He thought he added his dad to the family chat. Six months later, he realized 'dad' was a stranger.

You know that moment of sheer panic when you realize you've sent a message to the wrong recipient? The dawning horror as you realize that — oh no, oh no, oh nonononono — yes, you really did that, is one of the worst feelings modern technology is able to induce. What would you do if that happened with a six-months-worth of messages? Impossible, you say? Allow me to introduce you to Jonno Hopkins, a copywriter from Kentish Town in the Greater London Area, England, who'd beg to differ. Hopkins and his family went six months without realizing that the contact they assumed was their dad in the group chat was in fact some random bloke.

Hopkins took to Twitter a couple of months ago to share the hilarious tale of the fake 'Dad' who became a silent spectator to their conversations for half a year. "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," he wrote. "My family doesn'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."

It never really occurred to Hopkins that he had added the wrong person to the group chat as his actual dad isn't much of a texter. "I'm not sure why, when setting up the group, I didn't add 'Dad' and not 'Peter,'" he tweeted. Speaking to Bored Panda, Hopkins chalked it up to a moment of absentmindedness while adding members to the group. "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.' 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," he said.

"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," Hopkins tweeted. It was only then that he realized that the Peter who'd been silently reading all the messages for six months was actually a plumber that Jonno hired once in 2013. "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. But that's a story for another day," he informed those following the thread on Twitter.

"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," Hopkins added. He revealed that when he realized the mix-up, he "panicked and [fake dad Peter] was kicked out of the group." Responding to follow-up questions, he added that he hasn't gotten in touch with fake dad Peter yet as "he really messed up some of our favorite clothes."

"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," Hopkins explained. "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 color carpets she was going to have in her house, pictures of my nephew playing in the snow, asking about switching emails. Very dull stuff." 

Their conversations might've been dull but Hopkins' narration of the incident sure wasn't as nearly 80k Twitter users liked the hilarious thread with some sharing similar stories of their own.