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ijustlovemath
justsid
I didn’t use Omegle much, but I actually met my now wife on there. We used the text only thing where a third person suggests a topic. Must’ve talked for a good 2 hours on there before exchanging informations, I shudder thinking that even the smallest glitch could have changed my life so drastically.
We met 11 years ago on the platform, a completely random fluke. And while I haven’t really used Omegle in a long time, it’s always had a soft spot in my heart due to how much it changed the trajectory of my life. It’s a sad day.
huseyinkeles
Think about all the infinite numbers of glitches that happened in the past and prevented you to meet other possible wives :)
balls187
I tell my wife that she and I always end up together in every multiverse, including the one where our relationship somehow causes that universe to collapse on itself (also that’s the same one where Hacker News is implemented as ASP.Net app)
hollerith
If he wants to stay married to his current wife, I advise him not to think about that.
rootsudo
What if meeting the wife was the glitch?
stronglikedan
Surely he met them all in other universes so the balance is restored.
ignoramous
You posit as if future glitches are improbable ;)
0xDEAFBEAD
For people who are looking for this -- It's a common refrain on Twitter that Twitter can be a better dating app than actual dating apps. I think the mechanism here is similar -- both Twitter and Omegle encourage a sort of stream-of-consciousness, semi-anonymous communication style that facilitates soul entwinement.
ploum
I met my wife because she saw on facebook a screenshot someone has taken from a tweet I did about a terrorist attack. (Charlie Hebdo 2015- Paris).
This encouraged her to read my blog then to get in touch, etc…
So meeting my wife happened because:
1. There was a terrorist attack 2. I tweeted about it 3. The tweet became popular 4. A random someone took the time to screenshot it to share it on Facebook 5. That random screenshot managed to get through my future wife timeline.
To this day, when I look at my son, I wonder how odds were that he exists.
(I told the story in French here for those really curious: https://ploum.net/comment-les-reseaux-sociaux-ont-transforme... )
pmarreck
I got dates from Amazon reviews (back when I used to write more Amazon reviews).
It never became anything serious but the whole "find people online on not-dating sites just by communicating" is real.
amatecha
No way! That's awesome. You should reach out to the creator of the site and let him know about this (if you haven't already). He'd probably be super happy to hear this story :)
jacquesm
Any platform that is large enough will sooner or later become a 'slice of life'. I've seen this with ww.com/camarades.com, and it was fascinating to see that development up close.
One of the most memorable ones for me was a terminally ill patient in a hospital that was still conscious that used our fledgling video meeting service to stay in touch with family members all over the USA. And random strangers dropping in to wish them well. Some people would protest that this wasn't material that should be shown online but I always defended such uses because (1) it seemed like the right thing to do and (2) life has nice sides and darker sides and I don't think pretending the darker sides don't exist is a realistic position.
prox
Maybe its a good idea to collect a lot of these positive stories and get them up somewhere for all the peeps at Omegle to see.
reliablereason
The chance of a small glitch or anything that did not happen in the past is as likely as a ghost dinosaur coming up to you and scamming you out of all your money.
Looking at the past through a probabilistic lens is irrational, unless you are doing it to predict the future through information collection.
Sort of, of topic but anyway….
101008
I don't know why you were downvoted but it's true. My dad was almost scammed this past weekend. Or kind of scammed. The thing is that of a group of 200, 195 were scammed and he wasn't (or he was, but he got what he paid for in the end). And he wasn't just because a random event, he was very luck.
I kept thinking in how lucky he was and how sad my family would be if he was part of the 195. But it didn't happen. Maybe in an alternate timeline (?), but not on this one. Worry about what could have happened is not worth it. To induce stress for things that did not happen is not worth it. Yes, we can use it to learn for future opportunities, but that should be all.
auxfil
[dead]
admissionsguy
What was the suggested topic?
justsid
I don't fully remember, but I think it was about One Direction. We very quickly went off on tangents, but I think the feature was implemented so that the third person can spy on the messages but not interact in any way. I sometimes wonder how long they ended up staying in the conversation.
xjewer
I happened to realize today that many if not all results we observe today is outcome of one or the other probable event in the past.
How often we analyze past near miss situations, or car accidents that did happen and change lives.
History is a chain of events, some of which are so prominent that they covered in books or passed through generations as tales.
Recent Same as Ever by Morgan Housel conveys in the first chapter literally this statement: one random thing can change entire history of humankind, especially in wars.
safeandsound
Sliding Doors the movie comes to mind
pbhjpbhj
To my recollection "sliding doors" was already a meme (in the Dawkins sense). The movie was based on that. I swear I remember explaining to my then girlfriend the term, as I'd read it on the internet?
Wikipedia says the term came from the movie. Obviously the idea didn't; but it's my recollection wrong or can anyone show that Wikipedia is wrong here?
I guess a search on Usenet archives might find something?
jeffwask
> I shudder thinking that even the smallest glitch could have changed my life so drastically.
Met mine in an MMO and I think about how many ways there are that it could have never happened.
pmarreck
I once met a couple who met in Felwood (the WoW region).
