Talk to Strangers Online, at the Pace You Choose

You may be in a shared flat at midnight, or in a waiting room, or just not feeling like being seen. Maybe you are shy, and talking comes easier before faces are involved. None of those is a bad reason, and a good site should not make you feel like it is.

That is why talking to strangers online on PinkChat starts with a choice. You decide how much of yourself to show, and you can move up or down in the next match.

Written chat is easy to start and easy to let die. One-word replies kill it faster than anything. A few habits help.

• Reply with a sentence and a question, not just an answer.
• Skip "asl". Ask what they are doing, what they are listening to or where they are tonight.
• Match the length of what you receive. A paragraph in reply to a "hey" feels like a lot.
• If the replies slow down for a minute, it usually means a bad connection or a distraction, not a rejection.

Voice is the sweet spot for many people. You hear laughter, pauses and accents, and nobody sees your pyjamas. It also moves faster than text: a ten-minute voice chat can cover what would take an hour of typing.

A small thing that makes voice chats nicer: use headphones. Without them, the other person's voice leaks back through your speaker and turns into an echo for both of you.

One quiet advantage of chatting online is that somebody is always awake. If it is midnight where you are, it is breakfast or lunchtime somewhere else. People in a different time zone have no idea about your week, so they ask fresh questions, and you get to answer without the usual backstory.

It also takes the edge off the nerves. You are not trying to impress a person you will see again on Monday. You are just talking to someone, once, for as long as it is fun.

• Where they are right now, and what the weather is doing.
• What they are having for dinner, or wishing they were having.
• A song, show or game they cannot stop thinking about.
• The best place they have ever travelled to, and the worst food they tried there.
• Something small that went well today.

None of those need preparation, and each one invites a real answer. For more, how to talk to girls on video chat has a longer list that works for anybody, whatever mode you choose.

You can leave any time, and you do not owe anyone a reason. If you want to be kind about it, "I need to go, nice talking to you" does the job. If you feel uncomfortable, skip without a word and use report and block if the person broke the rules. The community guidelines describe what that covers.

Strangers online are mostly friendly and sometimes not. Keep your surname, address, phone number and workplace to yourself, and be wary of anyone who wants you to move to another app quickly. A few minutes with the safety tips before your first chat is time well spent.

Prefer it random and quick? Random video chat explains how matching works.