself.

6. The booger shrine…

I’ve been active in numerous online communities over the years, and have been fortunate enough to hang out with many of the friends I’ve made there in person. There’s only been one incident I couldn’t cope with.

He picked me up at the airport, which was very nice of him, and as soon as we got into the car, he started picking his nose.

There’s a lot that goes through your mind when you hop into a vehicle with someone you’ve never been alone with and you immediately catch them two knuckles deep in their rostrum. I looked quickly away so that he wouldn’t know I caught him and be embarrassed, if he was just trying to sneak one out before I noticed. If he did notice, he didn’t seem embarrassed, so I relaxed a little. I guessed maybe he was just so confident about himself and our friendship that he’d ascended past caring if I saw him take care of a quick boog.

Fine, sure.

When I finally looked back at him, he was wiping his fingers across his dashboard.

To this day I’m not really sure what to think, but this guy spent the entirety of the few hours we were together scooping out boogers and wiping them off on parts of his car or the table or wherever it was that we’d stopped at. I realized I was being transported in a rolling booger shrine and that there was nothing I could touch without needing to wash my hands. I was sitting on a crust of fossilized booger stuff. I had to be.

I didn’t want to hurt his feelings, he was a nice dude, but I wound up ollying out of our visit early because I couldn’t handle it. I don’t consider myself a clean freak, but as wiping started to stack it was all I could do not to throw open the passenger door and roll myself out into traffic to escape.

I still wonder if I should have done or said anything to save him some grief in the future but it didn’t feel like it was my place, you know? What do you even say?

7. Omg… helping a legit stalker do his thing?!

Guy I knew in college met a girl online and spent every day talking about her. She lived about 6 hours away, so he planned to take a semester off and pursue this relationship.

He got a job in her town and asked if I’d help him move out there since my car would hold more than he could take on a bus.

I had a long weekend off and figured, why not? A road trip cold be fun. I’d drive him out as a goodbye present, and the way back I planned to visit Yellowstone.

Well… We arrive and it turns out he doesn’t have an apartment lined up and… He found a job posting in his girlfriend’s town, he hadn’t actually gotten the job. Or even applied yet. I make a bunch of phone calls and find him a room to rent that will let him move in that day with just first, last, and deposit, even without a job.

I’m tired and disgusted with his lack of planning, but figure it’s worth staying the night and trying to end things on good terms with my buddy. Then he breaks down and confesses that he hasn’t actually met this girl. The nights he spent “video chatting” with her were really just him watching her vlog and jacking it. They’ve never talked. Never texted. Never even emailed. Hell, he’s never even left so much as a comment or “like” on one of her videos. She genuinely didn’t (still doesn’t) know he existed.

His plan was to hang out at this game shop she talks a lot about until she showed up and somehow create a relationship from that. He thought that they’d meet and she’d fall in love with him and move back to our college town to marry him… all before the next semester began.

That didn’t happen. Instead, I made my “buddy” buy a bus ticket for his ride back to school and left. He came back to school and got more cringey, not less.

I lost track of him after that.

8. Choked

I used to play WoW with my now ex. Our guild leader actually wound up moving to our state with his wife. My ex and I broke up before we got the chance to hang out with the guy, and right after the break up he messaged my ex essentially asking if it was cool if he and his wife got me drunk and took advantage of me. Ex showed me screenshots when I was getting my stuff from his place and I cancelled my plans to meet the guy and his wife.

My ex had been physically abusive and broke up with me to date the girl he’d cheated on me with. I’d tried leaving before but he’d fake suicide attempts and I was so scared he’d go through with it so I stayed. Even though he was in a new relationship he tried to keep tabs on me and control me, but I saw it as my chance to escape.

I happened to move right after we split and he didn’t know my new address. I blocked him on everything. Somehow he kept getting information on me though. Turns out the guild leader was feeding him everything, I hadn’t deleted the guy off Facebook cause I figured he was only a problem in person.

When I confronted him over messenger, bringing up the abuse, and the guy said, “He said he choked you because you guys were arguing and he was afraid he wouldn’t get the chance to speak. He still loves you.”

Side note, the choking was cause I was defending myself against accusations of cheating, which I hadn’t done.

9. Seized

I met a guy online, we really got on and he came over a few times so we could hang out. I did find him attractive and tried to hint that I was into him (note, I can’t flirt to save my life) but nothing ever happened. After a few “dates” he suddenly vanished offline. No social media, he wasn’t answering texts or emails, nothing. I thought he’d ghosted me. After 6 months he reappears, I asked him where he’d been and he said “I don’t want to talk about it”.

A few weeks after, there was a fad where people were googling their names and posting humorous stories they had found about similar people with their name (mine was about a ship that had my initials) and I started to google friends names just out of boredom/morbid curiosity, googled his name and found a local news story from his area, one of those “crime and courts” things that he had been done for statutory rape of a minor, online grooming and had his computer and phone seized as evidence.

10. The cancer patient…

This is way back in the mid ‘90s. Bulletin Board Systems were all the rage. I made friends with this guy from NC – he was friends with a bunch of us from my dorm, mostly females, which should probably have been a red flag but I was extremely naive at the time.

A couple months in, he mentioned he was coming to our state for a wedding and asked if he could come by our college to meet everyone. It was agreed he’d sleep in my dorm room since my roommate was almost never around. Now, there was no discussion or thought of sex, but I was pretty excited to meet this guy and see if he was as funny and charming as he was online.

Well.

Day arrives, dude shows up. I should mention that I and all my college friends were 18 or 19, this guy was 24. Or so he said. Guy looked like, and I’m not exaggerating, a cancer patient. Pale, gaunt features, long greasy pale blond hair except where he was bald on top, and just generally looked like he was about to die or he was dressed as a ghoul for Halloween. He insisted on hugging all of us.