You never know where that person's going to come from! And the best ones seem to come while you're not looking for them directly and just having fun being yourself...
rfwhyte
I miss the web where there were services actively trying to help you find new, interesting and weird things, not just the stuff that makes them the most money from ads. Feels like even the things that are supposed to be about "Discovery" are increasingly only showing you things from an ever shrinking walled garden. Despite there being exponentially more stuff and content on the web than say 20 years ago, it actually feels like a much smaller these days.
SnooSux
Stumble Upon used to be so addicting
patates
Not exactly the same experience but close enough for me: https://search.marginalia.nu/explore/random
Kovah
Maybe https://Cloudhiker.net will bring back this experience.
simian1983
Ahh the first days of Web 2.0. Reminds me of http://ytmnd.com You’re the man now, dog!
all2
This place. So bizarre. I loved it so much back in the day. Especially showing friends the latest weird thing I found.
kridsdale3
This was the prototype of the concept that became Vine, and thus TikTok.
wslh
What was the relationship between StumbleUpon and Omegle. I haven't used Omegle but used StumbleUpon and was one unique place where you could discover hidden gems in the longtail.
gentoo
I think it's that both were websites that catapulted you into truly random, non-targeted interactions -- Omegle with a random person, StumbleUpon with a random site.
undefined
dheera
Maybe we should create a DeFi version of this that doesn't have an owner and can't be sued. Things like Omegle should be likened to an empty grass field in the middle of town, with nobody responsible for what actually happens on it except the people who choose to be there.
GaryNumanVevo
The DeFI element, of course, would enable someone to pay so MORE people could see their penis unsolicited
andrepd
This is a bad take on several levels. First the de-fi angle. You want a distributed application, no need to shoehorn crypto into there. But second and most important: the ultralibertarian angle of "you chose to be there so you take respinsabolity for whatever happens to you" is also not good. For one, there's children. For another, moderation and law enforcement is a good thing. Whatever replaces omegle will almost certainly have worse moderation, a less benevolent manager, and less eagerness to cooperate with authorities to, for example, hand over evidence of child predation. Free speech is not incompatible with the attempt to enforce laws.
master-lincoln
Children shouldn't be browsing the internet without supervision. If they do I'd argue their parents should be regulated more, not the internet.
concordDance
> For one, there's children. For another, moderation and law enforcement is a good thing
I think the idea that the government has any place controlling people's ability to freely communicate in private is at least five orders of magnitude more dangerous than allowing children to communicate freely with random adults.
But I expect you're one of those people who thinks everyone should be required to wear a microphone that uploads all nearby comversations to police servers in real time to be sure nothing criminal is going on so establishing common ground will be trickier than usual.
uconnectlol
being able to freely make whatever website / internet service you want is not ultralibertarianism. it's in fact an ultrastatist standpoint that there is something about internet communication that inherently needs policing
alas, the only good willed thing on that line of thought has ever been privacy regulations, which did not fix one single thing, just made everything worse because of cookie popups. it was a completely predictable outcome for any competent engineer of software and protocols, too. and it's the consumers fault for not opting to use a simpler protocol that doesn't dox you the moment you do anything.
the US police state won when they went after napster. you all ate that up. it's likely if we ever have a free internet again it will be outlawed, while the main internet has no purpose but to serve corporate propaganda harder and harder and align it with politics like "not buying a doordash mcmeal = racist" and "wanting private browsing = pedo". you will pay a $50 fee for the very most basic thing like permission to screenshot your monitor, and anyone who tries to fight it will be more and more criminalized. statism is the problem, not """libertarianism"""
dheera
> You want a distributed application
What would incentivize a huge number of people to run a decentralized and distributed application so that it actually continues to run? (Hint: the hope of a coin mooning)
Galanwe
If there is no incentive to operate the network, who will sustain the infrastructure?
If there is no cost to using the system, how do you prevent spam abuse?
This is what crypto solves. It doesn't have to be a get rich scheme, just issue tokens to those that run the network, and have users consume tokens when they send messages.
eru
> Where you looked at what people did with The Web 2.0 and only marveled at the possibilities of what could come. Truly feels like the death of one of the old guard, a Usenet-of-the-2010s.
This is funny to me, because I am old enough to remember when web 2.0 was new, and people were nostalgic for 'web 1.0'. (And, of course, it's turtles all the way down with nostalgia.)
maegul
> it's turtles all the way down with nostalgia.
And yet golden eras do occur, or so it would seem.
I’m sure it’s hard to tell when you’re in or near one, which is an interesting topic in its own right, but it doesn’t mean we should dismiss outright the possibility that a passing era might just be taking something truly valuable with it.
gcanyon
"I wish there was a way to know you're in 'the good old days' before you've actually left them." https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ujJQyhB0dws
jakderrida
>it doesn’t mean we should dismiss outright the possibility that a passing era might just be taking something truly valuable with it.
Our youth is usually the part we're nostalgic for and nothing else. You ever hear the nostalgists crying out to go back to a "simpler time"? It's because they were children and the world is simpler for a child that lacks obligations. Fortunately, my childhood was crappy enough and my adulthood fun enough that I can more than let go of the 80s and 90s without any reservations.
