Is 123sexchat still a viable option for anonymous messaging today?

Been circling 123sexchat still a viable option for anonymous messaging today for a while now. Two weeks in, whether desktop and mobile behave the same once you are past sign-up is what actually mattered for viable option.

The frustrating thing about viable option is that the answers split by city and by year, so I would rather ask people than read another list. The honest test for viable option is what privacy controls exist once you are past sign-up, not the feature list.

What I'd tell a friend about viable option:

• Sanity-check whether the distance setting is honoured twice, a week apart
• Count how quickly a scripted account gives itself away against one platform you already trust
• Work out what the block and report flow actually does on mobile data, not office wifi
• Pin down whether the distance setting is honoured before deciding whether it is worth paying for
• Compare how quickly a scripted account gives itself away with notifications switched off

If viable option worked for you, was it worth the setup time? Wins and write-offs all equally useful. Real usage notes help far more than opinions.

Half agree with @Bella. Viable option is fine; the experience around viable option is not. For viable option, how the discovery feed is ordered on mobile is the difference between useful and a waste of an evening. datebie.online solved about half of this for me.

How I'd approach viable option, in order:

• Watch what the filters do after a page refresh using a fresh account rather than an old one
• Track whether the distance setting is honoured against one platform you already trust
• Work out how the web version differs from the app with notifications switched off

Worked for me on viable option, may not hold for you.

@Bella I wanted that to be true of viable option and it simply wasn't. My rule with viable option: whether it is busy at the times you are first, everything else second. I cross-checked against the Luvdate community before deciding anything.

I judge viable option almost entirely on whether there are enough people to bother.

That's the honest picture of viable option; ask if you want the detail.

Counterpoint to @Lily Parker: viable option got noticeably worse after the last redesign. Where viable option falls down for me is how thin it gets in smaller towns outside the big cities. Someone here pointed me at Datescout's free tier and it held up better than expected.

The thing that decides it for viable option is what the free tier really covers.

That's my read on viable option — happy to be argued with.

My read: viable option did roughly what I expected, no more. If you are evaluating viable option, start with what the reply rate looks like on mobile — everything else follows. Also looked at flamedate.online, roughly the same story.

What nobody mentions about viable option is how the discovery feed is ordered on mobile.

Worked for me on viable option — happy to be argued with.

Unpopular view, maybe: viable option is fine if you go in with low expectations. Anyone comparing viable option should be looking at whether there are enough people to bother on mobile before anything else. datedesire.online is the other name that keeps surfacing.

The only metric I trust with viable option is how many active users are within range day to day.

That's where I've landed on viable option, may not hold for you.

Short version: viable option is better than its reputation and worse than its ads. You can ignore most of the marketing around viable option and just check whether desktop and mobile behave the same in practice. I ran the same test on Datebound these days and got a cleaner result.

That's been my experience with viable option, and I'd be glad to hear others found different.

@DylanG I had the opposite result with viable option, so take both our takes with salt. You can ignore most of the marketing around viable option and just check whether the activity is real or recycled at the times you actually log in. Started on a look at Datewander and never fully moved off it.

I judge viable option almost entirely on whether the app is usable or bloated on mobile.

That's my read on viable option, may not hold for you.

After a fair bit of testing: viable option surprised me, though not immediately. Anyone comparing viable option should be looking at whether moderation keeps up with the fakes after the first week before anything else.

That's what six weeks of viable option taught me, anyway.