Gives me chills, that was so heartfelt and raw. Hurt on all sides, but this is a bit like losing access to a public space because someone committed crimes there.
One of the greatest things Omegle enabled is this... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HhzHV9QD0Is (Harry Mack freestyling for random Omegle matches, it was a series of 90+ episodes and brought me and others so much joy during COVID)
Frank Tedesco, pianist / musician meets people on Omegle, takes song requests and plays them - and for ones he doesn't know, he listens once on his phone then plays them by ear.
Both Frank Tedesco and Marcus Veltri frequently did joint Omegle videos with Rob Landis. Tedesco and Veltri also have some joint videos. I seem to also recall some Wilkins, Landis, and Tedesco collaborations.
Man, i stayed up way past bedtime watching the Frank Tedesco youtubes. I was completely blown away, his ability to listen to 20 seconds of a song on his phone and then get it mostly right on the piano is incredible. What an amazing individual. hah, the reactions were golden too, very funny and endearing.
edit: i'm not exactly musically inclined. When i was in college the joke was Guitar Center had painted a line around the building in the parking lot and i was not allowed to cross it.
Thanks so much for posting that. I hadn't ever come across Harry Mack. That guy is fantastic. And he gave so much happiness to those people he was rapping for! Just seeing all the delight on their faces gave me a tear in my eye. There's a lot of lonely people in the world, and for a moment, he improved their lives. We need better ways to connect; today I can VC with anyone in the world in a second, but we don't know how to connect like he does. Creators, work to make that kind of connection happen.
So happy you've discovered it! In every single video in the series he lifts up a bunch of people who are struggling in a really personal, memorable, inspiring way. I reckon he's saved a few lives (at least).
Great analogy. And.. thank you so much for posting this. HMack is a legend. Every time I listen to him I get stuck for hours. He is mindblowing constantly, pure love. It's worth the excursion every time, no one can amaze and impress like him every time. I've seen some Omegle videos with him before, but this one was really special. Super appreciate this.
Tbh the sad thing isn't any youtuber losing a platform, it's that Omegle was really a place people went when they were having a hard time and other people went there to cheer them up. I really hope there's another platform like it, but I don't know it.
There's an interesting progression watching him over time. While his technical ability has dramatically improved, so too has the engagement. Now you start to get more clips of people saying "Wait. I've seen you on Youtube/TikTok". Love his journey.
The journey of those episodes is really inspiring. Practising in that environment he pushes the boundaries of so many areas of human achievement in one, and once he's better than anyone else in the world (maybe half way through the series) he then starts surpassing himself faster and faster.
I’m so glad to see Harry Mack getting love on here. It’s wild that he just shared his last episode on Friday and now the site is shutting down. Glad he already took off and found success.
For that one it may be a combination of two things.
1. He starts out by asking if he can show them a magic trick. They say yes or nod yes. He then exits stage right. He then returns either through the back door or some the side stage left. Where he enters from is too far away from where he left for him to have walked or even ran there in the time between entrance and exit.
The part up to where he exists stage left could be pre-recorded. His wording and gestures change slightly with different people but he could have several different pre-recorded segments for this.
As Teller once observed:
> Sometimes magic is just someone spending more time on something than anyone else might reasonably expect
Penn has said something similar:
> The only secret of magic is that I’m willing to work harder on it than you think it’s worth
It could then switch to live for his return, where he then actually converses with them to prove that he's live.
2. If he encounters someone whose responses to the pre-recorded segment don't fit in, he skips them. Remember, we don't see how many people he had to try this with to get enough good ones for a video, and recall Teller's quote from above.
The one he's done that has me baffled is the one where he does this:
1. He asks them what city they live in.
2. He then tells them he used to live in that city and gives the address of where he lived. It is their address or an address of a close neighbor.
He also does this except instead of asking the city he tells them he has a talent for guessing people's names, and then tells them their name.
I can see in general how to do these, by using fake disconnects. He uses fake disconnects in one of his most common routines where he asks someone if he can show them a magic trick, starts a "pick a card" type routine, and then disconnects just has he's revealing their card. Then later when the person is connected to someone else either that someone else says "is this your card?" and holds up the correct card or he walks into that someone else's room and shows the card.