0xDEAFBEAD
I think we're in a golden age of computer gaming right now. I remember what it was like when I was young: paying $30+ per game (many of which were flash-game quality, and I only learned how good the game was after I bought it), or endlessly scouring the internet for something free. Nowadays I can pay $5 on Steam, GoG, etc. for a game that will engross me for 100+ hours
eru
Even a non-golden era can have something truly valuable.
Btw, we are living in a golden age. The vast majority of humanity has never had it better.
JohnBooty
My experience begins with BBSs in the late 1980s and runs through some of those eras.
I thought the Web 2.0 era was something special! Web 1.0 was fun but looking back, it was mostly about the promise of what the web/internet would eventually be able to do.
Web 2.0 was where it really came together for me. The interwebs started to actually attract more diversity and specifically, it started to no longer be overwhelmingly male, which started to make the social aspect a lot more fun to me.
Web 2.0 was the era when Javascript started to be semi-useful, and there was a lot of cool "remix" type stuff happening via open API's and RSS before everybody locked all that stuff away, and video on the internet started to be kind of practical. And the web hadn't been completely choked by naked commercialization. Felt like there were still some cool alternative corners of the web that hadn't yet been paved over so they could build a parking lot for a mall.
I also thought that a lot of cool Web 2.0 stuff happened because of the post-Web1 "dot com" era layoffs. You had a lot of underemployed but talented developers making things.
(but obviously everybody will have their own personal favorite eras!)
jchw
Even though I did miss older stuff in the web 2.0 days, I had a positive outlook (and good reason to have it) for the things that would come next.
Not anymore.
cplusplusfellow
I was growing up when the first people got BBS' and CompuServe. I don't miss the days of dial-up.
I miss the days just as you learned Google could answer questions you asked in free-form, without the censorship and advertisement preferences they give today. Those were better days on gonewild also.
civilitty
I miss the good ol’ days of Minitel. Imagine an internet made up almost exclusively of French people.
eru
> Imagine an internet made up almost exclusively of French people.
I'm not sure I would want to imagine that. But then, I'm German.
malpighien
How expensive was it to participate in message boards. My parents used it so sparingly and with the idea that any minute was addding up. I read 60 francs l'heure, so about 10 euros or more like 17 with inflation. Even spending an hour a day would be a costly hobby.
theclansman
I'm still nostalgic about the pre-facebook internet.
sneak
We’re all still here. Start a small online community and tell us about it. (I did!)
ehnto
Flat Design had barely begun, jQuery had a bright future. CSS compilation? That's a step too far don't you think?
undefined
onetokeoverthe
[dead]
Blahah
Gives me chills, that was so heartfelt and raw. Hurt on all sides, but this is a bit like losing access to a public space because someone committed crimes there.
One of the greatest things Omegle enabled is this... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HhzHV9QD0Is (Harry Mack freestyling for random Omegle matches, it was a series of 90+ episodes and brought me and others so much joy during COVID)
jodrellblank
Or this: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL5poLSRa3cpHBfiJ6wQdT...
Frank Tedesco, pianist / musician meets people on Omegle, takes song requests and plays them - and for ones he doesn't know, he listens once on his phone then plays them by ear.
tzs
Also see these musicians with many "play for strangers on Omegle" videos:
Marcus Veltri, piano, https://www.youtube.com/@MarcusVeltri
Rob Landis, violin, https://www.youtube.com/@RobLandes
Billy Wilkins, guitar and vocals, https://www.youtube.com/@BillyWilkins
The Doo, guitar and piana and otamatone, https://www.youtube.com/@TheDooo
Both Frank Tedesco and Marcus Veltri frequently did joint Omegle videos with Rob Landis. Tedesco and Veltri also have some joint videos. I seem to also recall some Wilkins, Landis, and Tedesco collaborations.
cristoperb
Harry Mack has done a few collaborations with Marcus Veltri and Rob Landis:
smcleod
Harry Mack
0xbadcafebee
Is there a word for whatever the human thing is that makes people want to watch reaction videos?
Cthulhu_
As others have said, empathy and/or mirror neurons; it's the modern day equivalent of a laugh track.
texuf
Mirror neurons
Simran-B
Philanthropy? Humans are social creatures.
ferfumarma
Empathy?
2devnull
Are they much different from book or restaurant reviews?
Lacerda69
mirror neurons
chasd00
Man, i stayed up way past bedtime watching the Frank Tedesco youtubes. I was completely blown away, his ability to listen to 20 seconds of a song on his phone and then get it mostly right on the piano is incredible. What an amazing individual. hah, the reactions were golden too, very funny and endearing.
edit: i'm not exactly musically inclined. When i was in college the joke was Guitar Center had painted a line around the building in the parking lot and i was not allowed to cross it.
rnk
Thanks so much for posting that. I hadn't ever come across Harry Mack. That guy is fantastic. And he gave so much happiness to those people he was rapping for! Just seeing all the delight on their faces gave me a tear in my eye. There's a lot of lonely people in the world, and for a moment, he improved their lives. We need better ways to connect; today I can VC with anyone in the world in a second, but we don't know how to connect like he does. Creators, work to make that kind of connection happen.
