Vent to a stranger, anonymously

The people who know you are the worst people to vent to, for one reason: they will remember. They will bring it up. They will worry, or take a side, or tell someone. A stranger on HearMe has none of that. They do not know your name, they cannot see your face, and when the chat ends it is gone from their screen and not saved on any profile of yours. You get the relief of saying it without the cost of having said it.

There is a second reason. A stranger listens differently. They have no history with you, so they hear the thing you are actually saying rather than the version filtered through everything else they know. People are often surprised by how well a stranger understood them in ten minutes.

Text if you want control. You can write it out, delete half, and send the part you can stand to send. Nobody hears your voice crack. It is the right mode if you are somewhere you cannot talk, or if what you need is to put the thing into words for the first time.

Voice if you need to be heard. There is something about saying it out loud to a real person, even one you will never meet, that typing does not do. The call is mic-only; the site never asks for a camera, and it is not recorded. If you cry, nobody sees it, and nobody else hears it: every call is private, between the two of you only.

The request board is the third option: post what you need to talk about, pick voice or text, and wait for the stranger who wants exactly that conversation rather than whoever the queue sends next.

You do not need a clever first line. 'I just need to vent for a bit, is that okay' is the whole opening, and almost everyone says yes. It tells the stranger what you need, which is not advice, and it gives them a role, which is to listen. If they start solving, you can say so. If they are not the right person, Next, and try again. It costs nothing.

Set an interest tag if it helps: 'venting', 'listening', 'life'. The matcher prefers people who picked the same tag, and a lot of people who pick those are here to listen.

Honestly: it varies. Most strangers on HearMe are decent and will listen. Some will say the wrong thing, because they are strangers and not therapists. A few will be having a bad night themselves. Occasionally someone will not want to be your listener, and that is allowed. Treat the first person as a first attempt. If they are not right, the next one is a tap away, and nothing you said follows you.

What you should not expect is a professional. A stranger is not a counsellor, and HearMe is not a crisis service. If what you are carrying is heavier than a bad week, the next section is for you.

For everything below that line, a stranger is a fine place to start. Saying it once to someone who cannot repeat it often makes it possible to say it again to someone who can help.

• Text messages are held for 24 hours only so that a report can be reviewed, then deleted. They are never shown on a profile or to anyone outside the chat.
• Voice calls are private and not recorded. Only a report sends a short clip from just before it for review.
• The stranger sees your nickname and your country flag. Not your name, email, IP, city or face.
• You can Block at any time. It is permanent, and you do not need a reason.
• A guest session is a cookie with a random identifier. Clear it and there is no trace of the session on your device either.

More on what the site does and does not keep at anonymous chat.

Half the people who come here to vent end up on the other side of it another night, listening to someone else. It is one of the better things the site does. If you have the room for it, set the tag 'listening', and when someone opens with 'can I vent', say yes and let them. You already know what it is worth.