Okay, this is going to sound a little strange, but I swear I'm not crazy. A few months ago, I was browsing a site for a local coffee shop and noticed a tiny line of text at the very bottom of the page that said something like "3 guests online now." I thought it was a glitch.



Since then, I've started seeing this same little feature on all kinds of other sites—a small, real-time counter showing how many other visitors are on the page at the same time. It’s such a small thing, but it’s weirdly compelling. It makes the whole internet feel a little less lonely, like you're browsing in a room with other people.



I got curious about how it works and found the tool that a lot of these sites seem to be using. You can check out the one I found here.



Am I the only one who finds this fascinating? Has seeing one of these counters ever changed how you behaved on a site?

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