Ask Lemmy

I've actually looked for none of them, come to think of it. I've googled a couple of kids I lost touch with younger. It's mostly normal stuff, but the one guy runs a marketing/inspirational speaking outfit now, which is hilarious because that's exactly how I remember him at 7.

Multiple dui mugshots before 30.

Checked out honestly.

One dude ghosted everyone about a decade ago. One day he got a phone call while hanging out with some friends, said he had some important family business pop up, and completely vanished. We had tried googling him, but didn’t get anything substantial… Until one of our friends remembered that he always went by his middle name. His legal first name was completely different. So we finally googled using his legal name…

Turns out, he’s doing 30 years for repeatedly raping his underage cousin. We started looking at trial and sentencing dates, and realized he got that phone call about a week before he was initially indicted. So we’re betting it was the cousin coming forward and telling someone, who then called to confront him.

Going way back before high school here…

In the 70’s in elementary school I had a classmate who had a brother about two years younger than we were. In 1978 when the brother was only 8 years old he was killed in a freak accident. The family had moved to a new house whose previous owner collected war memorabilia. The brother found a hand grenade that had somehow been left behind. It was live and blew up in his hands.

Ten years later my former classmate was killed on board the Pan Am 103 bombing.

Archived New York Times article that is mostly about my classmate but mentions the death of the younger brother as well: https://archive.is/ykLi0

Those were the only two children in that family. I still think about them all from time to time to this very day…

several of mine transitioned and became musicians…

I occasionally googled the names of a couple of friends growing up. Nothing terribly unusual for a rural farming area. Several joined the military, but most stayed local (or returned after uni). One of my two best friends from childhood apparently became a far-right nutjob. Some died from drugs, some from accidents, and a couple died in the military. I graduated in the late '90s.

Didn't need to Google him because it was in the news. He got shut down by the colombian air force trying to smuggle drugs out of the country.

I've tried looking up a few people and the closest I can find are records from a local newspaper about births at a hospital. Specifically just that they happened on a certain date, with zero other information. That only worked for a select few people, though, because it was for a specific hospital.

I've tried also using a throwaway temp email to create a fakebook account to find someone I used to go to school with but I couldn't find him anywhere on the site, so I assume he has some settings to prevent being found or something. That, or just doesn't have an account.

Edit: same newspaper has the class/year we graduated. Cannot say when/where because I don't feel like intentionally doxing myself.

I've known this guy as an acquaintance for a few decades back to my high school years. I'm a dude but 3/4 of my friends are women and some went to high school with him (I was at a different school). Though superficially incredibly charming, he's been pushy, stalkerish, and manipulative as fuck to people over the years, doesn't understand the word no, and has crossed many lines more than he ever should have been allowed to. We pushed him away from our extended friend group, but most of the women didn't report and the ones that did didn't see much in the way of results (just retaliation).

Looked him up recently, he's got a case, looked it up... CP & sexual assault on a minor. Stacks of felonies pending. Out on bond. I am both shocked and not surprised. Not at all surprised he's a scumbag rapist, shocked he did it to a minor.

I want to go to the trial, but I'm not sure if it'll be open to the public based on the nature of things. Would love to see this chapter of life end for my friends who were impacted by him.

In intermediate, there was a guy who was always a massive dick to me, but we had a mutual friend and were in the same house so we interacted far more than I would have liked.

Turns out he fucking killed someone.

A couple are dead, they just weren't the ones I expected.

One is a park ranger across the country and caught a pedophile from our home county that went on the run with their grooming victim! Im not sure if he did it in the course of park ranger business or what, but he got a cash reward from the parents regardless which is neat.

Everyone else is boring because we were a boring class.

Really not that shocking at all compared to many... occasionally finding out someone is dead and etc.

But one of the ones that got me was finding out that the girl who I grew up... initially was sort of friends with and eventually painfully shunned me and treated me like an alien eventually became a therapist lmao

This made me look up my best friend and it's hilarious that I get an IMDB page for a modern actor with the same exact name and he even looks similar. Had to send it to said friend and be like "Yo, when did you start acting?" lol

We were friends for a short while...

But during the time we went to the same school, weird behaviors showed themselves, they told friend R that I would not play games with R unless R did what they said.

This turned me off them completely.

Anyway, I googled their name one day a few years back, and found that they have completely flipped out.

They have seemingly lost all control, and they and their family are have been bullying their neighbors and other in the community.

They have been to prison for stalking and assulting people, there have been reports of them even driving agressively towards random pedestrians.

They will latch on to other people and can make their life a living hell.

I am being deliberately vauge here.

Unfortunately, nothing yet. For quite a good amount, I wouldn't be exactly sad.

On the exact opposite, searching for the guy I met in the psychiatry (both in for severe depression, as teenagers), he's doing quite well.

When I was in elementary school, we came home from shopping and discovered someone had pried off the lock and stolen my bike. I was inconsolable. About an hour later I spotted a kid from my class riding my bike, and managed to recover it.

I looked that guy up a few years ago. Found him on the sex offender registry.

In high school, one of my classmates shot and killed his sister's friend while cleaning a .22 rifle. There was a trial, but I don't remember the verdict. As a minor, it might have been sealed. He disappeared for about a year. When he came back, he was completely withdrawn and...changed.

I looked that guy up a few years ago. Found him on the sex offender registry.

There was a guy at my high school that was just an absolute jackass. One of those guys that you know is never going to amount to anything, and will probably be in prison shortly after graduation. He disappeared my junior year, I thought he had moved.

I looked that guy up a few years ago. Actually, he had broken into someone's house (a burglary) and beat the shit out of the homeowner when he was discovered. But he'd also been held back in school a couple times, so he was 18 when he did it. When I looked him up, he had just been released from prison.

I'm surprised how many of them turned into single moms shortly after graduation.

I only remembered ones name, and turns out he is gay (didn't know that at the time, he had girlfriends) and is now married, living in nyc as some kind of banker type so good for him?