I started an account on a website where you could talk to people. You could dress up your pixel character as either a male or a female. You could also roleplay in the website like as a normal person and I often took the role of a male (I am a female) because their roles were much simpler. As time passed on, my user got more friends and I was never bothered to change the character back to a female. I met this female on the website and she was funny and was a good friend. Since she met me in a male form she automatically thought I was a male. She confessed her boy problems to me and that she accused one boy of ‘catfishing’. Now, I forgot to mention that I had started a kik account and used a male profile picture to stay connected with said female friend. Once she explained what catfishing was to me, I knew I had done something wrong. Except, I wasn’t ‘catfishing’ to hurt people, I just thought that it would be less complicated than the truth. So I cleared my friend list and changed my pixel character to a female. I had stopped all communication with said female friend after I cleared my friend list on the website. A few months later she and I were in the same ‘room’. She private messaged me and said “Nice to see you deleted me ‘____’” the blank is the male name I used for when I was a male character. I ignored it because I thought if I try to explain she wouldn’t understand. Then a user adds me and private messages me and asks me my name and where I live and such. And then the user (who I don’t know) asks me why I used a male character in the past and I responded with “I felt like it.” They then proceeded to ask me who I catfished people with. I responded with “Why does it matter to you?”. At this point I knew this user was trying to get me to feel like a horrible person which i did. I had no intention what so ever to hurt anyone that thought I was a male. I personally didn’t think it mattered. Anyways, I proceeded to try to wrap up the conversation because I knew that I had done wrong in the past and I couldn’t do anything about it. The user told me “Alright, I have proof of you admitting it.” Great? I thought that it wouldn’t matter now that i had no “secret”. But now as I sit here, why did they need proof? I didn’t know I was doing such a bad thing until said female friend explained what catfishing was and how much it hurt her. I feel so bad about it all and I just can’t get it off my mind.