Chat rooms in early 2000s were full pedos.

And they didn't even try to hide very much.

Look at the story from darknet diaries, where the interviewee talks about setting up an AOL account with girlie name and instantly getting flooded with messages, 9/10 of them being from pedos.

https://darknetdiaries.com/transcript/56/

Don't have any examples myself because I was a spectrum kid at that time, quite oblivious to the idea.