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Let's have a staring contest

Stranger Video pairs you with a staring partner via webcam

The loading screen of Super Mario64, with a smiling Mario staring at a star. The star is casting a light on his face.
Image credit: Nintendo

Stranger Video is a website that wants access to your webcam. Grant it and it will show you a close-up of your own face, the background around you cropped out. Close your eyes to tell it you're ready, and open them again when you hear a chime. It'll now connect you to a stranger doing the same thing: first person to blink loses.

You can play it here.

I'm playing it right now and no one else in the world is. Let's all of us play it together.

Stranger Video is work of Eieio, who makes "stuff for the 2000s internet." It has that old school, lofi, '00s vibe, as if a leftover from the personal web. It's also from the same creator as One Million Checkboxes, which Edwin wrote about back in June.

Both of these are nominees in the Tiny Awards, which aims to celebrate "the other web, the one that is small and handmade and isn’t trying to sell you anything or monetise anything but which instead is about people using the digital tools we all have access to to make the sorts of small, personal experiences that you tend not to see ‘in feed’." It's a trove of beautiful websites.

Anyway. Put your staring eyes where your mouth is, RPS readers.

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Graham Smith: Rock Paper Shotgun's editorial leader, corporate dad, and breezy evening news writer.
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