There is a particular kind of heart attack moment when you accidentally send a message or an email and then you realize that it’s the wrong person or that you have left in a huge mistake and there is now no way of reversing this decision.

Well, imagine that same feeling except it’s not one, but six months worth of messages and not just you, but multiple people in a family group chat. And you only realize that there is an impostor in the chat after those six months when someone asks to add ‘dad’ to it.

Imagine the feeling when you add a random person to your family chat and only notice it 6 months later?

Image credits: jonnohopkins

Meet Jonno Hopkins, a copywriter from Kentish Town in the Greater London Area, England with whom Bored Panda got in touch, who has gone to Twitter to share a little oopsie he experienced recently.

Around six months ago, Jonno created a group chat for his family. The family didn’t communicate well due to an unfortunate divorce, but this was a solution to fixing this and Jonno was excited about it.

For some unknown reason—like a moment of absentmindedness—Jonno created the group, but instead of adding ‘Dad’ to the group, he added ‘Peter,’ which is his dad’s actual name.

This is what happened to Jonno Hopkins who added a random guy to the family chat thinking it was his dad

You see, instead of adding ‘dad’, he added ‘Peter’ which is his dad’s actual name

Image credits: jonnohopkins

It never really occurred to him that he had added the wrong person to the chat as dad was never really a chatroom person, nor did he make much of it when he confronted dad about it on one of his calls—he wrote it off as him just being old.

“I’m struggling to figure this one out myself. I was obviously having a Bart Simpson moment, but I never call my dad anything other than ‘dad’,” elaborated Jonno on why he ended up not noticing how he added a stranger to the chat. “I can only think that he was added in haste, during a momentary lapse in concentration. Nevertheless, I’ve learned from my mistake and will never add the wrong dad to groups again.”

The actual person who was added, now called ‘Fake Dad Peter,’ was actually a plumber that Jonno hired once before. He just read the messages, never chimed in on anything in the group chat. And now it’s obvious why.

Turns out, the person he added shared a name with his dad but was actually a plumber he called in once in 2013

Image credits: jonnohopkins

Well, this would have continued for years if not for Jonno’s sister who asked him to add dad to the group chat. At this point, Jonno did a double take and understood that the Peter he added wasn’t actually his dad—the number was different—but the plumber.

“I could see in Whatsapp that Fake Dad Peter was viewing the texts, which is why I found it strange when my real dad would call and ask me about things that we’d spoken about in the group chat,” elaborated Jonno. “I just assumed he was being aloof, old and, well, dad-ish.”

“I can’t imagine what Fake Dad Peter thought of my family’s texts. It was all quite random stuff, like my mum talking about which colour carpets she was going to have in her house, pictures of my nephew playing in the snow, asking about switching emails. Very dull stuff.”

Well, one person swap later, Peter was gone from the chat and dad was in. “I’m not sure why, when setting up the group, I didn’t add ‘Dad’ and not ‘Peter.’ But now I feel bad for fake dad Peter and hope he enjoyed reading my mum’s messages about how she’d thought Coldplay’s album was called A Cold Hard Blow To The Head.” It’s actually A Rush Of Blood To The Head. You’re welcome.

The avatar even had Peter’s plumbing company’s image on it, so it’s a mystery how Jonno didn’t notice

Jonno also shared a picture of his actual family, not the one with ‘Fake Dad Peter’

Image credits: jonnohopkins

Jonno shared the story with Twitter, where it went viral. Nearly 80,000 people liked it, asking follow-up questions about Fake Dad Peter, like how he didn’t notice (“No Idea”) and wasn’t he in touch with Fake Dad Peter (“No. He really messed up some of our favorite clothes”).

“I was very, very surprised to see the tweets go viral. I always try (and fail) to be entertaining on Twitter, but didn’t think the story would get much attention as it was just a dumb thing that happened that my family all had a laugh about. I suppose part of the story’s appeal is that (to my surprise) it’s something that’s quite common,” said Jonno.

“I’ve told my family they went very viral. They seemed nonplussed.”

People started asking a lot of questions, so Jonno answered them in bulk to give more context

Image credits: jonnohopkins

Others also shared some of their stories of how they had sent messages to the wrong person or even got into someone’s car without realizing that it wasn’t a taxi and the dude was calm about it. All in all, everyone thought this was a pretty hilarious (and honest) mistake.

“I had a lot of comments from people who’d done similar things. I was genuinely ecstatic so many people enjoyed it. It was just a dumb thing, but I had hundreds of people reply to tell me that it’d cheered them up during a crappy time. That’s always a nice thing to hear and I’m glad it helped,” said Jonno.

Here’s the moment of realization

Image credits: jonnohopkins

As of now, there’s almost 80k likes on the thread with loads of people sharing their own stories

Image credits: TadghofNewry

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Image credits: DigiLifeRescue

Image credits: pbeighton

Image credits: sarahlewismcd

Image credits: ___Ginge__

Image credits: marciahearne1

What are your thoughts on this? Have you ever sent a message to the wrong person (and on multiple occasions)? Let us know in the comment section below!

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