Recently, I came across Omegle – their tag line “talk to strangers!” – and obviously my curiosity got the better of me and I started experimenting with it.
It had multiple ways to interact with strangers – you could either meet them by interests, or by location. You can also just post a question or a topic for discussion and watch two strangers debate on it (haha, if you can ask interesting questions, you are sure to have some fun).
Initially I joined to rooms by interest – sketching, painting, chess. Unfortunately, there were very few who were even interested in these topics :(. I met someone who claimed to be a mangaka from Japan, but when I did ask her for any of her manga online – she disconnected. (then I thought, may be I was too forward?!).
Then, I thought to meet people by region. And so, I selected India. Doing that took me back to the nostalgic ages of “asl”. The conversation would last for 2 messages at most. “m, asl?”, and with my reply – boom – I would get the popup (the other participant has left).
After this, I got a bit more curious, I wanted to know if it was just the case here in India, or does everyone try to use such a platform for finding a possible “date”? I felt – hey, it might be more in the US. So, I went ahead and joined it. I met a guy from Alaska working on a rig. He was a carpenter by profession, but also worked on the rig. 14 days on the rig and 14 days at home. We had an interesting conversation which lasted for half an hour. He offered me his yahoo contact in case I wanted to contact him and we closed on a fun note. Suddenly the platform made more sense to me. You truly meet new people and learn about them. That is exactly the experience I was looking for, and it felt nice. Interacting with people from various places helps you grow – and I think that was what the platform was designed for.
I wondered why there was this difference in the experiences I had. However, it’s not my part to comment on it, everyone has their own way of looking at things. I would like to experiment more before I can make any statement, so for now, I stay silent. But yeah, do try it out for yourself and share your experiences :).