Ok, right, so. Grab a drink, snuggle down, cause I'm bringing you
a story time, filled with twists, bisexual confusion, and... emo hair.
This is the time I got catfished.
When I was about 18 or 19, the internet, believe it or not, was a simpler time.
I didn't know what a tweet was, Mark Zuckerburg wasn't analysing my blood (breaths)
(laughs) It was nice, in a way! Everything looked like this.
You may not know this, but before I was AmazingPhil here on YouTube,
I was kinda a big deal (laughs) on MySpace which is the least cool thing to say now.
If you weren't on it, MySpace had a very weird culture. The general point of it
was to try and get as many friends, 'friends', as possible while trying to be
as cool as possible. This isn't cool, this wouldn't give me more friends.
And of course, the coolest thing back then was being an Emo. (emo music)
What a wonderful time. So just like when I was a kid and pretended to be SnowDude
the snowboarder on AOL Chatrooms, I decided to turn nerdy teen lanky Phil,
into emo, mysterious MySpace Phil. I dyed my hair black, which I kept to this day!
That was a good call! I swished my hair into that specific position. SO much
hairspray guys, and took my profile pictures with my digital camera held at a very specific
angle. Bam! I created the profile of a cool looking person!
At that time it was normal to add anyone from your city incase you wanted to hang out,
which sounds weird now, though I did meet Dan off the internet, and he could have been
a catfish. I mean, is he really called Dan? Somebody called Nev? I don't know!
Anyway back then I was also dipping my foot, this is my hand, (laughs) this is my..hand
pretending to be a foot, in the pool of maybe I'm a little bit gay!
A little bit, just a dusting of gay.
After seeing all those gifs of bisexual emo guys kissing, I thought, maybe if I
was a mild emo, I could attract one myself! And we could make our own gif! (chuckles)
So one day, up popped Jake (ding) in my friend requests, he had about 1000 friends,
and look at that prime specimen of an emo fringe. I know this (laughs) is the
picture that anyone would use if they were an emo boy catfish, I know that now
but back then, I was a gulli-Phil. I didn't know any better.
That was obviously not who I was talking to, if you've worked out from the title
of this video. Well done Watson. So why Phil, why would you believe this is Luke
after all these red flags? I was innocent, I didn't think humans would lie
or do anything weird on the internet. How wrong was I..
His profile seemed pretty cool. It said he was into tattoos, and seeing bands,
already cooler than me, let's be honest. He was from Manchester, which was a big
plus, and double plus, his orientation said (whispering) bisexual.
(spoken) I don't know why I said it like that, but that was exciting.
Anyway, I said a generic 'hey! Thanks for the add!' trying not to be too eager,
you know I can be an eager guy so I thought I'd just low-key 'hey! thanks for the add!'
At first he just said 'hey..' (laughs) I don't know why I'm imagining him
to be like a serial killer, he was just like 'hey, thanks for the add'
but after 5 minutes he straight up asked for my MSN! The DM's were being slid into
(boing) now this very cool emo guy had a very weird email address
it was like sparklepigxoxo, was it you? (No!) and their profile picture was
like, a glittery heart. Now this was too exciting to question, I mean I thought
was a fraud, for even pretending to be cool enough to speak to this guy.
So I messaged Luke on and off for a couple of weeks and he was super cool,
but the strange thing was sometimes he'd seem super interested in getting to know me
and then other times he'd just send one word answers like 'lol', 'idk', 'dunno'
Sometimes he was flirty, sometimes he wasn't, I remember he complimented my
smile, (ding) one day (laughs) and- compliments still stick with me, guys.
A lot of the time I'd ask him a specific question, and then he'd say something like
'brb' and go away for five minutes, and come back with a super vague answer.
After a couple of weeks of chatting he was like 'oh, I'm bi by the way', bye bye,
and I was like 'yeah! me too, I guess'. Then a few days later I said 'does anyone irl
know that you're bi?' and he was like 'lol what you talking about that's weird'
I'd also tell Luke really specific things about my life like 'this is my street'
'these are my friends', 'this is my blood type', 'my pin number is 1234'
Why did I do that?! I don't know, I guess I was just oversharing to compensate
for his under sharing, if that makes sense? Now people would often video chat on MSN
like FaceTiming so I was like 'hey, why don't we video call?' The problem was
every time we tried to do that his webcam would be broken, or it just wouldn't connect
and other shady business. But of course this wasn't suspicious to young
Phil, I was just like wow, yeah, happens to the best of us dude.
