Ben Facey | Meaningful conversation

At face value | Have a no baggage conversation

By Ben Facey 04/03/16 10:33pm

Last week was April Fool’s Day, the one day a year where terrible pranks and general mean-spirited jokes are both acceptable and expected. Reddit, a popular online forum site, has once again created a social experiment to celebrate the occasion.

Last year, Reddit created what would become known simply as “The Button.” This experiment was extremely simple: Reddit placed a 60-second timer along with a button on its home page. Every time a user clicks the button the timer returns to the full 60 seconds. Everyone had only one allotted button click. This simple concept led to weeks of online conspiracies, faction forming and even pseudo-religions based on a simple click of the mouse.

This year, Reddit has created a more nuanced and more interesting experiment called “Robin,” a random user chat similar to Omegle. You enter the chat and are immediately paired with another random user, and have two minutes to chat during the first round. The interesting part is the voting. During each round all members of the chat have a chance to vote on the outcome of the chat.

The options are as follows: ABANDON — if you vote this you will leave the chat at the end of the allotted time; STAY — if the majority of chatters vote this option, then a permanent space will be created for all the users to chat; and GROW — if a majority of users vote this option then at the end of the allotted time, the group will merge with a similarly-sized group and therefore grow in number of users.

I played out this experiment several times, each one unique in unexpected ways. I had a pairing with a man from Kentucky who wrote lyrics to Willie Nelson songs the whole time. I joined a group of 20-ish Redditors who attempted to turn our small group into a democratic autocracy. I even became part of a group of more than 60 chatters divided into all-out war over a newly created religion worshipping the supermarket chain Costco.

Out of the dozen or so “interactions,” I found one to be exceptionally meaningful. I found myself a part of a group of 16 people from around the world. For the allotted 20 minutes we discussed our lives, our histories or hobbies. We discussed religion and politics in a delightfully civilized manner. It ended with everyone voting STAY to have a permanent space to chat and discuss life with the strangers who were now friends.

After the success of this interaction I began to wonder: Could I have such a meaningful experience with 16 strangers face-to-face? Probably not. Something changes in a face-to-face encounter. Even in a group of strangers, when talking face-to-face, you bring with you your insecurities, your fears, your self-consciousness and your desire to quickly fit in. It changes an interaction from something possibly meaningful to a chess match: figuring out the words to say and the way to act in order to quickly fit in and assimilate into the group.

Earlier this year I wrote a piece on the necessity of an anonymous internet; Robin is the perfect defense of this. Reddit has, possibly unknowingly, created a space for strangers to come together regardless of background, race, religion, age, country, insecurities, failures, status or baggage to have bizarre, interesting, unforgettable and once in awhile extremely meaningful and rewarding conversations.

I do not need to explain that the internet is an amazing place — you all know this — but maybe I do need to persuade you to use it differently. It is the culmination of all human knowledge, intellect and history, but it also exists as a place to form real human connections. No, this is not sending friend requests on Facebook, or liking an Instagram photo, but having real and worthwhile discussions with real people in an unencumbered setting.

Reddit is definitely not a site for everyone — actually in most cases I would say avoid the site — but I urge everyone reading this to go to reddit.com/robin/join and give this a shot. It will take only minutes out of your day, and you might even get something out of it. Give it a try and see what it’s like to be truly anonymous and truly human.

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