TALK TO STRANGERS
I found an incredible website that speaks volumes about how far we’ve come in internet culture.
It’s called Omegle. The simple site greets you with the tagline “talk to strangers” and a big blue button to “start a chat.”
The service connects two random users to each other. The amount of information given and depth of conversation is set only by the dialogue that follows.
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Communication on the internet began with moderately sized groups— newsgroups, chatrooms, listservs. It expanded to larger communities with less focus on niche (like IRC), which set off a trend of diverging from dialogue with strangers and more on anonymity.
After the long and isolationistic commercial era of the internet, communication in web 2.0 only served a purpose of giving feedback to a producer (uploaders, creators, blog authors). No return dialogue was expected from the recipient.
Simultaneously, the critical mass of social networking reinforced attitudes of elitism and nepotism. The networks people sought online were the same networks to which they already belonged.
The internet is now arcing back around to an atmosphere of mutual knowledge sharing. Soon, people won’t think of themselves in stringently-defined terms of consumer/producer and spectator/spectacle.
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Within five minutes of playing with Omegle I learned all about micro-genres of bassline music in neighborhoods of Sheffield, England and the state of local hardcore in Philadelphia.
The world is friendly. Talk to strangers.
