I'm intrigued by this idea of random-socialization online. Obviously the sites like this have thus far catered more towards sexual content, but I feel like there's huge potential for online streaming socialization that Twitch and Discord haven't fully tapped. I can't put my finger on what, but there have been nights I just want to hop online and meet random strangers to talk about common interests about. Kind of like going to a bar to meet people, but with a higher chance that they'll be interested in the same things as you, so a cross between going to a bar and coming to HN to discuss interesting things.
Well shit. Yeah usually I read the article first but the title got me so excited that I wrote the comment because that topic really fascinates me. Oh well. Thanks for pointing it out.
ICQ used to have this in the late 90's. You could find random people on the network based on what they filled out in their profile and start chatting with them. I live in Europe and made a friend in South Africa that way, who I ended up visiting a few years later.
Of course, you couldn't do this nowadays because abusive people would show up and ruin it for everyone. I don't know why they didn't back then.
I don't think you can explain this by simply categorizing people. You can find more than a few stories of nerds being abusive to other people.
I think initially the Internet brought people closer together. It was like ham radio - you could connect with people in a relatively small but very distributed community of hobbyists and experts. Once everyone joined and it became ubiquitous, it's had the opposite effect - it's replaced most of our social interactions but there's an increased anonymity and social separation.
> I don't think you can explain this by simply categorizing people
I was not trying to categorize people, but I was trying to abstractly point out how this might happen, but I used a "category" to explain it simply.
> I think initially the Internet brought people closer together. It was like ham radio - you could connect with people in a relatively small but very distributed community of hobbyists and experts. Once everyone joined and it became ubiquitous, it's had the opposite effect - it's replaced most of our social interactions but there's an increased anonymity and social separation.
Exactly!
"nerds" is just a type of social circle, who're also the initial adopters of a tech, you don't want to be an outcast by doing something that is not "nerdy" in the early stages, because it is easily noticeable by other nerds of that tech. When the social circle expands to potentially bring in other types of social circles (by going mainstream) and becomes (pseudo)anonymous, you'll obviously find a large variation of (acceptable) behaviors among the different social circles, which may or may not overlap with each other.
> You could find random people on the network based on what they filled out in their profile and start chatting with them.
In my case not ICQ, but a local messaging app had this feature as well. When I have moved to a new city a girl who has also recently moved there has found me by age and location. We've been married for 13 years now :)
Another I remember from that era was Microsoft Netmeeting.. there was an screen with a list of all users and their status online/offline and you could call a random stranger.
Another thing I remember about this is that I could make unlimited calls to land lines in the United States from my country. Pretty interesting for a 12 years old kid.
Indeed! I actually started reading this expecting a new product for random meetups on interesting topics; the actual topic was also interesting.
The concept is intriguing, at least if one could keep it on real meeting topics which could have a world of interest and discovery (vs 4chan-ish foolery, of which there is already plenty available)
WeChat has a shake feature that pairs you with some one who supposedly is shaking as well. Who knows how well it really works. Seems like I always get paired with Saudi Arabia.
