I Used to Fake My Camera. Now I Actually Need These Conversations.

I got into video chat trolling when I was nineteen. I found a tutorial on YouTube for routing a looped video through a virtual camera. Download a clip, set it as your webcam input, and hop on random chat sites. People would try to talk to someone who was not there. I thought it was hilarious.

I did it for months. Different clips, different platforms. Sometimes I would let it run in the background while I played games. I never thought about the people on the other end. They were just reactions on a screen.

That was six years ago. A lot changed since then. I moved cities for work, lost touch with most of the people I used to hang out with, and spent the last year mostly alone. Not in a dramatic way. Just the quiet kind where you realize your phone has not made a sound all weekend. The loneliness epidemic stopped being something I read about. It became my Thursday night.

So I went back to video chat. No loops this time. Just my face and whatever I could think of to say. The first few sessions were rough. I had forgotten how to hold a conversation with a stranger.

I have been trying different platforms since then. Fox Video Chat ended up being the one I open most, with some other small sites coming in clutch as well. The people I run into in these platforms tend to actually want to talk. Last week a guy from Argentina spent twenty minutes teaching me how to make chimichurri. The week before, someone from Poland told me about a village where her grandparents grew up. Small things, but they stay with you when your social life has gone quiet.

There is some irony in this. The same type of platforms I used to waste people's time on are now the ones keeping me company. I think about the people on the other side of those looped videos sometimes. I hope they found better conversations than the ones I gave them.