Why this is a boundary question, not an etiquette one
Alcohol does two things at once that matter here: it makes people more willing, and less able to judge what they are agreeing to. That combination is exactly what consent rules exist to catch — an enthusiastic yes from someone who cannot properly weigh the question is not the same as a yes. Online it is easier to ignore, because there is no bar staff, no friend group, nobody standing there watching it happen. So the judgement has to come from whoever is still sober.
The second half is self-interest. Interactions with impaired people are the ones most likely to end in a report, a reversed payment, a screenshot that resurfaces, or an accusation you have no way to disprove. You cannot know what they will remember tomorrow, or what they will believe happened. A conversation you would have to defend later is not worth having tonight.
There is also an asymmetry worth naming out loud. A sober person remembers the whole conversation and can describe it accurately; a drunk one remembers fragments and fills the gaps with whatever fits the mood the next day. So the sober party ends up carrying the judgement in the moment and the version of events afterwards, with no way to check either. It is not a fair split of the work, and it is still yours.
None of this needs a diagnosis. You are not deciding whether someone is legally intoxicated — you are deciding whether to keep talking to them. The bar for stopping is simply "I am not confident this person is fully with it", which is the same standard set out in our safety notes: leave early, and never treat leaving as something you owe anybody an explanation for.
24 notes: reading it, holding the line, and getting out
The first seven are signs, the next six are what changes, then what not to do, and finally the exits. If you only read one block, read the last one — that is the part people improvise and get wrong.
- 01
One sign is not a sign
Bad audio, an unfamiliar accent, somebody working in their second language and plain exhaustion all produce something that sounds like slurring. Act on any one of them alone and you will mostly be wrong about people. What you are looking for is three of the signals below turning up together inside the same few minutes.
- 02
Repetition inside a short window
The clearest tell in a live room is the same question or the same story arriving two or three times within a few minutes, with no awareness it has already been said. Tiredness tends to lose the thread. Drink tends to loop it.
- 03
Reactions arrive late
Watch the gap between your question and their answer. Alcohol lengthens it noticeably, and video makes that obvious in a way text never does. If they are answering your last-but-one question, they are running behind the conversation.
- 04
The camera drifts
Not diagnostic on its own — a one-handed grip, lying down and a cheap phone stand all look much the same. But alongside the rest it is worth noticing: the frame wanders, the ceiling makes an appearance, the face leaves the shot and comes back at an angle. It is the one signal nobody bothers to perform deliberately.
- 05
Mood swings out of proportion
Warm, then hurt, then irritated, inside a couple of minutes and over nothing much. This is the sign that matters most, because volatility is what turns an awkward room into a bad one. Treat it as your cue to wrap up rather than to steady them.
- 06
Read the room behind them
Bottles are the obvious version; context is the useful one. A loud group in the background, a bar, several people talking over the microphone, someone off camera clearly enjoying this. What is happening around a person often tells you more than the person does.
- 07
They usually just say so
The single most common tell is somebody typing "sorry, I'm drunk". Take it at face value. It is not a joke to play along with, and it is not an invitation to see where the evening goes.
- 08
Consent stops being reliable, so stop relying on it
Willingness is not the same as capacity. If a yes is only on offer because someone is impaired, treat it as not on offer. That is the whole rule — everything below is just it applied to specific situations.
- 09
Anything sexual is off the table
Not "tread carefully" — off. Whatever the two of you might have been comfortable with sober, tonight is not the night, and the person making that call is whoever is still sober. Nobody has ever regretted this decision the next morning.
- 10
No recording, no screenshots, no clipping
Recording anyone without their consent breaks the rules here and the law in many places, and a person who cannot consent certainly cannot consent to that. There is no version of a screenshot taken tonight that looks good later.
- 11
No money, coins or gifts in either direction
Do not accept gifts from someone impaired and do not steer them toward sending any. Transactions made drunk get disputed, reversed and regretted, and the sober party always ends up looking like the one who arranged it.
- 12
No moving to another app
"Add me on…" from a drunk stranger is the request most likely to be deleted, regretted or reported by morning. Off-platform there is no skip, no block and no report button — you both hand away the safety rails at the exact moment they are most needed.
