Rando is a newish “anti-social” photo sharing app, available for iOS and Android. You snap a picture (it’s automatically cropped to a round shape), and Rando sends it to somebody far away. You never learn who they are, though Rando will later tell you where in the world they live. (Brazil and Russia are common destinations). The recipient of your photo is similarly told where you are, but nothing else, and has no way to contact you (though they can rate your photo, and some people have been posting “randos” of their e-mail address as a way of establishing contact with strangers.
I found the service charming for a while. The serendipity of it, slices of life from half a world away.
But pretty soon a problem emerged. I would send photos like these:
Broadway and 110th
Boys’ Gate, Central Park
Citibikes
Battery Place Statue of Liberty
and I’d get back photos like these:
Fluorescent light, Santa Barbara
Fluorescent light, South Korea, near the DMZ
Blurry shoes, Curitiba Brazil
Who knows? Central U.K.
It’s easier to take a lousy picture than a good one, and absent any kind of reputation system, Rando has no way to encourage people to send anything interesting. The result is a lot of blurry photos of people’s feet and of fluorescent lights.