5 things you instantly remember if you were the generation on Omegle.

Omegle, the online chat service that would connect you to strangers (and quite frequently, their genitals) is dead. No literally, if you visit it now there is even a tombstone.

For those who don't know, Omegle began in 2009 as a service that randomly paired users in one-on-one chat sessions, where you could chat anonymously with or without your camera on. It became a go-to bit of fun for millennials in the early 2010s, and in its later years helped a bunch of Gen Z TikTokers go viral.

The service was grossly abused by many people and was wrapped up in issues of discrimination, pornography and child abuse cases during its 14-year reign, which is partly why it was dissolved on November 8.

Currently, the homepage features a goodbye note from founder Leif K-Brooks, who opened the site when he was 18.

"If the internet is a manifestation of the 'global village', Omegle was meant to be a way of strolling down a street in that village, striking up conversations with the people you ran into along the way," he wrote, while stating "there can be no honest accounting of Omegle without acknowledging that some people misused it, including to commit unspeakably heinous crimes".

The page also includes a quote from author Douglas Adams:

"In the beginning the Universe was created. This has made a lot of people very angry and been widely regarded as a bad move."

Yep.

That about sums it up.

But for a generation of millennials, Omegle was also a formative experience, as evidenced by the below shared memories.

1. The d*cks.

Okay, let's just get the obvious out of the way first. If you spent even seconds on Omegle, you probably saw a penis. Most likely, multiple penises. 

Omegle was hijacked by dudes who wanted to jack off on camera almost immediately, which is gross and disturbing but also... not at all surprising. When they inevitably popped up, you and your friends would scream, hit next in a panic and then double over laughing.

2. It was the perfect pre-game activity.

The aforementioned penises were particularly funny when you were mid-way through a bottle of Passion Pop and getting ready to hit the town. This was practically a weekly ritual for my friend group when we were 19/20.

No pre-gaming was complete until you'd screamed at the sight of random strangers.

3. A/S/L?

A/S/L – a deeply millennial greeting meaning 'age, sex, location' – could've died with MSN Messenger. But the emergence of Omegle kept it going for many more years, and I think that is beautiful.

4. You could, and you would, pretend to be anyone but yourself.

Once you'd waded through all the highly inappropriate nudes and stumbled across someone who asked A/S/L, you were most likely to just... make something ridiculous up. 

My go-to was Greta, a 20-year-old German astronaut. I had taken a year of German in high school, so I'd just throw out random words to make it more believable. It still wasn't, but that made it funnier.

5. The one strangely normal unicorn person you'd come across once in a while.

Because you know what, the internet isn't ALL bad. 

Sometimes people were normal, and you would find someone you'd have a polite/interesting/not-at-all sexual conversation with for five minutes before heading back into the Wild West.

The absolute best part was stumbling another group of people doing the exact same thing as you... which was mostly drinking cheap wine while putting on your thick black eyeliner, Supre dresses and wedge heels.

RIP, Omegle. And thanks for the memories.

Feature image: Omegle.