Blahah
So happy you've discovered it! In every single video in the series he lifts up a bunch of people who are struggling in a really personal, memorable, inspiring way. I reckon he's saved a few lives (at least).
amplex1337
Great analogy. And.. thank you so much for posting this. HMack is a legend. Every time I listen to him I get stuck for hours. He is mindblowing constantly, pure love. It's worth the excursion every time, no one can amaze and impress like him every time. I've seen some Omegle videos with him before, but this one was really special. Super appreciate this.
bpicolo
This definitely may have destroyed the career of a large number of widely popular youtubers... It certainly destroyed their format anyway.
Imagine they'll hop to a different platform.
Blahah
Tbh the sad thing isn't any youtuber losing a platform, it's that Omegle was really a place people went when they were having a hard time and other people went there to cheer them up. I really hope there's another platform like it, but I don't know it.
diamondsdancing
not video based, but captures some of the spontaneous spirit of omegle. it lets you have live interactions with anyone on the same web page as you.
Tijdreiziger
Some of them were already on OmeTV, so I imagine that’s where most will move.
_eric
His Omegle 100[0] video is one of the best one yet, Harry is a legend. [0]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ijVGIcVRIbk
DoingSomeThings
There's an interesting progression watching him over time. While his technical ability has dramatically improved, so too has the engagement. Now you start to get more clips of people saying "Wait. I've seen you on Youtube/TikTok". Love his journey.
_eric
Definitely, it's been a crazy and inspiring journey. I'm kind of bummed it's coming to an end, it was my favorite series of his.
amanzi
He just did the 100th episode the other day and announced he wouldn't be doing any more.
Blahah
The journey of those episodes is really inspiring. Practising in that environment he pushes the boundaries of so many areas of human achievement in one, and once he's better than anyone else in the world (maybe half way through the series) he then starts surpassing himself faster and faster.
pdxandi
I’m so glad to see Harry Mack getting love on here. It’s wild that he just shared his last episode on Friday and now the site is shutting down. Glad he already took off and found success.
donkeyd
Thanks for sharing Harry Mack, never heard of him, but this took me down an emotional rabbit hole. Amazing what music can do.
soulofmischief
My first thought was, what is Harry Mack going to do now??
ConorSheehan1
The Doo and Marcus Veltri too. So many world class musicians show up randomly on omegle
userbinator
This brings back some amazing memories. If I remember correctly, the original inspiration for Omegle came from 4chan; or more precisely, a user thought of stretching the limits of "anonymous free speech" to realtime communications, and came up with the idea in late 2007. The PoC server for it was nothing more than "telnet to this IP" and it was sporadically advertised on 4chan for a short while.
Astonishingly, Google still remembers after 16 years: "forced_anon chat" (with the quotes) finds the very origin, if you want to go down that dark and probably-too-offensive-to-the-current-generation rabbithole.
kr0bat
God, they're complaining about newposters all the way back in 2007. Is the problem really Eternal September or is it just "kids these days"?
Also Leif K-Brooks is a thoughtful person, and it bleeds into his posts
I don't know why exactly I think a one on one chat system would be different from an imageboard. When one makes a post on an image or discussion board, I think one does take into account that his words are going to be judged by the whole community. Even he isn't worried about preserving some identity, he still identifies with those words and responds to the reactions they get, and I think that ultimately leads to self-censorship and conformity. When there's only one person passing judgment, it doesn't have nearly the same negative impact, and what's more you can hit F5 and dismiss the entire thing, whereas a post still remains.soulofmischief
Eternal September is an observable phenomenon whenever a new demographic in a community outstrips the old guard. This is fundamentally different than "kids these days", though you may find some overlap.
morkalork
It's either growing and suffering from eternal September, or shrinking and a dying echochamber.
nemothekid
>newposters all the way back in 2007
My recollection is that newposters was coined around 2007 for everyone who joined after the Habbo raids that had made /b/ much more popular. These newposters from Habbo were "ruining" the site.
at_a_remove
One night, visiting a friend, I overheard his kid complaining about the first big Habbo raid and how these people were everywhere. I slid into one of his schoolbook's a block-printed note reading POOL'S CLOSED. He never knew it was me.
Lacerda69
protip: it was never good
waffleiron
> and what's more you can hit F5 and dismiss the entire thing, whereas a post still remains.
Which was no longer a thing, with many people using Omegle to create content and upload it to youtube. It became far less anonymous in some cases than an image/discussion board.
mardifoufs
Complaining about newposters is just something you do. It would be weird otherwise.
huytersd
Calling it newposters is already weird
vasco
Lurk more
GaryNumanVevo
On an anonymous website, that's the only differentiator
permo-w
>probably-too-offensive-to-the-current-generation rabbithole
4chan offensiveness isn't so much a generational thing as it is a personality thing
midasz
Teenage me loved the edginess. Adult me just finds it boring. More like a phase thing to me.
zigman1
I find people who love edginess to feel some sort of moral or intellectual superiority to the commons or people they often communicate (example, in high school where you really have a random mixture of all kinds of personalities). Definitely a phase kind of thing
Loughla
100%. Adults who still enjoy that "edgy" style of communication and entertainment always come off as super immature.
