As I’ve said in the past, for every negative interaction the internet has housed, there was been an equal and opposite positive one. While the dangers of reaching out to the world are obvious, many people, who would have otherwise never had an audience or someone to talk to, have been able to reach out and interact with people in a way that has helped their mental health.
I always try to remember that when I grow weary of the overuse of modern social networks. Okay, so Rando isn’t exactly operating on a higher plane here, but it touches on some of those same principles.
The app, in short, is exactly what it says it is. Rando is a way to reach out to people and share silly pictures, anecdotes, and GIFs, which is basically what most conversations distill down to anyway in this era of emoji. It’s tagline of “bored?” sends a clear message to its audience, in that it’s not something you’re going to use all the time, but it’s great to bust out when nothing is happening.
To facilitate this process, prospective users will select from a category (photo, GIF, quote), then break it down further into a type (qualifiers like romantic, funny, or pet related), and finally, choose to send it to a party either blind, or revealed. The former obfuscates the photo or text so you can’t see it until it actually goes through. It’s supposed to be “exciting,” but I usually just ended up revealing it and flipping through them until I found one I liked.
It’s silly, but fun. Rando is technically a free app, but every few “sends” or so it’ll queue up an ad. It’s not obtrusive and doesn’t take away from heavy usage, if you do end up getting into it, but there’s sadly no way to “buy out” the program, so you’re stuck with the occasional pop-up message from time to time. As long as they keep rolling out updates to keep the GIFs, quotes, and pictures relevant, it’s not so bad.
Rando is an iOS app that can be downloaded for free in the iTunes App Store.
