We’re All Connected

"We’re all connected, New York Telephone."

That’s a dated phone company jingle, and it runs through my mind occasionally when I ponder connectivity. So congrats to the jingle-writer, methinks.

Anyway…

We live in a very social, globally connected time, and yet it’s not hard to hear the cries of people passionately wanting to connect with other awesome human beings.

Well, I personally love, love, *love* connecting with people. I’ve known this since I was very young, and my life has gotten to the point where I make awesome connections with amazingly beautiful people subconsciously, through habit, almost by breathing. It wasn’t always to this degree though, and even with this high degree of connectivity, I still enjoy interesting ways of connecting with people. I’ve met a number of really interesting people through craigslist barters, twitter, dating sites, and — wait-for-it — anonymous random chat sites.

Admittedly, these sites can be a cesspool of bored, depressed people, but a) those people are often the one’s most in need of connection. (Even a random happy "Hi!" before they click disconnect out of fear, can brighten their day,) and b) it’s a good chance to play with your social-filtering and note the kind of experiences you attract, and whether you’re able to appreciate them or not.

This is a relatively new development in the web 2.0 world, and depending on the circles you run in, you may or may not be familiar with them.

If not, allow me to introduce you, and share some of my experiences.

In about 45min I rotated through a bunch of chat sites and connected with a number of people. Some chats people would consider junk, some chats people would think was an incredible connection.

Now, I should note that some people go on these sites simply to ’cause trouble, others have very strong sexual agendas, etc. – Many people have 3-4 infinitesimally small chats which a quickly disconnected, and they are turned-off and give up on the sites, which is fine. I’ve been there, and through experience, I’ve learned that for me, it works best to start with something like:

"Hi! I’m awesome and it’d be totally cool if you didn’t disconnect immediately " (Note: this line is inspired, the perfect thing to suit me and my personality. Feel free to try it yourself, but I’d wager strongly there’s a line that is more appropriate for you personally.)

Since adopting this opener, I’ve gone 5 for 5 random chat connections lasting over 10 minutes, and usually where I refer them to SpiritSentient.com or trade Facebook info or whatever, and ta-da, I’ve made a connection, sometimes in my own city, other times across the world.

Here we go

Random Chat Sites:

		GettingRandom.com – Getting Random is a Facebook Application, that let’s you chat with a random user. You can specify gender, and there’s an option to publish the chat to their archive. I flirted heavily with Sarah, it was a blast, until she got pissed that I chose not to follow the Olympics this year and disconnected. They have a best of chats section.
		iMeetzu.com – Has geo-specific chat-capability (map yourself and find someone close by), gender-specific chat. I talked with a guy about books, and he recommended Confessions of an Ugly Stepsister by Gregory McGuire.
		aNiceChat.net – Nickname character limit of 8 characters. I believe A Nice Chat was the first site of it’s kind. It’s clean, simple, minimal, completely random, not published, and I met a cool, sexy girl who liked Tool.
		talkspot.yolasite.com – Chats are published. They have guys only room, girls only room, teens only room, adults, etc., I’m not a big fan of the interface/nickname functionality on this site.
		omegle.com – This site has had quite a lot of viral success. Lots of users. Big chat button and go. They also have a really funny chats section.
		chatroulette.com – Incredible video/webcam integration. Often filled with people abusing the visual aspect of the site.
		iddin.com – Relatively popular. Iddin allows for semi-geo-specific chat. I had no real success with this site when I tried.

Playing with these sites can be seen as a complete shot in the dark, or in light of a divine-ordained miraculous connection, or somewhere inbetween, but it is definitely a *new experience* for most people.

If the back-and-forth of real-time chat doesn’t suit your style, there’s similar sites that work more on a random pen-pal basis. One of the poems I posted on SpiritSentient a long time ago came through EmailRoulette.

Random Email Sites:

		E-mail Roulette – Similar to the chat sites above, no geo-specific stuff, no gender-control, completely random. Very cool though. I met Echolalic Dyspepsia through it (a guest poster here a long time ago.)
		BumpList – a mailing list for the determined. Only 6 users are allowed to be subscribed at any time and the oldest member of the list is "bumped" every time a new person signs up. It promotes community participation, since members constantly need to re-subscribe if they want to continue the conversations, lol.

Extra:

Of course there are trolls sometimes in the world, and though they seem to avoid me/stay out of my way, your mileage may vary. Here’s a ‘best of chat roulette‘ for your amusement.

I’d love to hear any experiences you have with these sites

Tags: chatroulette, craigslist, gettingrandom, social media

Written by Jason Fonceca

Jason Fonceca is a visionary/creator with 25 years experience in writing, art, technology, spirituality, and many other disciplines. He's the author of the upcoming book "Idealution & Thoughtsperity," as well as the founder of SpiritSentient.com & JasonFonceca.com.

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