There's something in there about human development and pushing boundaries in your youth, I'm certain.
Also, it did feel great as a teen from a very backwards rural area, to be on the very bleeding edge of internet culture. Knowing the memes before anyone else was secretly satisfying.
Cthulhu_
Our generation grew up on offensive / edginess, things like late 90's shock rock, South Park, Jackass, Saw, etc. Nobody cares anymore, and it feels like nobody's tried to out-edge series like South Park. It feels like we've reached rock bottom so the only way is up. Which is a good thing btw.
Dalewyn
I will forever respect and cherish 4chan because it's pure, undiluted humanity in all its goodness and badness.
praptak
Dunno, it feels very diluted nowadays to me.
cultureswitch
A community is defined by the selection process.
People who aren't sensitive to the general offensiveness of these communities come from all backgrounds and are effectively tolerant of each other in ways that are meaningful to them.
ryzvonusef
https://archive.tinychan.net/read/img/1196772434
archive link for those who don't want to google
sltkr
Very prophetic:
> is this meant as a new scheme to pick up underage children by getting them one-on-one with no one else to monitor the two-way conversation?
_shantaram
That Google search you suggested appears (barring some UI thing I'm missing because I'm on Mobile) to only have two results, your comment and the 4chan archive. Is there a name for a google search with exactly two results? I know one with one single result is called a Googlewhack.
londons_explore
It's cheating if you use quotes.
ratg13
FYI, ICQ had popularized this type of random chat long before 4chan existed.
Aicy
Any time I used it in the last five years I had to wade through about ten obvious bots advertising some pornsite or scam before I got to a real person.
Then when you do get to a real person, 90% of the time they said "M or F?" and if you said M they'd instantly leave
melvinmelih
> But it became popular almost instantly after launch, and grew organically from there, reaching millions of daily users.
The law of big numbers dictate that if there’s even a tiny chance of a catastrophic event it has close to 100% probability of happening if n is just large enough (in the case of millions of daily users, probably multiple catastrophic events per day). This kind of asymmetrical risk is very hard to defend against no matter what you do.
adamomada
The question in my mind is, 74 million monthly users have a good time (or not bad enough to not come back, whatever) vs the inevitable catastrophic event as you say, isn’t it well worth it to accept the risk and continue? The world couldn’t possibly function any other way
terryf
Yes, 100 times yes. This is one of the big issues with the modern world, that no risk at all is acceptable. And that's bullshit. So many things that are enormous amounts of fun can get shut down because maybe someone gets slightly hurt some time or whatever.
Should we make things safe? yes, of course. But the trade off should not be "if there is any risk at all, then no". It should be made clear that risk exists and it's everyone's own personal responsibility to take that into account when doing something. And if I happen to be the unlucky guy for whom the risk realizes, then well, guess life sucks for me. Let's move on. That shouldn't stop everyone else from having fun.
concordDance
The big issue here is that us monkeys really can't comprehend scale (insert classic links to studies on scope insensitivity here). Heuristics that work well for groups of up to a few thousand people stop working when there are hundreds of millions.
There is genuinely and honestly a number of days of people chilling on the beach with their family that is worth a life (or more accurately, shortening a life by ~50 years), and it's probably less than a million.
lambdatronics
> But the trade off should not be "if there is any risk at all, then no"
I'm a kitesurfer and I'm with you 100%. I'm glad kiting is not banned in most places. Kiters die every year -- I knew someone who was killed, and I've had a couple close shaves. In fact, today I was kiting and witnessed a kiter get rescued by the Coast Guard. It's understandable that society would want to have some say due to the externalities (loss of productive members of society, cost of rescues, risk to bystanders, etc).
IMO it's not the case that 'no risk is acceptable' -- it's just that the risk tolerance for various things seems really arbitrary & out of proportion to reward. For instance, if we didn't accept any risks as a society, we'd ban alcohol & tobacco along with kitesurfing, skydiving and motorcycles, but we don't.
alwayslikethis
This is one of the root causes of many of the issues in modern society. The creeping safety is taking the fun out of everything, especially kids. Kids nowadays rarely have any play time anymore, which has an immense cost to their later growth and well being. If you want to read a book about this with some related topics, I recommend "The Coddling of the American Mind"
MrGilbert
I'm honestly surprised that I'm still allowed to put myself on two wheels with an engine in between, and ride down the autobahn at an insane amount of speed.
varispeed
> isn’t it well worth it to accept the risk and continue? The world couldn’t possibly function any other way
Had a friend who started a social network website at his parents house. Pushing 20 million monthly users. Death threats, competition uploading illegal content and then reporting it, whistleblowers and more threats, people having beef and looking for arbitration, more threats for getting banned etc. He become extremely stressed, stopped going out, paranoia kicked in and then suicide attempts. His friends helped him close the site and he "recovered".
