STRANGER BUT TRUE
Omegle.com — in case you haven’t heard (I was chided during my first chat on the site: How could anyone “NOT hear about this site?”) — was recently developed by a bored, ambitious, slacker-adorable teen in Vermont to enable strangers to instantly hook up via Instant Message.
Your chat conversation transcript is literally set up between “You” and “Stranger.”
Of course, I needed to check it out immediately.
“You’re now chatting with a random stranger,” the site welcomes you. “Say hi!”
At 2 a.m., I found myself chatting with a guy who said he was not a guy but that people called him Peter, was Spanish (“Hablas espanol?”) and then, when I finally signed off, revealed, in one final enigmatic flourish: “I lied. I AM black.”
In my favorite moment, he asked “If you are 33, then why is it you need to talk to strangers?”
Oh black-Spanish-Peter-lady, if you and I both knew.
Writes 18-year-old Leif K-Brooks in regard to my inquiry as to why he created this thing, “In general, people associate based on common interests. Nothing is wrong with that, and it’s completely understandable why people would want to have something in common with their friends. However, if no one ever talks to people who aren’t like them, lives will become very stagnant; it’s difficult to learn new things from someone who is just like you.”
For instance, I learned from “Peter” that it made him feel “sad face” when his connection imploded with another stranger he chatted with after he used a racial slur. This is quite common: Many connections are ended in the span of a minute.
In explaining to Petey-pie that something I wrote was only “a figure of speech, yo,” my new BFF proceeded to smack me down with: “So what, just cause I say I’m spanish . . . you automacally [sic] assume that I say ‘yo’?”
You’re now chatting with a random idiot. Say bye!
mstadtmiller@nypost.com

