My early internet life

Hi, you all don't know me, why would you? I left my days of running large accounts in the past, staying low profile for 10+ years, but as I've been seeing people talking about a creator with a bigger platform than mine, using he/they pronouns and has been posting about how older people should not be dating barely legal teens, and them using an audio from a popular singer, things have been brought up, and I hate it, but it's not something I personally did wrong. This is my story, so obviously the names will be changed at any point names are used.

it all started back in late 2008-ish, I signed up for a little website, Facebook, and this is back in the times where we poked people, had games like farmville, and one specific game called "pico" where people would gather online and make friends, decorate our little houses, go to clubs and groups and things, so one day I meet this guy on there, which seemed innocent enough, I was 16, and me this guy, we'll call him howard, became frineds, got along talked pretty much all the time, he tells me he's 19, which as friends thats a big age gap already, but I was 16, eventually Howard and I get closer, hang out on this game all the time go to each other's "houses" and hang out all that. After some time Howard starts asking me out and I tell him no, again Howard told me he's 19, and here I was just 16 years old, going to church and youth group, doing my class work, running my large page at the time, a Justin Bieber fan page, and doing karate, you know, kid stuff, anyway Howard keeps trying to convince me to go out with him, eventually I ask Howard where he's from, he finally tells me "I'm from Iraq" or some place in that area, and I ask him how he's playing the game through the website they had for it, or through Facebook, Howard tells me that he's playing through the website as he doesn’t have facebook, and me being a dumb 16 year old, spends weeks convincing Howard to make a facebook account, I wanna see what my friend looks like, I mean who wouldn't want to see their friend? and this is way before video chat was a thing, we barely had skype in this time frame, so I keep asking him "Howard did you make a facebook yet?" only to be told no, which whatever I'm 16 I have other more important things to do, I mean math was annoying and I had those worries in life, nothing like what life now in 2024.

After weeks of asking Howard to make a facebook account he finally does, and so I added him, and Howard starts adding pictures and tells me to go look, mind you I didnt swear at all when I was mad, it wasn't in me I've changed over time, but we're not talking about today. So I go look at Howards pictures he was uploading on facebook, and I message him "lol you're old how are you really?" and he got scared and was like "Tianna pls don't get mad...am not 19...am 32" THIRTY F*CKING TWO! As you can imagine I lost it, and my mom knew that I was talking to this guy, we all thought he was 19, and just that week a documentary came out, which was honestly perfect timing, and I'm sure you're curious "what documentary was it?" I'll tell you. So there was this guy called Nev Shulman and his brother and his friend Max, "wait that Nev?" yeah THAT Nev, and the docuumentary? Catfish, of course it was, why wouldn't it be, my luck being how it is. Anyway, when Howard finally admitted to lying and getting me to behave essentially in ways he liked, I told my mom and we had just watched this new documentary and she asked me if she could dm Nev about it, I said yes, now I'm not sure if he ever replied, but I know this documentary got so much attention Nev got picked up by MTV to make a series, thats still running today, although not with Max anymore, so to this day, obviously, and understandable I don't watch this show. But this creator on tiktok had no intentions of bringing things back up for me as they didn't know, but seeing that, and people getting legitimately mad at them for saying adults shouldn’t be friends with or dating minors is wild to me, and while I know this story wasnt very well spoken, I was a child when it happened and have done my best to stay on the timeline. If you read it thank you, if not thats okay, I understand too