If you’re interested in learning important life lessons, a random video chat site probably isn’t where your instincts would lead you. After all, sites like ChatSpin are geared towards making friends and meeting strangers, right? That doesn’t really say “go here to gather gems of wisdom”. It’s true that random video chatting may not change your life in a big way, but it can still have plenty of positive effects.
What Can You Learn from Random Video Chatting?
And guess what? Everything mentioned below could come as a result of simply exploring the random chats on your chosen website. There aren’t any special steps to take or a certain order in which you have to do things. All you have to do is keep an open mind, and the rest will follow on its own.
You can Strengthen Your Social Skills
There are plenty of ways to boost your social confidence, but random video chatting can be especially useful – especially for anyone with social anxiety. Why? Because you can leave any chat, at any time you want. This means that if you aren’t feeling a particular chat partner, you can find another one. If you make some blunder that you just can’t forgive yourself for, there’s no need to fix anything – just get a new chat partner who has no idea that you’re occasionally awkward.
It’s a bit like using training wheels while you’re learning to ride a bike. At first, you won’t be able to balance; without the training wheels, you’d spend all your time falling over rather than getting any constructive practice in. Since you do have training wheels, though, you won’t be preoccupied with the possibility of taking a tumble. You’ll be able to focus on getting the right balance, and soon enough, you’ll be riding like a pro.
When you can reduce the stress of talking with strangers, you can concentrate on the actual conversation, instead of all the disaster scenarios you’ve already planned out in your head. With enough practice, you could bring that same focus to your real-life conversations too.
Boundaries Can be More Important than Some Friendships
Visit the home page of any video chat site, and chances are you’ll see them talking about the friendships you could make. This is true, but there are all different kinds of friendships – and if you know they won’t last, it probably isn’t smart to do away with all your personal boundaries. Specifically, you should avoid giving out personal details like your last name, email, phone number, addresses for your home or workplace, etc. In general, anything that could be used to identify or ha*k you belong well away from an anonymous random chat.
But what if you’re really feeling a connection with someone you just met online? Well, it’s your choice, but there’s a small chance that this person is actually an identity thief so you can also secure yourself from online issues with identity protection tips – that’s just the reality of video chat sites. While you shouldn’t assume that all your chat partners are up to no good, you should still prepare for the possibility. How can you prepare? By setting boundaries, and sticking with them.
Sometimes Self-interest Works Out for the Best
Most cultures today put an emphasis on considering others before yourself. Whether it’s cleaning the office breakroom, or holding back snide comments around someone you really dislike, you probably do plenty of things on the days that are for other people’s sake, not yours.
If you’re random video chatting, however, it’s a different story. Not that it’s the wild west, although a few chat partners might give you that impression; rather, everybody does certain things for convenience’s sake, which would be taken as an insult anywhere else.
Consider, for instance, the way random chatters cut each other off in the middle of a conversation if they don’t care for the way it’s going. Is this rude? On a chat site, it’s just efficient. If you stayed for every single chat partner, you’d spend half your time online listening to people you didn’t even enjoy talking to. Instead, start putting your own interests first – your chat experience will turn out much better.
Rejection can be a Valuable Form of Feedback
It would be hard to find someone who enjoys getting rejected, whether it’s from a job proposal, an offer of friendship, or even a simple conversation. If it happened on a video chat site, though, you can still turn it into something useful.
First of all, you have to remember that you can’t possibly be the right chat partner for everybody – you’re going to get passed over by some people no matter what. However, it could be happening more than it has to. If you think this might be the case, ask yourself what you could be doing better. Do you need to start coming up with some talking points, so your chat partners aren’t doing all the work? Or do you simply need to improve your lighting setup, so you don’t look like you’re broadcasting from a dungeon? It might take a few tries, but you can probably fix whatever’s causing the problem by simply paying attention.
There are Many Odd People in the World
Loads of people are made to feel like oddballs for the silliest things. They like to dip their potato chips in mustard, or they read Shakespeare’s sonnets for fun. Even if you are genuinely weird, sometimes it just takes a bigger friend group for you to realize that a ton of other people are weird too. You don’t have to feel like the proverbial sore thumb, or wish that you were more “normal”, especially if you’re random video chatting. Even with the most obscure tastes, you’re sure to find some kindred spirits in the people you meet online.
Do you want to experience some of these benefits for yourself? The first step is easy – hop online and start meeting people!
All you have to do is start chatting like everybody else on the site; you’ll soon be able to see for yourself that random video chatting can be a lot more than just entertainment!