I don’t know what AllAmericanBreakfast had in mind, but for “random connection with strangers for open-ended conversation”, what leaps to my mind is Usenet. In its heyday it was wonderful. It took a blow from Eternal September, but in the end I believe it was blogs that killed it As soon as LiveJournal invented blogging for the masses, most everyone preferred to write in their own personal space on the net instead of the town square, and left in droves. In principle Usenet still exists even now, and a few pockets of it still have sensible activity, but it is as lichen creeping on rocks compared with the tropical forest it once was. It is at least fifteen years ago that I finally left, recognising that I only still hung on out of sentiment for what it had been.
I don’t know what AllAmericanBreakfast had in mind, but for “random connection with strangers for open-ended conversation”, what leaps to my mind is Usenet. In its heyday it was wonderful. It took a blow from Eternal September, but in the end I believe it was blogs that killed it As soon as LiveJournal invented blogging for the masses, most everyone preferred to write in their own personal space on the net instead of the town square, and left in droves. In principle Usenet still exists even now, and a few pockets of it still have sensible activity, but it is as lichen creeping on rocks compared with the tropical forest it once was. It is at least fifteen years ago that I finally left, recognising that I only still hung on out of sentiment for what it had been.