But then one day, I got a video call. I was so nervous, this was the moment
I was gonna be face to face with Luke, was I gonna answer? I reached my finger forward
(laughs) really tryna add tension here. I reached my finger forward and I pressed
answer. The face I saw was no face. It was just a pair of man's arms. It seemed to be
a guy, but it was just some arms and a t-shirt, and of course, no voice.
He said the classic 'sorry, my microphone is broken' which of course I believed (facepalm)
I think he was just like 'sorry, I don't want to show my face, I'm having a bad
hair day.' And before you all start screaming into this video,
at this point, I did get a bit suspicious about why he wasn't showing himself
his face. That sounded weird. I still thought it was Luke though, I just
thought something might be off, like his emo hair wasn't as luscious as the pictures
or his snakebites were clip ons from Claire's accessories, I don't know!
Something was weird, at least it was a seemingly useful arm though,
and not like, a crinkly one, or a robot arm. In the next couple of weeks
we didn't actually speak that much and I was like 'ugh maybe he's just not that into me'
after seeing the truth (laughs) of my face, and then one fateful Saturday
completely out of the blue said 'do you want to thang out in Manchester'
today. I need at least 3 weeks of pacing around the house to process that question!
You can't say today! But, I was feeling particularly brave, I was like 'Come on Phil!'
'You're nearly there! Go meet Luke!'
Luckily I had some space in my thriving social calendar (laughs) outside
of all the mad partying I usually did. I just said yes! Which seems crazy now
but, you know, I did it. And I thought we could meet at an open location,
I've seen his arms, what's the worst that could happen? His arms could be carrying
swords Phil! But remember, I would have seen him if he wasn't having a bad hair day!
I wasn't scared about him not being real, I was worried that he'd be so hot and cool
and how awkward I am, and see that I was the real fake. I did what every teen did
and sat in the food court, which is where we agreed to meet.
Nothing like the smell of McDonalds ad to meeting someone for the first time.
Looking out for Luke, 10 minutes passed, 20 minutes, 30 minutes
One Hour Later
No sign of Luke, I'd been ghosted mate. This is when my mum called me, and was like
'hey, what you up to love?' and I casually explained that I was meeting a guy from
MySpace, I'd only seen his arms, and he hadn't shown up yet. And she went full mum
(horn) stranger danger panic, and I don't blame her. She said he might be watching
me right now, he's gonna have a gun, he's gonna kill me, what was I thinking?
What if he murders you, Phil? What if you die? A bit overdramatic, but, fair.
I suddenly realised for the first time how weird this was, and I got the fear
inside me that maybe I was in mortal danger and I was about to die, and should probably
leave the food court. I looked around, I saw a family throwing fries everywhere,
A guy and a girl sharing a milkshake, an old lady getting a Subway, but no
sign of Lukey-pops. So with my newfound fear (laughs), I half stumbled and ran out
of the food court, and went to the bus stop. I decided to go home, and accept the
fact that I didn't deserve any cool MySpace friends anyway.
This was when two people slowly came up to me at the bus stop, it was the milkshake
guy and girl, and they were like 'hey! we recognise you! you're that Phil MySpace
guy!' which surprisingly wasn't the first time I'd been recognised from the internet
because if you're trying to be cool, made a MySpace profile, and you were in Manchester
there might'd be a couple of people that would recognise you from your page!
That's what I was up to, I explained my friend had bailed on me, and they
suggested that I hang out with them. And they seemed like pretty normal peeps
If you want a mental picture they were both a bit alternative, they were ginger, guy
had a lip piercing, I'm not actually if they were brother and sister, they looked pretty
similar, anyway they seemed like nice, friendly people.
We went to Afflecks Palace which you might remember from a fetus Dan and Phil video,
We had a pretty nice day and I started to feel better about the Luke situation.
They walked with me back to the bus stop, and I thought as Luke was a bust, thanks,
maybe I could ask for these guys MySpace's and that could be my achievement
of the weekend. I was like 'err, can I have your MySpaces?' and they looked at each other
strangely, the boy went bright red, like, this is weird.
The bus started to approach, and the girl just blurted out: "We are Luke."
