Community guide

Go to the community

Getting started

There are two ways in. Pick whichever suits you.

1. Choose a nickname and picture. Use something friendly that is not your real name. Afterwards you can add your pronouns and a short line about yourself from your profile page. Both are optional.
2. Read and agree. You tick boxes for the Terms of Use, the rules below and the Privacy Policy. They are written to be read.
3. Say hello in the Lounge. Mochi, the friendly bot, will greet you. Everyone started as the new person once.
4. Come back any time. If you chose to stay signed in, you are already in. On a shared phone or computer, leave that box unticked and log out when you finish.

Teenagers are welcome through the anonymous door. Email accounts are for adults because the law needs a verified parent's consent before an app holds a child's email, and we cannot check a parent.

The chat rooms

• The Lounge is for everyday chat.
• Kind Ears is a softer room for a rough day. It is peer support from other members, not therapy, and nobody there is a counsellor.
• Game Corner is where Mochi runs games.
• Hinglish Adda is for Hindi, Hinglish and English together.

Tap the smiley for emoji and the GIF button for GIFs. Tap a message to reply to it, add a reaction, or report it. There are no private messages on purpose. Everything happens in the open, which is much safer for everyone.

Making it yours

• Your profile. Tap your picture in the top bar (on any page of the site) and choose Open my profile. There you can change your picture and colour, add your pronouns and write a short line about yourself. Other people can tap your picture in the chat to read it. If you aren't signed in, the same button lets you log in or join.
• Appearance. Pick a calm scene for the background (a new one is chosen every morning at 2:30), make the text bigger or smaller, switch off the drifting petals and snow, or turn the scenery off completely. The scenes are drawn for this site and shared for anyone to reuse.
• The Fun corner. A new fun fact, joke and question every morning. They are the same for everyone, so they make an easy way to start talking.

Mochi, the bot

Mochi is an automated helper, not a person. It says hello to new members, starts a chat when a room is quiet, answers when you mention @Mochi, and keeps you company if you are the only one in a room. Mochi can make mistakes, so don't rely on it for medical, legal or personal advice. To write a reply, Mochi sends what you said and the last few lines of the room to an AI service. Please don't put anything private there.

Type /help in any room to see what Mochi can do.

Games in the chat

Press the game button, or type a command. Anyone in the room can play.

• /trivia asks five questions. Tap an answer before the timer runs out. Faster right answers score more. Try /trivia pop, desi, world, science, sports or fun.
• /wyr is Would you rather. Pick a side and see what the room thinks.
• /riddle and /emoji are guessing games. Type your answer in the chat.
• /hangman is played by tapping letters together.
• /story builds a story one line at a time. Add yours with /add your sentence.
• /mood is a quick, kind check-in of how everyone feels.
• /joke, /fact, /8ball, /dice, /coin, /pick tea, coffee and /compliment @name are quick extras. /top shows this week's best players and /stop ends a game.

The wall and the art corner

The wall is for experiences, hopes, kind words and poems. The art corner is for drawings, paintings, crafts and photos you took yourself. After your first ten minutes here you can share on either.

• A person reads everything first. Nothing shows up until a moderator approves it. This usually takes a day or two, and sometimes longer. You can see the status under My posts.
• You choose how it is shown: with your nickname, or as Anonymous.
• For art, share only your own work. Please don't include faces of other people, names, addresses, school uniforms with a school name, phone numbers or anything private in a picture. Pictures are cleaned of hidden data, such as the location a phone may add, before they are saved.
• If something is not approved, you will see a short reason. You are welcome to try again with changes.
• You can delete anything you shared at any time.

The rules

1. Be kind. No bullying, no hate, no slurs, no teasing about who someone is or how they look.
2. Keep it clean. No swearing, sexual talk, nude pictures, or anything meant to shock.
3. Keep it private. Never share phone numbers, addresses, social media names, photos, or what school or college you go to, yours or anyone else's. Don't ask others for them either.
4. No links, and no asking to talk somewhere else. Everything stays here.
5. Don't out anyone. A person's identity is theirs to share.
6. No scams, spam, or pretending to be someone you are not.
7. Respect the moderators. They are volunteers trying to keep this place good.

