Heya!
My name is ken and I just wanted to say that 2017 was an absolutely CRAZY year and not just for me but this site as well.
I wouldāve just turned 16 and was going through my first year of high-school. Some of you may know it can be a very difficult time in a teens life. I was always an awkward kid with MASSIVE amounts of social anxiety, so meeting and talking to people (especially peers) was very challenging to me.
(In hindsight, it was a pebble compared to the mountain I made it out to be.)
But then I found a chat-site called TalkWithStranger!
At first I thought this site was a creepfest with people using random chats and anonymity to do what creeps do best. But then I found the Public Chat and seeing the amount of active users chatting with each other is what convinced me to create an account. Through public chat alone I was able to meet so many new and wonderful individuals from all across the world. These people who were just as odd and introverted as I was and it made me feel so much better about myself.
I was active daily, talking with people and making new friends. In fact I was so active that I had actually become moderator for a short while and had even worked with the developers of the site to implement a livestream for music. I remember the day that admin entered public chat to tell us that the site had its most traffic (active users) that day and they seemed genuinely excited and humbled, it was super adorable.
The only Global moderator I remember from the old days is @WtfJudith and Iām really glad you get to keep doing what you do best <3
Now the stories I have from the site, the situations and just all around drama can mostly all be traced back to one person named Manuel, or his online alter ego ākekā.
I have met Manuel personally and originally called myself his friend. He was a caring and compassionate kid from Italy who was only a year older than me. It felt almost like Iāve known him for years although I had just met him. We would play video games together and tell each other about school and our family, we grew quite close or at least thatās what it seemed to me.
Now ākekā is the polar opposite of what I just described. Just imagine the most horrid troll known to the cyberspace and amplify that by 100. The worst parts of 4chan, reddit and Facebook all neatly bundled together and ready to start a war.
He got what he wanted, war was started on this site. Trolls Vs Mods. Never-ending ban waves and lewd pictures were all weapons in this war, and Kek was leading the trolls. Kek had also convinced admin to make himself a moderator before it was quickly revoked due to blatant abuse of power. He was able to hack into others accounts and pose as them before he was discovered by the admin. He didnāt care if you were a mod or a new user, everyone was affected.
I personally believe that this āwarā had a huge impact on this siteās user-base and not in a good way.
Hereās a pic of me having to convince admin that I am not kek (because of his recent account hackings)
This is getting to be a bit of a read so I might make a PT 2 with more tea if anyone is interested in what went on back in the sites āgolden daysā.
Goodnight luvs, Kenny.