The single life can get quite lonely sometimes. Often, you might find yourself sitting at the computer knowing that you really should get some sleep. However, you just can't help to stay up. There is something just keeping you awake. You would like to call someone, but it is that late of an hour where everyone you know is probably already asleep. Or if you do call them, no one picks up the phone.
A man is left to himself with his own thoughts. Sometimes, they are quite disturbing thoughts. And sometimes a man wishes he had someone to talk to. Almost anyone would do.
I found myself in that situation a few weeks ago. I just wrote a motivation for Monday morning but I was still kind of coming down because of work the next day. I had a crazy thought. With all the crazy things that are available online, maybe there is someone that will just talk to you at your request. I typed in "someone to talk to" into Google and came to the website 7 cups of tea. It is a website where people can go to talk to "active listeners" to just talk about their problems.
Finding random people to talk to online is no recent thing. I remember decades ago that chat rooms were available on America Online. You could walk into any random room and join a discussion with up to 20 other people. Much more recent that that was chat roulette. You had the ability to talk to and see a random person but this website had the reputation of men going there to do obscene things on camera.
7 cups of tea was the first time I heard of a format where you just check in and talk to someone who is waiting for you. It kind of felt like an adult phone service only it was free and not dirty. As soon as I signed on, the listener was asking me how I was doing and what my problem was. I had no real problems, I just needed someone to talk to.
After talking to her for a few moments, she seemed kind of artificial and fake. Her responses were very robotic and I suspected I was talking to a good computer AI. To test her, I had to ask her very unexpected questions like what her favorite color was, what she thought of Lady Gaga, and what is the correct order of the planets in this solar system. After getting some silly responses, I was convinced that she was real and not a computer AI.
Talking to a complete stranger online is oddly very comfortable. Since they don't know you, you feel no sense of judgement and have no inhibitions about telling them anything. Active listeners are also willing to role play. You can carry on a conversation with him or her pretending to be someone else.
For anyone in a similar situation, 7 cups of tea might be fun to try out. It costs no money and it is easy to access. I would try to warn against using it too much because it could be habit forming in the same way a kid might play World of Warcraft for hours.
Now, I was surprised that the site exists. In today's world where people are growing more and more isolated from each other, a website like 7 cups of tea serves a purpose. When people don't want to deal with other people and would rather look at their smart phones all day, social isolation is bound to happen. And with a self therapy website, human interaction is becoming a commodity that can be requested on demand. The world is getting stranger and stranger. Pretty soon, there will be parlors where you can pay just to cuddle with a woman. Oh wait... never mind. Those already exist.
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