Forum Roleplaying and Mediated Relationships

case study #1, female, 2003-2011

This interview recounts Janeane's early internet experiences, which led to a problematic long-distance relationship with an older man that began when she was 11 years old. Janeane reflects on how the internet impacted her creativity, social skills, and identity.

Janeane: I'm 31. 

My earliest memories on the internet were when I was 10 and 11 years old. So that would put me in 2003-2004. The primary communities I trafficked in were fan fiction. I was on fanfiction.net a lot. I would go on Oekaki boards, which are drawing boards, a lot of online role-playing, specifically forum-based role-playing. 

I got started with Teen Titans. I was very obsessed with that show. I was about 11, so that would have been around 2004. That's also about the time I started posting on or reading fanfiction. So again, 2004. I also became very into the NaturallyCurly.com forums, probably around the same time, maybe a little later, moving more around 2005-2006.

I haven't been as active in those, but I've been a lurker in many communities. I was a big lurker/fan of the initial YouTube beauty community, like Purse Buzz, xSparkage, Temptalia. I was obsessed with them and watched all their videos. So that definitely would have been around 2006-2007.

The Internet impacted me most in terms of my creativity, because there was also a sister site to fanfiction.net called Fiction Press for original fiction that you could publish. I wasn't as active on that, but it really fueled my creativity and my desire to write. 

I don't really write now, but I would just fill pages of notebooks and type things up. 

I remember making a whole set of characters. I can't remember what it was for. It was sort of like almost proto-woke — they were all based out of different countries and they all came together. I wish I could remember what they were for.

Like  many in my peer group, I was more online than others. But I was also coming up around the time of MySpace and Xanga, people used those. And AIM, that was probably one of the main ways we communicated.

Katherine Dee: Did you make any friends in these communities?

Janeane: On those role-playing forums, when I was 11, I met a man who was 18 or 19 at the time, and we developed a friendship. It was not where I felt like he was a predator or looking to groom me or anything. We had a very nice friendship where we would role-play and write. It's like when you talk about getting to know someone's soul online—when it's just pure creative exchange—you can develop a very deep bond that way, and I did.

So yeah, again, 2004. By probably around 2006, we were romantically involved. We primarily communicated over Yahoo! Messenger. My parents found our chat logs, and we had been sexually explicit at that point. It was like two days before Christmas. And it was just the worst, one of the worst days of my life, probably in the top five.

Katherine Dee: Wait. You said he wasn't a predator, but it sounds like a classic grooming story?