Hello Fellow Kids: I Spent An Arvo In Chat Rooms & It Was A Trashfire

This is a new series, Hello Fellow Kids, where we rediscover cherished (and not so cherished) relics of our teenage years. In this instalment, I’m navigating the terrifying terrain of online chat rooms.

I don’t want your pity, but for me talking in chat rooms was probably the most invigorating part of being a teenager.

Sure, MSN Messenger was great, but you were mostly just talking to your friends you just saw an hour earlier at school or the boyfriend you had only met once who lived in Geelong (just me?).

There was no thrill quite like logging on to a random chat room with your bestie in the privacy of your dad’s study.

My main memory of chat rooms was ‘asl’ as far as the eye could see and occasionally making new besties with strangers you just vibed with. But my experiences came from when I was around 14 to 16 and that was way back in the early ’00s. So what would it be like today? Well, there was only one way to find out!

I tried chat rooms as an adult and oh boy, it was an experience:

I spent most of my time on Omegle, as it was super easy to use and there was no need to register for anything. This appealed to me as I really didn’t want to give my email out to any seedy sites.

Firstly, I tried a friendly greeting…

I was dumped as a potential friend immediately.

Then I thought maybe I need to use chat lingo, so naturally I sent ‘asl?’

No takers? I tried again with the addition of a welcoming smile.

This was just rude! Losing my confidence, I remained silent for my next encounter until I got a ‘Hey’. Winning!

I sent back my go-to ‘asl’. They replied with two out of three answers, which ain’t bad.

I noticed I would be penalised for not replying quick enough.

Many potential friendships were foiled for me not replying in less than five seconds.

Umm…I am a BUSY WOMAN and RESPECTED JOURNALIST*.

(* my mum tells me so and I believe her.)

I decided to mix things up and reply ‘M’ for once. This was not taken favourably.

Why can’t two males have a nice chat? What’s happening to civilised society?!

Back at the Omegle opening page, you can set a topic so I decided to select ‘cats’.

This was…a mistake.

I was shook. I simply love to discuss felines, get your mind out of the gutter!

The more interactions I had, the more I noticed the convo often descended into horny chat.

I got quite a few messages like this:

Maybe I did want to see?

Then I got vague messages that seemed to always turn to sex talk.

And many more would end with the person asking to add me on Snapchat.

I think I showed my age by not know what ‘snap’ was but pretty sure I won them over with my MF, fun mo-fo banter.

Next time, I thought I’d do what everyone else seemed to do: start the convo by immediately declaring my gender.

I soon discovered at 31, I was considering hideously old by chat room standards.

Sick of being told how old I am, I decided to take on my old high school persona as a 16-year-old, but then my experiment took a dark turn.

Leaving Omegle behind and googling other ways to connect with strangers, I realised chat rooms weren’t as fun as I recalled.

This is the only acknowledgment I got in this chat room.

It was a lot of random ramblings and people yelling into an empty void.

But by far I faced the most horniness on chat site Talk with Stranger.

For those playing at home, I did not click here.

Then there was this person who tried to drag horny convo out of me but I resisted.

I’m pretty sure they got what they came for…

They quickly disconnected. Making new friends online is proving to be difficult in this modern age we live in.

Next time I try to cling to relics of the past, I should really just start wearing butterfly clips.