The site matches you with someone who disagrees. In 2023 we gave it more to disagree about.The site matches you with someone who disagrees. In 2023 we gave it more to disagree about.

Someone to Argue With (Mishehu Lariv Ito, in Hebrew) takes the Chatroulette idea, a chat between complete strangers, and adds sides. You say which side you’re on, and the site finds you someone from the other one at random. The conversation is completely anonymous, and the site’s own description says you can use it to close the gaps in Israeli society or to widen them, whichever you enjoy more.

The idea goes back to 2014. Eyal and Asaf Geva built the first version after Operation Protective Edge, as a place where people from both ends of the political map could say what was on their minds without giving their names.

The 2022 relaunch was Tal’s

Tal Israeli, a full-stack developer, brought it back before the Knesset election in November 2022, the fifth in about three and a half years. He redid the design and the experience, and added a way to view and share a conversation after it ended. The site went viral in the days before the vote, and in election week it logged over 60,000 users and 180,000 conversations between right and left. News sites in Israel and abroad wrote about it. All of that happened before I joined.

Past politics

At the start of 2023, Tal and I put out a new, bigger version together. Politics stopped being the only thing to argue about, with topics like soccer and religion, and the site got a new brand and a redesign. Tal is the CEO, on research and development, and I’m a partner, on research and design. He drew the 2022 look in Figma himself, and these days I’m the one who mainly designs it.

People also got more say in who they are on the site. You pick a nickname, a gender and a profile picture, and the group you argue for, in politics, sports or religion.

A form that hasn’t met you yet

In Hebrew, almost anything said to you is gendered. A verb or an adjective aimed at you has a masculine and a feminine form, and the form on the home page doesn’t know which you are yet, so it writes both, with a slash. Even the welcome at the top comes with both endings.

It asks for a nickname, which is optional, then whether you want text or video (video is marked as new), your gender, with male, female and other, and the topic you want to fight about. With no gender picked, the button under it is gray and reads “choose a gender”, so a gray button also tells you why it’s gray.

Next to the form there’s a line from Yitzhak Rabin, from 1994, about leaving the next generations a more reconciled world. I like that a site built for arguing keeps that on its front page.

House rules

The rules are short. You have to be 18 or over. No threats, slander or insults, and there’s one line I’d hang on a wall: “Curses are the weapon of people with no arguments.” If the person across from you is hurting you, move on.

Under the hood

Tal built it as a PWA, with an Android app on Google Play too, and the live chat runs on SignalR.

It’s live at mishu.im, and Tal’s write-up has the 2022 story and the press it got.