Interesting story, I ran a small forum myself as a teenager so I know it can be kind of weird trying to get some users and keep it active. I never made fake accounts but I did put a lot of work into a forum (like installing arcade modules and stuff like that) that only had a handful of active members and in the end was kind of sad that all that effort didn't turn up much. A girl I had made a co-administrator actually contacted me out of the blue a whole 5 years later and honestly i didn't reply to her message, I felt pretty bad about that but, it all felt like a thing of the past and I had moved on. I think in some ways online friends or online friend groups do just tend to come and go, it's fairly natural even though it can be tough emotionally.