Random text chat

$ history | head

The internet has always met strangers in text

Long before video calls, people met strangers by typing. In August 1988 a Finnish student named Jarkko Oikarinen wrote Internet Relay Chat at the University of Oulu, and within a few years thousands of people were typing into channels named after cities, hobbies and nothing in particular, talking all night with people they would never see. On 3 December 1992, an engineer named Neil Papworth sent the first text message to a mobile phone - "Merry Christmas" - to Vodafone's Richard Jarvis, who could read it but not reply. Within a decade, the whole world was texting.

Text has survived every newer, richer format because it does something they cannot: it lets you talk without making a sound, at your own pace, from anywhere. TalkLive's text chat is the same old idea with the useful parts kept - one stranger at a time, a Next button, and Block when you need it.

$ man hyperpersonal

Why people can get close surprisingly fast in text

In 1996 the communication researcher Joseph Walther published a paper in Communication Research describing what he called "hyperpersonal" communication. Text, he argued, is not simply a poorer version of talking face to face. Because people can take a moment to choose their words, and because the reader fills the gaps in with their imagination, text conversations can become more intimate than equivalent conversations in person - sometimes surprisingly quickly.

That cuts both ways, and it is worth knowing. It is part of why a midnight text chat with a stranger can feel unexpectedly honest. It is also why people can seem more appealing in text than they are, and why scammers love the format. Enjoy the closeness; keep your details to yourself until you are sure.

$ when --text-beats-voice

When typing is the better choice

Tap to Chat has its own matching pool, so everyone you meet there wants to type too - nobody is waiting for you to unmute.

$ cat privacy.txt

What happens to what you type

Your match sees your display name, avatar, any interests you added, a country estimated from your network and your local time. They do not see your name, email, phone number, IP address or city. Typed messages are delivered through TalkLive's servers and kept in a moderation log so that reports can be reviewed - it holds the newest 5,000 messages across the site and deletes older ones as new ones arrive; the Privacy Policy has the details. The other person can always screenshot, so type as though what you send could be kept.

TalkLive is for adults 18 and over. Harassment, threats, scams and sexual content without consent lead to bans, and every chat has Report and Block. If you would like to know exactly what anonymity does and does not cover, our anonymous chat page opens the file.