Skyping Strangers

[Richard M]

This is a very interesting read...

In any event, I was sitting at my desk in New York on Wednesday night, writing a BarlowSpam, when Skype started to emit the old-fashioned bell tone that signals a request for a voice chat. I looked at the window associated with the request and saw a bunch of Chinese pictograms where the name should be. Some kind of Asian chatspam, I figured, and I ignored it. A few minutes later, it rang again. The name of the caller was "Kitty11_3". There was also a text chat box on the screen, also from kitty11_3 which read, "I need a friend." I was skeptical. I figured that "Kitty," or whomever, was probably looking for "friends" to come see her "relax" in her web-cam equipped "bedroom." But I took the call. A delicate Asian-sounding voice came from someplace in Cyberspace. "Will you talk to me?" she said.

http://barlow.typepad.com/barlowfrie...timate_pl.html

[Halcyon]

Interesting article which just goes to show that the world is practically open, and compared to about 30 years ago, we can now stay in contact with people all over the world at little to no cost at all.
The Internet lets us travel in a way that we can discover different cultures and find out things we didnt know. Unlike a book or a television programme, we are interacting live with someone from that country and it is a fantastic way to learn new things, and meet new people.

When writing text it is hard to show real emotions.
There are countless times when I've had mails from people and its been hard to figure out what they have meant from their text.
As that person in the article has experienced, voice can allow you to really add emotions to a conversation and connect with them in a better way. It is great that anyone can just start talking to people so easily.

Ofcourse it must not become a complete way of life as staying in and having a life of only online friends would not be healthy and you need to get out the house. But that is only rarely that people will go to this extent.

I often see people who have never used the Internet, (Yes there still are many people that have never clicked onto the web) tell me that the internet is full of child molesters, pornography, and anything else they've read/ heard in the media.
Ofcourse there are going to be instances of fraud and fake people and as long as you check them out and dont reveal everything about yourself the moment you chat to them then there is no reason why that person may not be a genuine kind individual who is in fact looking for someone to taklk to / share their views / and have a normal friendly conversation. It is interesting to talk to someone. Everyone is different. If everyone was the same the world would be a very boring place. By chatting we open up our world to learn about new exeriences that others live by. And it is very interesting as it offers us a change from our daily life.

As with all people I chat to, I check them out, make sure they are not spammers / pornoggraphy chatters, or anyone dangerous, and then I start to chat to them. As long as you remember to take precautions then over time you can gradually share more information. Its simple.


It just goes to show how great the net is.

[Richard M]

Fantastic post Hal, the net has made things so much easier.
10 years ago I would never imagine that I would be talking to a friend in California in real time, by text, video, audio or even by IP phone - for free.
It's great, I've made some very good friends in the US, Spain and other countries even though I've never met them in "real life" - only by communicating over the net.
Indeed, I've never personally met Mick, Frank, Paul M, Chris or many others on this forum although I've met Neil and Russ in person. *
Seeing as we can run the biggest cable site in the world with just that, well it must prove something...

The Internet really is the Internet**...

* I have spoken to most of them on the phone or by Teamspeak though.

** The Internet is short for "International Network".