Meet strangers online and leave as acquaintances.

Meeting a stranger online works because neither of you has a history to protect. You do not know each other's friends, jobs or exes, so the conversation starts clean. That freedom is why people often say more interesting things to a new person than to someone they see every day.

Researchers have found the same thing offline: people expect talking to strangers to be awkward and are surprised by how much they enjoy it. The first ten seconds are the hard part. After that, it is just two people comparing notes on their day.

You press start and a new person appears, picked at random from whoever is online. You both say hello, someone asks a question, and within a minute you know whether you want to keep going. If not, next takes you to someone else without any awkward goodbye.

Meet with strangers the way you would in a busy café: be friendly, keep your private life private, and leave if something feels off. On ChatMet you can tap next instantly, block someone so you never match again, and report a chat to a human moderator.

ChatMet is both. It runs as a website, and you can pin it to your phone so it behaves like an app to meet strangers, full screen with its own icon. There is no store download and no contact list access.

If you would rather keep it in a tab, that works too. Instructions for every device are on the home-screen app page.

Compared with other sites to meet strangers online, the difference is the format: no lobby to browse, no public room, just one person at a time and a next button when you need it.

Every so often a chat with a stranger turns into something you look forward to. Same hour the next night, same easy back-and-forth. That is how a lot of online friendships begin, and we wrote about how to nurture one in Make friends online.

Other nights you land on someone from a place you have only seen on a map and spend half an hour learning how they say "good morning". If that sounds like your thing, see meeting international friends.