You are Luke? (dramatic music and heartbeat)
I had no words, this might not be surprising to you, but as gullible Phil,
when I received this information I was just like (brain explosion)
I don't know what to do, my soul has left my body, I cannot process
what is happening. The Bus driver assumed I was clearly not in a rush, so he drove off
and left me at the bus stop with these surprise weirdos. Then I looked over to
the guy, and it was the arms. These were the arms I'd spent hours confessing my
deepest hopes and fears. Just to be clear the arms were not attached to the same face
that I thought the face was gonna be of the Luke face.
The girl said that they'd both been using the profile, to talk to me, both of them
were the catfish! (music) They were both Luke! I was too stunned to even respond,
and like a villain from Scooby-Doo they just started to unload their story at me
while I stood there in stunned silence. The boy said that they made the profile
to get lots of friends on MySpace by pretending to be a cool emo.
Which, to be honest, wasn't the weirdest thing because that's what MySpace was all
about, putting out a fake persona which wasn't you. Although usually you'd use
your own face. They shared the account like a game to see how many friends they
could get and they never wanted to be creepy creepy, they just wanted to talk
to me. So the girl gave me her personal MSN, they wanted to tell me the truth
but they were too embarrassed because it had gone too far and the guy said he
wanted to tell me too on the video call but then bottled it when I started to ask questions.
So the plan was to meet up with me in person and then tell me the truth at the food court
but when they saw me, they were too embarrassed, so they just stared some more
which is creepy, but I get it in the 'ahh, we're too scared to do the thing' kinda way
but yeah, it was creepy. I was tryna play it cool like 'ahh, yeah, wow, that makes
total sense. It's not at all creepy that you were staring at me for an hour
next to a Subway while my mum was on the phone telling me I was gonna get murdered.
Totally fine!' They offered to wait for the next bus, but I was like 'nah, it's
alright, you guys can go' and I just sat on the bench, thinking about how freaking
weird what just happened was. Oh yeah, and once I got home, I immediately blocked
their account on MSN, unfriended them on MySpace, and that was the end of Luke!
(cheering) Sometimes I think maybe I would have been friends with them,
I mean, we had a lot in common, we had a nice day, should I have been more accepting
of their snowball of lies, and just got to know them? I dunno (laughs)
I guess we'll never know. To this day, I wonder who was bisexual, the guy or the girl
or both, did they graduate to become a serious catfish, or was this just harmless
emo roleplay on the mysterious website that was MySpace?
Either way, wherever they are, even if they're watching this video, I hope you're
doing well. It's a shame this happened before the MTV show, I think this would
have been a spicy episode, if we'd got Nev in the mix we probably would have showed
up outside their house, and they would have opened the door and screamed 'oh my god!'
'it's the arms!' and then fainted. In hindsight, it's not the weirdest thing
that's happened to me because of the internet, but it did teach me a lesson.
Or not, I mean Dan could have murdered me next to a Subway too. I guess the moral of
the story is don't roleplay too far, so you unintentionally catfish someone
and make their mum stress while their child is sweating nervously in a food court.
Maybe that it's you don't have to pretend to be really cool on the internet
if you're just yourself. Then it's more likely that you'll actually find someone
out there, and you can actually be friends. Nice.
(nice piano music)
I hope you enjoyed the story, so now it's officially sweater weather in England,
everyone was saying we were gonna have a really hot September and it was warm for like
2 days. Now all the trees are dead, so I guess that's what its like living in England.
But good timing, because I just released some new merchandise, which I'm calling...
(ahh) The Couch Club Collection! It comes as a set of this hoodie and these bottoms.
It's made out of the fluffiest and most comfortable material... in the entire world.
I feel like I'm being hugged from all angles by a friendly Koala. You can also get these
fluffy socks and these alone have been life-changing to put on on a cold morning.
I hope you enjoy wearing them but warning, once you put them on, you may never wanna
get dressed, which is kind of why I made them for myself (laughs) anyway,
link below! Also if you're in the mood for some snackable Phil content,
I'm gonna start putting some shorts on LessAmazingPhil so if you want a little bit
of me to boost your day multiple times a week, then make sure to subscribe to this
channel, I'll put him here, give him a little click, make sure you're still
subscribed, and you can watch my last video here, I hope you're having a good day,
thumb me, if you've enjoyed this little adventure, and I will see you very soon.
Gooooooodbye!
(snickering) Oh my god.
Don't do that if you're wearing couch club.