Does anyone understand the appeal of Omegle?

[autumnpalm]

I work with the youth in my church and the other day they brought up the website Omegle. I hadn't heard of it before, so for those who haven't, the Wikipedia entry says:

"The service randomly pairs up users online into one-on-one chat windows, where they can chat anonymously using the handles "You" and "Stranger". Either party can disconnect at any time."

The website slogan is "Talk to strangers!"

I logged on today just to see what it was like and as I suspected there were some pretty suspect people on there. Definitely not people I would want my 13 or 14 year old daughter interacting with (these are the ages of the girls I work with!) It is supposedly safe because it is anonymous but it still gave me the creeps.

Am I the only one who doesn't really get the appeal of this kind of thing? I guess you could say chatting on the DIS is just interacting with strangers but there is a sense of community here, it is a great resource for information and there is moderation and surveillance of the community.

Has anyone else here read about or used the site? Apparently it's quite popular but I hadn't heard of it before! I was very surprised that the girls' parents let them on unsupervised!

 

[jazzielady]

That's just creepy. Another thing I gotta warn my kids about

 

[WOW! SERIOUSLY??]

it is not fun

 

[etoiles]

Out of curiousity I just went to the site and immediately had a chat window opened with a stranger and the first words typed on the screen were 'blow me.'

Well..... I think that about says it all....

 

[AshleyW]

I've gotten on there a few times. It's pretty entertaining for a few minutes, at least. Definitely not something for kids, though.

 

[luvmyfam444]

Never heard of it - thanks for the 411 though