- 13
Nothing that has to be remembered
No plans, no promises, no swapping details, no "let's talk tomorrow". They will not remember, and you become the person who arranged something with someone who was not really there. Anything worth agreeing to survives until they are sober.
- 14
You are not their therapist
Drunk confessions are common and often heavy. You can be kind for five minutes; you cannot be a support system for a stranger, and pretending otherwise helps neither of you. Warmth followed by a clean exit is a better outcome than two hours nobody can act on.
- 15
Do not argue
Debating someone who has been drinking changes nothing and escalates everything. Whatever they said, it is not a position you can move tonight, and it is not really a conversation with the person they are sober. Let it go and move on.
- 16
Do not bait them for entertainment
Winding an impaired person up, filming the reaction, seeing how far they will go — this is the behaviour the house rules exist for, and it is squarely on the wrong side of them. If you see someone else doing it, that is a report rather than a joke.
- 17
Watch for a third party off camera
Laughter off screen, a voice directing them, a phone being aimed at them by somebody else. If a person is being egged on by others in the room, they are not making their own decisions at all. Leave, and report it.
- 18
If you have been drinking, apply all of this to yourself
Run the same checks on yourself before assuming you are the sober one: are you repeating yourself, is your own frame drifting, would this look sensible written down in the morning. Then apply the practical half — no topping up coins, no handing out details, no camera for anything you would mind seeing again. If you are unsure, close the tab; nothing here expires.
- 19
Leaving takes one tap and no explanation
Skip ends the room immediately and nobody is owed a reason. If you would rather say something, one line is plenty — "you should probably call it a night, take care" — and then go. Politeness does not require you to stay.
- 20
Block is on their profile, not on the room screen
Skip moves you on. Block is a separate action and it does not live in the room — the call screen carries mic, camera, next and hang up, nothing that files a person. It sits on their profile, alongside report. Once you block someone, they will not be matched with you again.
- 21
Report the cases that are more than drink
Aggression or threats, sexual pressure after a no, anyone who appears to be under 18, anyone who looks coerced or in danger. Report is a short form rather than a single tap: it lives on their profile alongside block, and it asks you to pick up to three reasons from a list, describe what happened in up to 300 characters, and optionally attach up to three photos as evidence. It remains the right call even if you also skipped straight away.
- 22
If someone sounds like they are in real trouble
You are a stranger on a random video chat, and that is the honest limit of what you can do. Do not try to talk someone through a crisis over a cam link. Tell them plainly to call their local emergency number or a helpline in their country, end the room, and report it so a human can look at it.
- 23
You choose when you show up, not who does
There is no filter for this and it would be dishonest to pretend otherwise — random matching is random, and the person on the other side could be anywhere in the world on any schedule. What you do control is your own patience: decide up front how many rooms you are willing to spend before calling it a night. Most bad evenings online are simply evenings somebody stayed in past the point of enjoying them.
- 24
Have your exit line ready before you need it
The reason people stay in rooms they want to leave is that they are improvising a polite escape in real time, badly. Decide the wording now: one friendly sentence, then skip. Having it ready is the whole difference between leaving at the first sign and leaving twenty uncomfortable minutes later.
The short rule, and where the buttons are
One sentence covers most of the list: if you would not be comfortable explaining the interaction to them sober, do not have it. That test is stricter than the law, far easier to apply than guessing how drunk somebody is, and it has never once cost anyone a conversation that was worth having.
Practically, the part that gets you out is always in front of you — the room screen carries mic, camera, next and hang up, so leaving is one tap and costs you nothing. Block and report are deliberately not in there: they sit on the profile of the person you were talking to, which is worth knowing before the night you need them rather than after. When something needs a person to look at it rather than just an exit, report the room and the moderation team gets it with the context attached.
These rooms are for adults only, and what is and is not allowed beyond that is written out in the community guidelines. What no rule written on a page can tell you is what state a person is in tonight — that part still needs somebody on the other end of the call paying attention, which is the entire reason this list runs to twenty-four notes instead of one.
Two adjacent situations are worth reading separately, because the same boundary logic applies with different signs: someone pressing for personal details, and the odd hours when the crowd is at its most unfiltered. Both get covered from other angles across our guides to random video chat.