But lesson here is - if you don't have a deep wallet, right mindset and access to therapist, don't start a website today or keep it small and off the main internet.
dragonwriter
> The question in my mind is, 74 million monthly users have a good time (or not bad enough to not come back, whatever) vs the inevitable catastrophic event as you say, isn’t it well worth it to accept the risk and continue?
Assuming the 74 million are really getting lots of value from it, compensating the victims of the catastrophic event is more than worth it. Holding the host liable for the harms, and trusting the host to charge an appropriate amount warranted by the value received to the users is one way to do this.
Dylan16807
If it's actually very rare, that doesn't seem like an appropriate way to handle a free service.
Imagine a store owner downtown adding a flowerbed and a couple benches at the front of their property. If someone gets hurt via rare catastrophic event, it seems bad to make the owner pay, and even worse to suggest they're supposed to be charging bench users 20 cents each to fund payouts like this.
mrighele
In the US, about 40'000 people die every year in a traffic accident, yet using public roads for free is still a thing, and only the people that actually caused the accident are to blame.
If you think that victims of a "catastrophic event" need compensation, why not propose to institute a mandatory insurance for people using the Internet, like many countries do for cars ? (I am assuming here that the website is not actively trying to help crime, but this doesn't look to be the case with Omegle)
terryf
individual responsibility is the way things need to be handled. Make it clear that if you do X, then there exists a risk of Y, and Z. If you still want to do the thing, and for you the risk is realized, then ... well, sucks to be you I guess. But you knew what you were getting into.
And saying, "oh, but people are bad at analyzing risk" or "some people are too stupid to understand". Well, so what?
Building a world where everyone is wrapped in a soft foam and nothing can be done because there is always some element of risk, is a terrible idea.
"You can get killed walking your doggie" - Heat (1993)
concordDance
The issue here is that the host is capturing only a very small fraction of the value here, which may not be enough to cover liability.
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lazide
Just because someone got struck by lightning while playing golf, doesn’t make golf dangerous to play.
plasticchris
No, but if you operate enough golf courses you better be ready for the eventuality.
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egorfine
Playing golf, no. Providing a golf field service in the US - yes, absolutely.
hypeatei
Golf also requires a membership and equipment to play, as well as physically being there. Omegle is (was?) a free online service with no signup required.
lazide
Which requires a computer, internet connection (subscription based!), and actually going to the website and interacting with it on an ongoing basis.
No one is ‘accidentally’ using Omeagle, anymore than they would ‘accidentally’ go golfing.
talldatethrow
I am absolutely certain people die hitting their head while at paid ice skating rinks. I'm amazed they haven't been sued into oblivion to where helmets are required to be worn.
So it seems like we do have SOME semblance of understanding risk vs reward.
dragonwriter
> I am absolutely certain people die hitting their head while at paid ice skating rinks.
And they are regularly sued for injuries (even short of death), and sometimes lose.
Picking one case out of many because it was a ice rink on a cruise ship:
https://www.mariettainjurylawyer.com/federal-court-holds-roy...
Nevermark
Business insurance is what prevents isolated disasters from killing off businesses.
Insurance takes on many useful forms.
For instance, you can hire a winter season snow removal service from companies that indemnify you from people slipping and falling on your property based on their having an insurance umbrella that covers all their customers.
May not be relevant to Omegle. It takes a healthy income to be able to afford serious coverage. And it wouldn't help with the policing work or the protests of pearl clutchers who don't care about precautions, effort and resources for victim support, and just can't handle any failure of any kind.
wildzzz
It's all baked into the premiums.
ajmurmann
Don't you have to sign a waver for that type of accident. Maybe that's what we are missing from the internet. But that would likely require a real proof of age to work
sanroot99
I think lot of problems from real world get projected to social media in meta form, we can also say lives of people has gone worse since web 2.0, hence rise of such cases, but increase scale of platform also contribute to probability of malice
low_tech_love
Maybe I’m wrong, but my impression is that it has been a living-dead service for many years already. I’m old enough to remember when it was actually exciting to use Omegle and chat roulette, but I’ve tried on and off for many years now and my impression is that, even at the slight chance that you got someone other than a naked horny weirdo, nobody was really paying attention to the conversation or interested in anything other than 15-second meaningless interaction. We certainly lost something nice here at some point but I’m not sure it happened today.
sublimefire
Multiple years ago it was something to us - something new. There are too many people who do not care about it (similar services) these days, people are born with the internet and just take it for granted.
Another analogy could be the gas car industry. We just look at it differently nowadays, we prioritize pollution and do not think much of the fact that you could easily travel around the world in any of these gas guzzlers. You could not do it in a Tesla or any other electric car, yet many want to just kill it off.
usrbinbash
> yet many want to just kill it off.
That's not because we take what cars can do for granted, it's because individual traffic is a major contributor to the mechanism that is actively killing our habitat. That isn't an opinion, it's a proven, peer reviewed, often-challenged-never-falsified fact.
