Omegle.

SO. I've given up on trying to get sleep today, so I thinks, what am I going to do now? I settle on listening to the radio for the first time in forever. So I goes on the net and finds Kindom FM's page for the breakfast show with Ian and Diane. It says it's currently playing 500 Miles by The Proclaimers. So I tries my hardest to get on it as fast as, cus that's an awesome way to "wake up" as it were. But all this faffing about downloading plug-ins and restarting shit and I missed it. Missed The Proclaimers. Some stupid pop crap was on.

So that's this morning's rant, very sorry for that bizarre accent that somehow got infused in there o.O

Anyway, as the title of this blog would suggest, this is actually about the wave of anonymous online one-to-one chats that are springing up everywhere, the best known obviously being ChatRoulette (which is clearly not very anonymous). I found Omegle, which as far as I know, is vaguely popular.

I decided I'd make an attempt at finding intelligent conversation. Impossible, it would seem, but I succeeded!

This is how it started:
You're now chatting with a random stranger. Say hi!
Official messages from Omegle will not be sent with the label 'Stranger:'. Strangers claiming to represent Omegle are lying.
Stranger: Hi.
You: Hey.
Stranger: What's your favourite number?
You: I can't say I have a favourite really. 12 sprang to mind though.
Stranger: 12. I like that number. My favourite number is 6. But I also like multiples of 6 by extension.
Stranger: I think multiples of 6 are overlooked, in general.
Stranger: Not like 5.
Stranger: You know. Or 3.
You: Ugh, 5 is the whore of numbers, only out whore'd by 3.
You: Ha, said that too slow.
Stranger: Yes, yes! You're quite right!
Stranger: I agree. And then 7
Stranger: 7 is everyone's favourite.
Stranger: And when you ask people to pick a number, they always pick 3, or 7... or numbers ending in 3 or 7
Stranger: People rarely pick6.
Stranger: And you know what else?
You: It's that "in-between" number, that makes people think they're being individual.
Stranger: Yes!
Stranger: You know how they tell
Stranger: when people have invented "random" results
Stranger: There are a disproportionate number of numbers ending in 7 and 3
You: They're in between the 5 and the multiple of 10, which validates my theory.

Now, to find this conversation I went through about 25 people who's first words were "hi asl". There is nothing worse than that. Would it really kill people to be creative and different?

Obviously though, conversations about numbers can't go on forever:
Stranger: I used to live in number 17
Stranger: And my friend always thought that was unlucky.
You: I must say, I take luck as it comes, it's nothing you can categorise with numbers or objects.
Stranger: Here is why. In Roman numerals, it is XVII, right? And if you rearrange the letters, it comes to VIXI, which, in Latin is the perfect tense of the verb to live, so it means I have lived.
Stranger: And if you have lived, in the perfect tense, that mean's you're dead!
You: I understand that.
Stranger: Cicero used it, famously.
Stranger: He said :vixerunt, about some prisoners, I can't remember who - I'm so poor on Roman history - to mean they had been executed.
Stranger: Do you like Latin?
You: I tried to study it in school, but had to drop it since I had to retake a class.
You: Been meaning to pick it back up again.
Stranger: Yes, it's easy to forget, isn't it? I did it in school too. It was my favourite subject.
Stranger: I loved all the grammar.
You: We studied...oh god I don't even remember what it was called.
Stranger: Some people don't like grammar but I think it's so interesting! And in Latin it's infinitely more logical than in modern languages.
You: we did the grammar and actual language part, but also roman history and the like.
Stranger: The Aeneid?
You: How did you know?
You: Yes, that was it.
Stranger: Because you can't study Latin and not do it!
Stranger: It's like THE Latin poem.

"What is this I don't even..." I hear you say. Yeah, not only did I find someone vaguely different, I've found real actual intelligence. There's no way this could get better though, surely:
Stranger: If you want to pick Latin up again
Stranger: I really recomend a book called Reading Latin
Stranger: It's a great book, and lots of interesting language points and translations.
Stranger: What subject did you like in school the most, then?
You: Oh I liked a lot, geography is in the top 3, definitely. As is history, and music.
You: Music is 3rd, geography and history tie for top spot.
Stranger: I didn't study a lot of geography. But I would have liked to, if I had had more time. What did you like about geography - physical, or human?
You: Definitely physical, but some human aspects were intruiging.
You: It irritates the hell out of me when people assume geography is all about where things are.
Stranger: Yes. I liked learning about different types of rock, and how they formed- how quickly the volcanic lava cooled and things, that was awesome!
Stranger: Yes, I suppose. It has that reputation, doesn't it?

But wait, there's more! 
Stranger: Do you want to do something in the future to do with that - like - environmental research?
You: Not really, I chose geography as a filler subject mostly just for enjoyment purposes and further learning, my focus is on psychology - odd combination, I know.
Stranger: Oh! Wow - really - so you study all different things?
Stranger: Or just those two?
You: Those two and philosophy.
Stranger: That sounds great. I don't know very much about psychology.
Stranger: It seems to me that humans are just - inexplicable - perhaps if I studied more psychology I would understand people better
You: Well it doesn't really work that way - sure you can boil things down to diagnosis of illnesses or mental problems, and mental processes, but (not discountng this of course, it's very valid obviously) every person is different, and every person will have different deviations from the typical "rules".
Stranger: Yes. So annoying! It would be great if you could finally figure people out like a maths equation.
You: But would it? that'd take all the spontiniety out of people, and take away what makes us human.
You: That sounded almost philosophical.
Stranger: Well, you're a philosopher too, right?
(insert hour long conversation about human psychology, and a discussion about human conformatism)

I managed to find someone on a chat site like omegle that I could have an intelligent, literate conversation with. Perhaps there are normal people somewhere deep in the interwebz.

And it didn't stop there. Psychology turned to discussing countries, to a conversation about accents, to stereotypes, to alcohol (it was always gonna end up there at some point), to places, to food...

And ended with:

Your conversational partner has disconnected.

No, I wasn't hung up on, he (I'm assuming it was a he) went to bed.
But I like that, I think it's gonna be how I end my blogs now, kinda like how Andrew has "peace out bubs".

So to conclude, the popular opinion that there are no normal people on the interwebz, only trolls and idiots and, ahem, wankers, is a tad inaccurate. Thank you 4chan, ChatRoulette etc. for ruining the concepion of the internet. You rapists and paedophiles aren't helping either.


Your conversational partner has disconnected.