u/Careless-Sand-3302

So of course I know what I did was not good and I deserve what I’m suffering right now. First of all I didn’t do it to scam people, I never obtained money or material things of this. it started out of boredom. I had a period when I actually enjoyed my life and didn’t pay much attention to it. I used it most to “fight” online and put some controversial takes that I wasn’t brave enough to put on my personal account.

Fast forward, during and after the quarantine I started to dedicate more time to it and somehow I met good people with similar interests. It was fun, and I got “popular”. The dopamine that the attention and interactions gave me made me lose control of it.

Soon I stopped caring about my real life, about myself, about my friends and everything. The attention and good interactions you get when you show yourself as someone pretty/handsome is insane. Everyday I felt guilt, shame, every time I knew that what I was doing was wrong but it was very addictive. I tried to quit so many times but i failed and relapsed.

I had to stop it as I got exposed so there’s no turning back. I thought it wouldn’t affect me cause for me I had the situation “under control” I was wrong. I had the chance to explain myself to a couple of friends I made with that account and they understood it and wished me the best.

After all of this I realised that I don’t know what I like anymore, the music I listened to, the movies or series I watched, everything I gave it to this fake persona. I can’t listen to or watch anything cause it triggers my anxiety

I started therapy to deal with this but it’s so hard, the addiction to this behaviour and the addiction to social media fried my brain. I know I need to find hobbies, interests to re discover myself but it’s so difficult. Every time I found myself missing that dopamine, I don’t have the energy to read or to do anything. My life feels empty, neglected and not interesting at all, the first days were hell, I’m starting to heal but some days like (today) are very difficult to deal with, I can’t stop thinking.

I want to get better as a person, someone told me “what’s stopping you from being like the fake persona you showed” and aside from the physical I realised there’s nothing, my self esteem is so low, I go to the gym, try to take care of myself but I feel it is useless.

Just wanted to vent this, I don’t know how to find motivation in this situation, probably this is “grief” for killing that “interesting” part of myself. My therapist told me that that being exposed is the best that could have happened to me, and I know it. It was making me anxious, guilty and miserable. Now I feel the same, but without the dopamine I got from it so I feel like dying.

So of course I know what I did was not good and I deserve what I’m suffering right now. First of all I didn’t do it to scam people, it started out of boredom. I had a period when I actually enjoyed my life and didn’t pay much attention to it. I used it most to “fight” online and put some controversial takes that I wasn’t brave enough to put on my personal account.

Fast forward, during and after the quarantine I started to dedicate more time to it and somehow I met good people with similar interests. It was fun, and I got “popular”. The dopamine that the attention and interactions gave me made me lose control of it.

Soon I stopped caring about my real life, about myself, about my friends and everything. The attention and good interactions you get when you show yourself as someone pretty/handsome is insane. Everyday I felt guilt, shame, every time I knew that what I was doing was wrong but it was very addictive. I tried to quit so many times but i failed and relapsed.

I had to stop it as I got exposed so there’s no turning back. I thought it wouldn’t affect me cause for me I had the situation “under control” I was wrong. I had the chance to explain myself to a couple of friends I made with that account and they understood it and wished me the best.

After all of this I realised that I don’t know what I like anymore, the music I listened to, the movies or series I watched, everything I gave it to this fake persona. I can’t listen to or watch anything cause it triggers my anxiety

I started therapy to deal with this but it’s so hard, the addiction to this behaviour and the addiction to social media fried my brain. I know I need to find hobbies, interests to re discover myself but it’s so difficult. Every time I found myself missing that dopamine, I don’t have the energy to read or to do anything. My life feels empty, neglected and not interesting at all, the first days were hell, I’m starting to heal but some days like (today) are very difficult to deal with, I can’t stop thinking.

I want to get better as a person, someone told me “what’s stopping you from being like the fake persona you showed” and aside from the physical I realised there’s nothing, my self esteem is so low, I go to the gym, try to take care of myself but I feel it is useless.

Just wanted to vent this, I don’t know how to find motivation in this situation, probably this is “grief” for killing that “interesting” part of myself. My therapist told me that that being exposed is the best that could have happened to me, and I know it. It was making me anxious, guilty and miserable. Now I feel the same, but without the dopamine I got from it so I feel like dying.

Algo que me impresionó al volver a Latinoamérica es que la gente se toma muy a pecho el uso de las dating apps con una falsa superioridad moral y falso amor hacia sí mismos.

I want to know if there are successful stories about overcoming this horrible addiction and what helped you the most to do it.

No me gusta generalizar, en persona he conocido a Argentinos muy amables, decentes y educados. La cosa cambia en redes, cualquier pregunta, opinión o simplemente una foto generan reacciones muy hostiles que van desde cualquier tipo de discriminación hasta el doxxeo. Hay gente buena también en redes tratando de arreglar esa imagen, lastimosamente son los malos los que siempre resaltan.

I’m talking from the experience of being a catfisher for over a decade. I started out of boredom, I didnt pay much attention to it at the beginning and I had clear that it was just to waste time. I didn’t try to make friends with that account. I mostly used to “fight” online and put some controversial takes that I wasn’t brave enough to put on my personal account. But soon (during the quarantine and after) I started to meet people through that account and became somehow “popular”. The dopamine I got for the compliments and attention made me lost control of it.

Soon I started to leave apart my real life, I didn’t reply to my friends’ texts, i started to make excuses to not going out, stopped taking care of myself, my family and so on. I forgot about my life.

I stopped enjoying things as myself, each song that I listened to, each movie or series that I enjoyed, everything I did it to continue building that fake persona.

I thought I had everything under control and I could stop it whenever I wanted to, BIG MISTAKE. I met very nice people through that persona, everyone was nice to “me”. I got into it so bad that all my thoughts, my experiences, absolutely everything I gave it to that fake account.

I got exposed so I deleted everything and I thought “ok this won’t affect me” WRONG.

After deleting everything I realised how awful my life is after being neglected for so much time. The guilt, the shame, the sadness started to eating me alive. I realised that my attention span is fried, I don’t have hobbies, all the music I listened to and the movies I liked triggered me because it remind me of that account. I know I deserve it for deceiving people, maybe that was the price to pay, I don’t want to play the victim.

I just want to tell people that if they are doing this STOP IT, the longer you spend on it the more you will suffer. Don’t waste your life on that, you don’t have control over it don’t lie to yourself. Learn to love yourself, learn to treat you better, work on become better and don’t waste your energy on a fantasy.

I know this is a stupid thought but I can’t take it out of my mind. My brain is so rotten due to being chronically online since an early age and now I’m dealing with low self steem and these stupid thoughts.

I know that not all blonde people is successful or look like Pinterest models, I know that some of them look like gollums or products of endogamic unions.

This thought comes from the amount of successful people I see every time on instagram.

So I want to know about your experiences, not scammers, but those who did it out of boredom and low self esteem. For how long did you do it? How did you get over it? Did it affect your mental stability and life in general?