Sunday, 26 January 2025
Three days ago, is happened to be another boring holiday. Like any other chronically online person, I go to Youtube to waste my time by watching random videos. I watched this video about a youtuber who accidentally 'broke' the oldest social media, caused by the sudden high traffic in the website. And the website is called Talkomatic.
for more context: (youtube.com) I Revived The Oldest Social Media - yikes
Based on the website:
"Talkomatic is an online platform for real-time text communication, essentially a chatroom. Users can type messages, and everyone in the room can see the messages they are being typed"
The real, first Talkomatic was released in 1973 at the University of Illinois on the PLATO system by Doug Brown and David R. Woolley. Who are they? and what tf is a PLATO system? Just search it in the web, pal.
I ain't gonna yap about an ancient tech here. Because my main focus is the web version, that is released on 2014 by the same guy who made it in the 70's. But anfortunately, due to technical issues and misuse, the web version was taken offline in 2024. I wonder why...
In June 2024, Talkomatic was rebuilt from scratch by the community as an open-source project on GitHub. They added some improvements and features that makes using them in the modern day safer and easier.
Well yesn't. Yes, it's based on a text communication but different from just sending a message bubble. It is like, you're screen sharing notepad, or when you're writing a message for your chair mate at school using one sheet of paper back to back because you can't talk when the teacher is teaching.
I mean yeah it's just a text-based interaction but there's something charming about it... I don't know what is it, but one thing that I'm sure is, because of small and obscure the place is in the web.
I can say that because I experienced it myself. I've spent hours talking with people there and the conversations we had is really engaging. There's not much public room online on the page so I enter a room that had the most members inside. At first I don't know what they're talking about, but as time passed, I started to catch up and damnn, I never had a good convo with strangers until now.
I kinda forgor what we talked about first, but I remember when we're talking about a lot of nerdy stuff like Windows 7, the old internet, Linux, Roblox, and cars. Some of them have the same hobby(ies) as me! I even encountered a Porter Robinson fan and his favorite album is Nurture, he's just like me fr.
Yes, we're just a strangers. The only thing we know about each other at first are our nickname and the useless location column that we can fill with anything. But as the conversations flowing, we start to learned about each other. Sharing interests and experiences, I even got some music recs from them.
TwentySeconds, Noah, and DluxGamerYT. These are people I'll always remember for being a very fun 'strangers' to talk to.
I like this website. Just a small humble platform that accidentally blew up because a Youtuber tryna 'revive' it but then the server is overloaded and shit happened. (Watch this video for more context). Thankfully, it's back and not filled with people trying to promote their shitty stuff anymore. I'm having a good time there, lucky that the first people I encountered are nice and very enthusiastic about things they like.
If you want to experience it yourself, check out the website https://talkomatic.co/. No sign in required (for the classic version), just fill your nickname and you're good to go!
- Dz, flexing their Arch Linux setup to strangers -