Thursday, February 10, 2011

Omegle

With the popularization of the internet, so many things have been made easier: shopping, staying in touch with friends... child predation.  Yes, it's no secret that the internet is a veritable playground for child predators - just watch Dateline NBC.  So the other day when I stumbled upon a curious website called "Omegle," I was intrigued.  This is a website on which two users are matched up randomly and can chat in real time.  To me, this screamed child predation.  So I decided that, being an intelligent 17-year-old young adult, I would confront these child predators head on - I was going to beat them on their home court (meaning Omegle, of course). 

I sat down at my computer and began my first conversation.  Here's the transcript:

You: Hello.
Stranger: age
You: You want me to give you my age?
Stranger: yeah
You: Well this got creepy in a hurry.
Stranger: no i just dont wanna be talking to some 35 year old pervert or some 10 year old
(against my better judgment) You: Well I can assure you I'm neither - I'm 17.
Stranger: me 2 - 18 soon
You: That's quite the coincidence.  Or are you just saying that you're 17 to establish a connection between us which, as a 35-year-old pervert, you will later use to obtain my personal information and "become friends" with me?
Your conversational partner has disconnected.

Mission accomplished.  One (assumed) pervert down,  many more to go.  As I progressed, though, I realized that my first conversation might very well end up my most successful.  Here are a few of my other conversations:

Stranger: Are you a hot 18 year old girl with a video camera?
You: No.

Stranger: hey asl
You: Ask Something Lengthier.
Stranger: AGE SEX LOCATION
You: Shouting doesn’t help.
You: Also, may I suggest a question mark?
Stranger: soory
Stranger: age, sex, location?
You: Better, but a capital letter to start would be just peachy.
Stranger: Age, sex, location/
Stranger: ?
You: Now, if you would be ever so kind as to phrase the questions as a full sentence, I would be much obliged.
Stranger: Hey, may i have your age, sex, location?
You: That’s much better
You: No. 
 
Stranger: talk dirty to me
You: Okay.
Stranger: do it
You: So I haven’t showered in 8 days, and I get some really oily peanut butter and…
Your conversational partner has disconnected.
 
Stranger: check out this omegle thats only hot girls www(dot)BabesOfOmegle(dot)com, works on iphones too
You: That sounds plausible.
 
Stranger: I'm looking for that guy I talked to from canada earlier.  is that you?
You: No, but thanks for appreciating me for who I am.
Your conversational partner has disconnected.
 
Clearly, Omegle is a strange but powerful tool - you get a certain rush from talking to a total stranger.  However, the people you meet are not always the most intelligent, open-minded, or, quite frankly, normal.  It certainly was not a hotbed for child molesters (though that first person was pretty shady), but rather a hotbed for eccentric people.  I can't tell you how many weird conversations I had in just an hour of using Omegle - I'm not sure if I'll ever use it again.  I'm afraid. 



2 comments:

  1. Alex,
    After three hours of staring at my computer doing relatively no work on my Amsterdam paper I decided to read blogs as a way to pull out of my writing slump. This week in Chinese one of the words we learned was “chat room” which then launched our tiny class into a discussion of why people go on them and how the only people on them are creepy adults or young kids with lots of time on their hands. This post made me laugh so hard, the conversations are so absurd and were so entertaining to read. I remember when this post was on Bobbi’s Blog Banter and I should have read it earlier. Please keep up with these funny posts, I truly enjoy reading them.

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  2. well Alex, like Tina, I found this blog incredibly entertaining!..and very disturbing! I kept getting distracted from writing this comment because I also went on a child-predator hunt!...and found one!...I don't really want to talk about it, but hey! Better luck next time! Anyway, I like how you used the internet to find really sad people and crush their hopes and dreams of online 'lovin, you are truly an inspiration to cynics everywhere.

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