So this is a little bit of a different post; I’m not entirely sure this is the best subreddit for my problem, so if there’s a better one please let me know. TL;DR at the bottom.

In 2015 I met a guy on Tumblr. I was seventeen at the time, and he was eighteen, maybe nineteen. We started talking and bonded over our insecurities and love for anime - a classic little weeb love story I guess - and started flirting more and more over text. It never really developed into a full-blown relationship, especially given the short duration of our friendship, but we did eventually start sexting and kind of acted like a “couple”. This all happened over the course of a few months (probably less than four, starting late June 2015), until we kind of just gradually stopped talking. I guess we outgrew each-other or had better things to do at the time.

Now here’s my problem. I wish to reconnect with him, or at least know if he’s okay, but I can’t find him anywhere. He deactivated his blog in 2019 (I think) and none of his old handles that I remember lead anywhere.

We talked mostly on Tumblr, and I think we moved onto Skype at some point, but I have no clue what my account was at the time, so that’s a dead end. Plus I have no longer access to the Tumblr account I used at the time, so any information that might help me find him is not accessible to me at the moment. I’m working with support to regain access in hopes of finding something to help me.

This seems like a good time to mention I’m not asking anyone to find information about this person, all I want to know is, is there a way I can try to track down my friend to see if he’s doing fine? I only know his first name, a very vague age, his previous online nicknames and his interests and personality. I can’t even remember where he’s from.

So far I’ve: -looked for his old Tumblr on the Wayback machine, but there were no leads; -looked up his first name all of his nicknames I was aware of, nothing turned up; -contacted a couple of former mutual friends who are still active on the same blogs, one of which said they have no clue where I can find him.

I realize I might sound crazy but this person made me feel less alone during a time where I had zero self-esteem and really needed a friend. Less importantly, he was also the first guy to ever acknowledge me romantically/sexually. He kind of represented a milestone in my life in multiple ways, so I always thought of him fondly, and I really just want to know how he’s doing and maybe say hi.

TL;DR: how do I ethically find my 2015 pseudo-online-boyfriend again? All I have is a first name and old/deactivated Tumblr URLs.