Creepypasta: Nightmare Fuel

45: I Clicked One Of Those Pop-Ups as a Kid

I Clicked One Of Those Pop-Ups as a Kid by CreepsMcPasta

It took me longer than the other kids to grow out of cartoons. I loved all those childhood classics that were featured on Cartoon Network, Nickolodeon and such. It's funny, if you go on any nostalgic blogs nowadays you'll see people acting like they always loved cartoons, but I bet there was a time they denounced their love just to seem 'cool'.

Anyway this carried over when I was in my early years of high school and bored in IT class. Everyone was just doodling away on paint, playing flash games, or reading random pages found on the web. We had one of those teachers that never really cared about what we did as long as the work was done.

My favourite cartoon at the time that I was binging was 'Batman: The Animated Series'. Out of boredom I was just searching away random things on search engines. First I typed in 'Batman: The Animated Series trivia' which came up with a plethora of random facts about the show. I then found some little interviews about the 'behind the scenes' and 'making of' which was pretty interesting. After hearing the same facts over and over though, I changed things up a bit. I decided to search for fan sites to see what others thought of the show. First I found some popular blogs sharing fan fictions and theories. I even found a few hate pages which peeved me. But alas, I eventually fell into a monotonous grind through the pages of search results.

I eventually hit the double digit figure of search pages, which is when you find the more bizarre and less relevant pages. I came across some role-play forums, illegal streaming sites of the show and even a fanatic who acted out episodes in costume. I was just mindlessly clicking through these until I hit a generic, albeit amateur looking fan page. It had a generic spiel about how they loved the show, and there were pages of commentary written down on an episode by episode basis. I was curious, but as I was getting into things a pop-up came up.

"You have been selected for a chance to win £100,000".

Obviously I had been warned by my parents to be cautious about things that are too good to be true. But I was also at that age where I felt I was destined for something special; and this could be it. I hesitantly clicked on it, and it lead to a little questionnaire, one question at a time. First it asked a generic question about Batman. Luckily I had just been reading all the hidden details of the show and proudly clicked the right answer in the drop-down.

"Correct!" it congratulated me with. This gave me a great feeling and a small shot of adrenaline. 'This could be it. I could be rich in a matter of seconds,' was the thought racing in my mind.

This all left me on the next question.

"What is your name?"

I was hesitant now. I was especially warned to never fill in personal details on the internet. Class was ending soon and I needed to be fast. If I answered, I could get in trouble, and if I left it, this opportunity would slip me by. In a panic I looked around my class for inspiration, and my eyes met with the people in my class. Then I came up with the genius idea- 'I could use someone else's name!'.

First I looked at my best friend. If all this turned out to be legitimate, he would definitely understand and share the wealth with me. However if he got in trouble I would feel like I betrayed him. I was scared to ask him as I didn't want him to laugh at me in case this was all fake. Next I turned to the big kid at the back of the class. Pete was basically the school bully. I thought if things went sour, I wouldn't mind him taking the fall. He'd gotten away with so much in this school that anything bad happening to him would be karmic justice. But then I thought of the potential good, and how he wouldn't even think twice about keeping all the money to himself.