In the light of the weekend coupled with my lack of desire to sleep, I went on my random websurfing spree on Saturday night, and stumbled on Omegle, a site which allows one-on-one chats with a random stranger. Chats are as anonymous as you want them to be – I mean, everyone goes on with the nickname Stranger.
Under my cloak of internet anonymity, I had a rather interesting time talking to various people across the globe. Here are some excerpts.
I decided to conduct a mini social experiment and I typed the generic statement ” You know, when one of us clicks “disconnect,” it’s almost a certainty that we will never speak to one another again. Doesn’t that make this moment special?” (By the way, I got this statement stumbling around the web as well) I spent roughly two hours on Omegle chatting with this opening line and I’ve chosen a few to showcase, completely unedited.
I lost the file for this so I copied it out onto MS Word.
(We went on to discuss things like utopian visions, fear of communication that resulted in violence)
These might come across as pointless conversations to you, but if you dig deep beneath, you’ll probably come to realise that this is perhaps a microcosm of the community online. The lovers, the haters, the perverts (predators, beware!) and the philosophical ones with strong moral codes.
Most people on this site are generally superficial – a typical conversation for them starts with hey, asl (short for age-sex-location). About 70% of people think that Singapore is in China, 10% think Singapore is elsewhere (I had someone ask if Singapore was in Africa!). The other 20% are less ignorant. They know it’s in South-East Asia. I suspect some of them used The Power Of The Googlemachine though. At least they tried.
P.S. I really enjoyed the last conversation.
hotdemon
April 20, 2009 at 2:28 pm
hmmm….. this is a really interesting argument/point/claim/thesis!
I am intrigued by this, though i wonder why would someone actually be willing to undergo such a process.
I guess i would never understand this mentality, but its not me…
I believe that when ever two people converse, they should have a form of link between, be it a friend’s friend or even a friend’s friend’s friend.
petersujian
March 7, 2010 at 1:57 am
Well what a good instant post-modern existentialism cyber-survey. good try!
Peter satien suratanakavikul @ 84 c15