How warnings work

Mochi stops a message that really breaks the rules (a slur, sexual content, a threat, or proper swearing) and tells you privately, so nobody else sees it. The first three times that happens you get a warning: "1 of 3", "2 of 3", "3 of 3". The next time you get a 10 minute break. You can still read, play and look around during a break, and your warnings start again afterwards. A warning also fades by itself after a day. If it keeps happening, the breaks get longer and then a moderator looks at your account.

Careless slips are treated more gently. A mild slang word, a phone number or link you pasted without thinking, SHOUTING or a long string of the same letter is stopped with a kind note, and it never counts as a warning. Nobody should be given a break for a mistake.

What moderators can do

Moderators can remove a message for everyone, reword a message or a wall post that is nearly fine (for example to take out a name or a place), give someone a short break, and pin a notice at the top of the rooms. If a moderator rewords something, it carries a small line saying edited by a moderator or lightly edited by a moderator for safety, so nobody is misled about who wrote what. Removed messages disappear from everyone's screen straight away, and so does anything that quoted them.

If something feels wrong

• Hide a person from your view: open the menu on their message and choose Hide this person. They can't see that you did.
• Report a message, post or picture: use the report option. A few reports hide a message straight away until a moderator has looked at it.
• Never meet or call anyone you only know from here, however friendly they seem. If someone asks you to move to another app, keep secrets, send photos, or meet up, they are breaking the rules and you should report them. Tell a trusted adult or friend as well.
• If you are in danger, call 112. If you are a child or teenager in trouble, Childline 1098 is free, 24 hours.
• If you see pictures of child abuse or anything illegal, do not share or save it. Report it to the moderators and to the police through the National Cyber Crime Reporting Portal.

If you are struggling

The community is a friendly place to be around people, but it is not a counselling service, and the people here are not trained to help in a crisis.

• Tele-MANAS 14416: free, private, 24 hours, many Indian languages.
• iCALL 9152987821: counsellors who are LGBTQ+ affirming.
• 112: emergencies.
• More people to call and talk to are on Help and guides. Numbers and hours can change, so check if one doesn't connect.

If you write that you want to hurt yourself, the site shows you these numbers privately, and a moderator is told so they can post a kind note in the room. We can't contact you, because we don't know who you are, so please reach out to one of the lines above.

What we keep, and what we don't

• We keep: your nickname, picture, and the pronouns and short line if you added them, a scrambled version of your login key or password (so we can't read it), your email if you gave one (encrypted), a record that you agreed to our documents, your messages for up to seven days, and your wall posts and art until you delete them. An account nobody opens for about 18 months is erased.
• We don't keep: your real name, phone number, address or internet address. There are no ads and no profiling, and we never send marketing email.
• Moderators can see nicknames and what was written or uploaded. They can't see your email or who you are in real life. The owner chooses who is a moderator.
• Services involved: GIFs come from GIPHY and load from its servers, so GIPHY can see that a GIF was requested. Only GIFs rated suitable for everyone (G) are shown, our own filter removes anything with an adult, violent or hateful title, and a moderator can remove any GIF for good. The Music tab plays songs from YouTube, but only after you press play on one; until then nothing is loaded from YouTube except small preview pictures. Mochi's replies are written by an AI service. The full details are in the Privacy Policy.
• Your control: Download my data gives you a copy of what we hold, and Delete my account removes your account, email, messages, posts and pictures straight away. Both are in your menu.

Questions and problems

Write to shiningforevr@gmail.com. We read every message and reply to complaints within a day. You can ask about a decision, report something serious, or tell us how to make this place better. Never send your password, login key or a code. The formal complaints route is in the Terms of Use.