Catfished for the 4th by someone in this sub
TL;DR: Someone ruined my nice 4th of July plan of walking by myself from Santa Monica to Venice by running me around the boardwalk pretending to be meeting up with me.
Hey all, hope you’re having a nice holiday weekend. I feel like such an idiot for not confirming this person was real before agreeing to meet them. I would never have missed these flags in the proper context — if this was a client, I would have known immediately they weren’t real. But I kept giving the benefit of the doubt, which is my thesis here.
I hate trying to become open to new friends in LA and getting burned. I’m happy on my own with my best friends in my phone (who live on the east coast). I’ve had a lot of lives and friends and communities here, but when I quit stand-up and then left 12-step, all those friendships stopped making sense.
Which brings me to yesterday. Someone posted feeling bad about not having 4th of July plans, and the inevitable “it’s hard here” discussion commenced. I happened to post the first comment, so a lot of people saw it — I told the OP it wasn’t their fault, it’s hard here, and my plan was walking by myself from SM to Venice.
Someone commented that they’d checked out my profile, said they were also AuDHD (autistic and ADHD), seemed really compatible and kind, and DM’d asking if they could join. I agreed, despite this being a really loaded holiday for me and me typically preferring not to let the possibility of LA BS in on loaded holidays.
Today they were late. Then the Uber was late. Then it couldn’t drop them at the cross streets. Then they were constantly “almost there” or “walking to meet me” — at the Santa Monica pier, wait, maybe the Venice pier, wait, they’d actually walked the whole way without me (3 miles?!) but would walk back.
I sent videos, shared my location (they said it didn’t work, then an hour later said “it would help if you shared your location”), and they kept acting like I’d done something wrong while taking zero accountability — meanwhile I’m already out here. I offered to Uber to meet them multiple times, told them every time I crossed a street or passed a landmark. A friend told me to stop walking and just call them. Of course they didn’t pick up. They kept insisting on walking every time I asked what they wanted to do instead.
We were supposed to meet at noon. At 2pm, my phone almost dead, they said their feet hurt and they were giving up. I asked if they still wanted to meet — I could take a car, we could grab a drink. They said they were too tired from all the walking. Walking that I kept telling them they didn’t have to do?????
Writing it out like this, it doesn’t seem like such a big deal, but it really messed me up. I was fine w my plan and then after I was just standing on the beach feeling stupid. Not wanting to go home or be out. I decided to try to be open to meeting people and it screwed me twice this week.
Update: my phone died so I wandered into a bar in Venice and made friends with some Australian football fans. And I did do my walk.
Am I overreacting, or was this as weird as it felt?