A London-based writer went viral on Twitter overnight after he admitted that he accidentally invited a rando man into his family group chat instead of his dad. And that rando man had been quietly observing the chat for the last six months.
This is a journey, friends, so strap in.
Jonno Hopkins thought he’d added his dad, Peter, to the family WhatsApp group, but it turns out he’d actually included some other man with the same name, who was later revealed to be a plumber.
“For 6 months there’s been someone in my family whatsapp group who I thought was my dad but was in fact a random called Peter (my dad’s name). This person has sat and read every message and never thought to chime in to inform us that we’ve added the wrong Peter,” Jonno’s Wednesday night tweet thread began.
Jonno’s family are kind of estranged, he said, and don’t really communicate, so he was excited to make the group chat.
“On calls my dad would ask what’s going with stuff, to which I’d say ‘Dad, you’re in the whatsapp group, YOU’RE READING THE MESSAGES!’ and he’d say ‘Am I?’ and I just put it down to him being old.”
He explained his first misstep and the kind of primo fam content Fake Dad Peter was privy to.
“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’.”
The 2002 Coldplay album Jonno’s mum was thinking of was A Rush Of Blood To THe Head.
Jonno only realised he’d made a mistake when his sister asked him to add their actual dad to the WhatsApp group. “And it dawned on me that the number of the Peter in the group was not my dad’s number.”
He really should’ve realised it sooner, because unlike his mum’s avatar of her dog, Peter’s avatar was the logo for his building company.
So who TF is Fake Dad Peter anyway? Well, he’s a plumber who came to fix the washing machine in Jonno’s flat EIGHT YEARS AGO. Yes, rando Peter is a tradie whose last interaction with Jonno was in 2013.
Jonno then dangled this other story about Fake Dad Peter that he refused to elaborate on: “No, I won’t be contacting fake dad Peter because when he came to fix our washing machine he ended up bleaching all of the clothes that were trapped in the drum.”
He concluded: “I guess after a while the moment for fake dad Peter to pipe up to let us know we’d got the wrong Peter had passed so he just accepted his role as our new dad.”
See the full thread here:
My family don’t communicate (messy divorce), so I was excited to have a group. On calls my dad would ask what’s going with stuff, to which I’d say ‘Dad, you’re in the whatsapp group, YOU’RE READING THE MESSAGES!’ and he’d say ‘Am I?’ and I just put it down to him being old
— Jonno Hopkins (@jonnohopkins) February 24, 2021
This could have carried on for literally years had my sister not asked if I could add dad to the whatsapp group (I guess my dad was too embarrassed to ask me because I’m a snooty tech arse). And it dawned on me that the number of the Peter in the group was not my dad’s number
— Jonno Hopkins (@jonnohopkins) February 24, 2021
People asking who fake dad Peter is. Turns out fake dad Peter is a plumber who came to repair the washing machine in our flat in December 2013
— Jonno Hopkins (@jonnohopkins) February 24, 2021
Here’s fake dad Peter reading my family’s messages. Not sure how I didn’t notice the builder’s logo avatar, which is something my dad definitely wouldn’t have pic.twitter.com/kjWbdYoQG2
— Jonno Hopkins (@jonnohopkins) February 24, 2021
Peter’s like pic.twitter.com/Mx8eSAp92r
— Jonno Hopkins (@jonnohopkins) February 24, 2021
Now, I guess it’s time to kick Fake Dad Peter out of the family group chat. Or maybe just make a new one to be polite? It’s a bit rough to boot Fake Dad Peter after all this time…