The key here is that he doesn't really disconnect. He just shows the disconnect screen, and then switches to feeding them video of the other person. They think that they have connected to someone new on Omegle but it is him the whole time.
With fake disconnects he could have his subjects in the "tell them their name" bit first talk to an accomplice who gets their name, fake disconnect and fake connect with him, and then he can do his name guess.
That should be fairly easy because people often exchange names on Omegle. But full addresses? I'd hope that would be rare, rare enough that even a Penn/Teller level of time would not be enough to get many people.
I've been following Harry Mack for years now and he still never ceases to amaze me.
Someone who has worked incredibly hard at their craft in a very public manner.
The positive vibe he brings makes the internet a little bit better on every encounter.
I almost shed a tear when H.Mack got the opportunity to perform in front of his idols, Ice Cube, who said he was one of the best freestyle rappers he's seen, and had followed his career closely for years. A magical moment :-)
It's more like losing access to a bar that allowed random people to meet in private rooms, and didn't check they weren't giving access to minors, and didn't check inside the private rooms to prevent sexual abuse.
And so now they’ll have to choose one of the other, even seedier bars. The kids aren’t any better off.
You’ve made a poor analogy, though, since obviously it’s very trivial for a bar to validate age at the door. If such a thing were easy for Omegle to do, I’m sure they would.
This bar had a complex tunnel system leading up to it that was completely unlit. In the beginning you could run right through, but eventually they made you yell "I'm over 18" and took your word on it.
This bar also had special partitions in each room that were practically indestructible, allowing sound and light through but protecting from physical harm.
[EDIT: I don't mean to imply that the check is easy! The reality of Omegle's difficulties is understood. I'm just riffing on the metaphor]
With websites, you can have one person serving ten million people, and support that on a single income. With bars, you can only fit about a hundred people in, and enough of them have to be paying customers that you can afford to keep the bar running – but that also means you can physically look at everyone's identification papers.
The anything goes / mass surveillance dichotomy is false. It is possible to have small-scale, individually-moderated websites, if the software to host them is available and easy to run, without sacrificing privacy (or even accountability). Pseudonymity is usually good enough, especially for things like Omegle.
Unfortunately, that requires a return to the days when most people's primary computing device was capable of acting as a web server, and computer literacy implied empowerment: that might be tricky, but if we work hard enough I'm sure we can get there.
> How do you propose verifying a users age without sacrificing privacy?
It's usually obvious if you can have a short conversation with the person in question. Throughout my childhood escapades, I'm certain that most, if not all, the responsible adults I interacted with knew pretty much exactly how old I was. (I'd managed to navigate a legal loophole that, I believe, still exists in GDPR today, so they weren't required to kick me off – but while I was treated as an equal, I wasn't treated the same way I'm treated now.)
> If it can be done at small scale, it will get sold to data brokers and exploited at large a scale
That's quite illegal, and quite easy to detect (just give slightly different data to everyone and see what leaks). Most people don't commit crimes: individuals just don't have the kinds of incentive to buy and sell people's personal data that organisations like Facebook, Taboola and Oracle have. (And what would they get for betraying these people's trust? $30? Sure… I'd totally go for that.)
How do you propose to give slightly different data to everyone and see what leaks when you have to have a short conversation with the person in question?
Because you can't police who is using the device at the other end. You're authenticating a client device, not a person, and that doesn't keep children any safer from abuse - if anything it means they have an incentive to keep their use of a thing secret for fear of punishment, which makes them more vulnerable.
Depends on the park. Some are known for it. Parents know to keep their kids away from those parks. For that reason, it’s better to have one really cruisy park that everyone knows about and can easily avoid but which also acts to contain the pervs. Maybe Omegle closing will just make the predators harder to spot and keep away from?
You've got an axe to grind don't you? Does it really not seem obvious to you that the damage of a single sexual harassment in a park outweighs any number of online interactions?
the worst thing that could happen on omegle is that a child shows herself naked. this in fact, is not the end of the world, and certainly doesn't justify some bullshit where we have to ask for permission before making a website or internet service plus photo ID for this and that party or whatever the hell you consider part of your solution.
One of the greatest things Omegle enabled is this... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HhzHV9QD0Is (Harry Mack freestyling for random Omegle matches, it was a series of 90+ episodes and brought me and others so much joy during COVID)