And no, EVs will not make that better. They are just a different instance of the same problem.
So yes, we do want to "kill off" cars. Not because we take them for granted, but because they suck as an idea, have always sucked as an idea, and will always suck as an idea, no matter how they are powered.
smolder
I disagree that they suck as an idea, they're just a misapplied one. Cars and combustion engines have done a lot for humanity. The bad ideas were: making excuses to sell as many cars as possible, investing in car infrastructure over mass transit, deceiving the public about the dangers of global warming once discovered, and for 50 years afterwards, ignoring/downplaying other externalities of fossil fuel extraction and use... Cars aren't really the villains in this story. It's just people being foolish and greedy, which they'll still be for the foreseeable future.
tylerjdurden
What do you think of the argument that EVs actually do make this better, albeit not entirely, due to the efficiency difference between[0] (coal-fired) power plants and internal combustion engines in gasoline powered vehicles?
[0] https://blog.ucsusa.org/jimmy-odea/electric-vs-diesel-vs-nat...
ulrikrasmussen
I think that's a very important and true argument, and something I have thought about for a while.
The thing is that these places only have value if people put in an effort, which is more likely to be the case when the platform and/or technology is new and only known by people who a priori have put in an effort to access it at all. When you mostly accessed web sites from desktop computers, you would be limited to use online platforms in the relatively small time window where you had free time at home, so the personal cost of using the platform was higher because you had to choose to take that time from other tasks that also required your computer.
Now everyone have a smartphone in their pockets and can access any online service at any time of the day, so the required effort to use them is a small fraction of what it used to be. As a result, the average user is not motivated to actually put in any effort, and because of this the quality suffers tremendously.
Maybe we should raise that lower bound on effort by requiring users to solve CAPTPTYCs - Completely Automated Programs To Prove That You Care - before you were allowed to interact with anyone online. A sort of proof-of-work for people to ensure that they have spent at least as much time on the content as they have on solving the puzzle that allowed them to publicize it.
Tijdreiziger
> we prioritize pollution and do not think much of the fact that you could easily travel around the world in any of these gas guzzlers
This example supports your point, but not in the way you think.
Back when Bertha Benz (wife of Karl Benz, the founder of Mercedes-Benz) took the first ‘road trip’ to another part of Germany, she had to fill up the tank at a local chemist, had to cool the engine with water from ditches and streams, and had to have her brakes repaired by a local cobbler. [1]
Nowadays, people take it for granted that cars are reliable and that there are gas stations everywhere.
[1] https://www.hotcars.com/the-story-of-bertha-benz-and-the-fir...
slikrick
when the planet is dead we can't go anywhere
cristoperb
I've never used Omegle myself, but I've watched all of Harry Mack's Omegle Bars videos (freestyle rapping) and they are golden. Always fun to see him matched with some random kids and brighten their day:
romanhn
I just discovered him yesterday and ended up watching something like 20 videos last night. This was also the first thought that came to my mind when I was reading the announcement.
wycy
The loss of Harry Mack’s Omegle Bars was the first thing that came to mind for me.
lukeholder
He was retiring the series at 100 episodes anyway, but yeah a sad day.
pwython
Wow, he finished that just in time (ep 100 was released just last week).
LarsAlereon
I'm really sad about this. I know that a lot of really desperate people used the text chat feature when they needed someone to listen, and there's certainly a lot of people who are alive and happy today because they found someone to talk to there when they needed it. I can't deny that there have also been cases where people's lives have been made worse or ruined because of something that happened to them, but I think on the balance the site made the world a better place.
yafbum
Every social app is a party, and every party peters out one way or another. Too few people? It's dead. Too many people? Chilling effects. No budget to police the place? It becomes a magnet for abuse / spam / porn / scams / human trafficking / you name it. This party lasted more than most, they should be proud to have had such a long run.
sizzle
Anyone know the tech stack this awesome 18 yr old used to create this service back in the day that was able to support so many concurrent users?
lubutu
I looked around and found an AMA [1].
> Python, using the Twisted framework for networking.
> Omegle runs on just one server: a Linode 2880. It used to be on a 720, which was very close to sufficient. No database at the moment, but if it never needs one, I'll most likely use PostgreSQL.
[1]: https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/9vbd7/i_made_omegleco...
Aeolun
The link to the proof is dead :(
__rito__
Here's a snapshot: https://web.archive.org/web/20151228083734/http://omegle.com...
spaer
Redis is/was part of the stack
buffalobuffalo
It used webRTC, at least in the early days. Same as Chat Roulette. That was why it was able to scale the way it did.
JellyYelly
How? WebRTC came out in 2011 and wasn't even widely supported in web browsers until years later. Omegle came out in 2009, and launched video in 2010.
buffalobuffalo
Ah, you're right. The video chat was definitely p2p though, I remember reading about it when it came out. I just tried to check what p2p video chat implementations were available back then, but no luck. Maybe a java plugin?
orly01
p2p?
thot_experiment
Wow fuck, I was on there sketching portraits of people just yesterday. This really sucks. RIP
unsupp0rted
> In recent years, it seems like the whole world has become more ornery
Have people always thought this (e.g. "the youth of today are lazy") or is it measurably true?