I was trying to remind myself that looks don’t matter and that he was a cool guy despite his very unsettling appearance. But then, when we all started hanging out, things just got worse. He was asking really invasive questions of all of us, making weird comments to whatever was said, just all around creepy and distressing. I was sitting on the floor with another friend and actively rocking back and forth from discomfort.

I lied and said I had hurt my back and that sleeping on the floor helped, because that night he kept insisting we could share my tiny twin college bed. Nope nope nope nope nope.

Last time I ever met anyone from that site.

11. Bromo crush…

after college ended i was playing a game called EVE-online. i was in a corporation with a dude who i thought was the coolest. he had sold shit in game for real world money and had built a super computer. he had a smoking hot girlfriend, and had pictures of them rockclimbing doing some super cool shit. he was also like a head chef where he worked and since i was a chef as well… well… i had a little bit of a bromo crush on him.

he told me after i graduated that he could hook me up with a manager job and all i had to do was move up there. i sold everything i owned that day at a pawn shop and bought a uhaul and started driving.

1 hour before i got there(it was like a week long drive) he called me and told me the job was no longer available and i shouldnt come. when he found out how close i was he said to just come anyways. when i got there i was compeltely blown away. they lived in a disgusting section 8 apartment with 4 other people… in a 1 bedroom apartment… they had like 3 cats, which im allergic to, and a kid as well.

day one it was all drugs and partying. i did not partake. i was not enthused. day two i went into the city looking for a shit job to survive. i got one. it was shit. day three my “buddy” tells me where all moving out and into a nice apartment. week 3 we actually move into a new apartment, and the first night in that apartment he starts beating his smoking hot girl in front of their kid.

the second time he beat her, i called the cops. him and his girl immediately said i was the bad guy and that they were just loving each other… they had the cops escort me from the apartment.

so there i was, 1700 miles away from home, homeless at 2am, and its fucking raining on all my shit…

12. Red flags. Red flags EVERYWHERE!

Had an online friend for well over a decade. She lived around Atlanta and I went down there to visit my aunt and cousin.

Turns cousin was out of town and my aunt was too old to go around sightseeing. Hit up online friend and she and her boyfriend weren’t far from me so we met up. They were homeless and couch surfing at the time so I paid for everything. Didn’t really care I had vacation money to burn.

The trip was fine no real issues.

When I got home things started going sour they got kicked out of the friends place so the boyfriend asked me multiple times for money to get back on their feet. I sympathized but I spent all my spare cash on vacation so I declined. Eventually they broke up and she moved in with family.

She claimed he was abusive which I never saw signs of but he did tell her some ridiculous things. He said he had to get dick reduction surgery cause it was too big. Other equally ridiculous things about his military career. Made me realize that my friend was pretty naive about how the world works.

She never held a job. No higher education (which I don’t judge as a tradesman) never really had any sort of financial responsibility as she was entirely dependent on family or boyfriends. Basically in a state of arrested development.

So one day she’s texts me saying she wants kids but doesn’t want another man in her life. So she asks if I will donate my sperm to her. I’d have no obligation to the children whatsoever just be a donor. I agreed if she could proof she was financially stable first.

She flipped the fuck out said I was just another man trying to control her. I was raised by a single parent so I know how hard it is and I don’t want a child to go through that with a parent who can’t provide. She got more angry and I got fed up and told her off.

We haven’t spoken since. A fifteen year (ish) friendship died that day.

13. Well, this is the saddest thing I’ve ever read…

I was on MeetMe, met this guy who was super cool. We ended up texting every single day and i took the train out to Los Angeles to meet him.

When i got there, he was being kinda shitty and he told me that he hadn’t gotten much sleep becuz he was partying until 5am. We walked to his house and when I walked into his room, i was kind of shocked. It was a 8×6.5 room. All he had was a mat on the floor and a small little jewelry box full of mementos on top of his suitcase of clothes.

We took a nap together. Later, we went to get ramen and he asked me to pay. I didn’t mind. We went back to his place and we listened to music while we waited to go to a party.

Fast forward to that night..we met up with some of his friends and they were so mean to him. They kept roasting him and picking on him and he was visibly getting upset. I stopped him for a bit so his friends could walk ahead of us. I reminded him that it was all fun and games and to ignore them.

Ended up at the party and lots of people knew him. I sat out in the patio with a few cool people that i had just met while i waited for my friend to come back from saying hello to everyone inside…he never did. I was outside in the patio with these strangers for about 3 hours. People kept coming up to me and asking if i was alright. Idk if i looked sad or if i just looked like a plain loner.

I went to find him and it was so packed. Didn’t see him so i walked back. I seen his roommate and asked him to please tell my friend that I was gonna go get a motel. He went to tell him, came back and said my friend was being a dick & he would walk me back to the house instead so i didn’t have to spend money on a hotel.

We got to the house and I thanked him for walking all the way back home. I really appreciated it as my friend was probz inside doing coke or fucking girls. I went to bed in my friends room and he woke me up in the middle of the night kissing me, trying to get his freak on. I simply said no. I’m not interested in having sex.

His exact words were, “Are you serious? What was the point of you coming here?? You’re such a waste of time!”

My feelings were really hurt. I went back to sleep, woke up and left.

Never wrote him after that. He had texted me a month later asking to borrow $50. I simply ignored the message and moved on.

I mean… what do you say after a story like that?

Good thing you got out of the crusty, mucus mess!

The post 13 People Who Met Their Online Friend and Regretted It appeared first on UberFacts.