I feel like it's obviously true.
tpetry
We had some years of kind-of stability in the world with no significant big wars. But with recent events the world is feeling like "it is burning". Just because we got accustomed to the more peacefull live.
So, I wouldn't say its like "we always thought that". Its more like we had a good short phase and now its back to normal. Or maybe the good phase is the normal and the pendulum swings back?
password54321
The world would be much better if people learnt that wars even in places far from them such as between the middle east and the US, would have a network affect and bring instability to other parts of the world and soon near them. The world started "burning" again with the war on Iraq / Afghanistan.
grumple
> The world started "burning" again with the war on Iraq / Afghanistan.
If terrorists didn't kill thousands of Americans on 9/11, those wars don't happen, so you'd have to say 9/11 started it. Ironically, the world had less combat deaths worldwide than ever during those two wars (although this does a terrible job of capturing deaths caused by war, but not directly from combat): https://ourworldindata.org/war-and-peace
The 90s were relatively peaceful compared to the previous few decades, but we still had the Yugoslav Wars, Israeli-Palestine at times, the Gulf war, Rwanda.
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panki27
> Have people always thought this [...]?
arrowsmith
Even if people have "always" thought this, that doesn't mean they're wrong to think it today or that the complaint has always been invalid.
It's entirely possible that people have always been complaining about X and also that X is more prevalent today than it used to be.
trabant00
That does not support that they "_always_ thought this", it only means that this happened in the past. Another interpretation is that periods of hardship are followed by ones of stability and the generation that lived through the hardship notices differences in their young.
johnnyanmac
It's measurable, but not in an agreeable fashion. I'm sure if you tracked curse words, or simply looked at the number or reports an admin has managed, you can track a change.
But you then argue with the metric. Maybe curse words aren't a good measure of hostility. Maybe the admin was overzealous, or underzealous and then corrected. That's what makes it hard to come to a consensus.
Anectodally, on the internet, I would agree. I feel post 2016 saw an uptick in hostility, and then the pandemic years of 2021/2022 saw another uptick.
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_factor
In developing countries, living conditions improve and reduce the perceived value of work.
rsynnott
Yes; moaning about both the youth of today and old people goes back, at least, millennia (though there are sometimes cultural taboos against moaning about old people which dampens that down).
My pet half-serious theory is that we currently talk a lot about the dastardly millennials and boomers because senior media staff are largely genX; note that we don't hear much about genX these days. This will start to change in a few years as genX starts to age out, and suddenly everyone will be complaining about genX and genZ. Whole new stereotypes will have to be forged (the old genX stereotypes from the 80s are very youth-of-today oriented and won't work for moaning about old people), and no-one will ever mention avocados again.
brailsafe
The culture of any generation is defined by the generation before it, that's why Gen Xers are the most depressingly suburban and forgotten about generation, not the boomers, because while boomers love themselves more than anyone loves themselves, nobody glamorized boomerism more than Gen Xers, who grew up with more direct exposure than younger generations; they just didn't have the same numbers.
Likewise, most of our prominent entrepreneurs are all Gen X try-hards who found fortune because of the consumption patterns that millennials adopted and were in the right place at the right time to capitalize on it. Millennial consumption patterns of course having been heavily influenced by gen xers and boomers by proxy, the few that got that good job and kept it forever are quite happy to upgrade their iPhone every year, buy TVs and cars for no reason, and move to the boonies not realizing that Gen Xers mistakenly gave up their sense of community to follow in the boomers' footsteps; they'll borrow and pay anything possible for the privilege.
Anyway, I'm already working on my Gen X material.
gosub100
Our mouthpiece to complain and share outrage is what changed. In Desert Storm or Bosnia, you'd get a 5 minute update on the war, tucked inside a 30m national news cast (not speaking for everyone but the majority of Americans). Now you get nonstop almost-live combat footage, citizen journalists (a good thing), along with disinformation from bad actors trying to manipulate the narrative.
tempestn
It's a shame. Even before Omegle, I remember when ICQ had a random match text chat feature. I had some great conversations on there. Briefly used Omegle for the same, but even years back when I tried it the signal to noise was a lot lower. I'd love it if someone found a way to do it sustainably.
system2
I met so many people from ICQ random friend searches. Met them in real life, still talking to some. Skype had voice channels too, admins of channels similar to IRC. They shut it down for the same reasons.
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This is devastating. I have so many fond memories of meeting fellow weirdos over text. The days where StumbleUpon always took you somewhere exciting, cool, beautiful, interesting, funny, or novel. Where you looked at what people did with The Web 2.0 and only marveled at the possibilities of what could come. Truly feels like the death of one of the old guard, a Usenet-of-the-2010s.
I even used it during pandemic times as a way to dance with strangers over video; putting on ridiculous outfits and playing disco were some of the moments from those dark times that I still cherish.
RIP Omegle! You will be missed, by me and many others.