Author: Greg Ellison
Do you love to gamble? Would you rather lose your faith in humanity than your money? Then Chatroulette is for you! Created by 17-year-old Andrey Ternovskiy and launched as chatroulette.com in November 2009, the web site receives about 500,000 visitors daily and was featured on “Good Morning America,” “The Daily Show with Jon Stewart,” and in The New York Times and Huffington Post. Chatroulette randomly selects two users from their database and connects them through a video chat, where they can interact via text chat or webcam. The two strangers are allowed to chat openly and freely with each other, but at any point in the interchange, they can “next” the other person, which will redirect each stranger to a new chat.
Before my first foray into Chatroulette, I felt a mixture of apprehension and excitement. I had heard that, despite the site’s policies prohibiting pornographic or otherwise inappropriate behavior, many use the site as a platform to display their genitals or masturbatory techniques. I was in no way eager to witness this. I was also a little nervous about letting a complete stranger stare into my dorm room. However, even considering the potential of vulgarity, I was looking forward to meeting interesting people and seeing what all the fuss was about.
Upon first connecting, I was immediately paired up with a man who appeared to be in his mid-twenties wearing a baseball hat. He drank two energy drinks in the time we were chatting (a span of about three minutes), and jokingly accused me of being anti-Semitic because of the Mel Gibson-centric “Braveheart” poster behind me.
We were randomly disconnected after that, which lead me to spend the next few minutes in a weird void between partners. Next I was connected to a teenager who yelled at his camera in an attempt to startle me. It didn’t work.
I also met a young man who lived in Hollywood and had the most glorious mustache I have ever seen. It was not a large mustache, but it had been shaped into a thing of beauty, neatly trimmed with marvelous curls up corners. It looked astonishingly like the ‘stache displayed by Clay Zavada of the Arizona Diamondbacks.
He told me how high he was, which was unsurprising, and he said he was working on a film called “Bravehood,” that, I think, was both a spoof of “Braveheart” and the story of some sort of youth uprising in L.A. He was very interesting to talk to, somewhat validating Chatroulette for me. After only a few minutes of spinning the Chatroulette wheel, I had stumbled across an individual with whom I could easily become friends.
Not all of my chats were like this, however. I did indeed see some genitals, and a woman invited me to go to some sort of sex Web site. This type of unnerving behavior was not unexpected, and I was much more disturbed by other things I saw. I chatted with an 8-year-old boy who used homophobic slurs and bragged about the size of his penis.
After that, I spoke with a German teenager who called me the n-word three times; this was his only recognizable use of English.
As I spent more time on Chatroulette, I began to feel increasingly out of place. I wasn’t comfortable with the way I was “next”-ed by people, and I couldn’t really get used to the idea of rejecting someone based on how interesting they looked. I was disturbed by all the genitals I saw. Some people were interesting and/or amusing, but the majority either next-ed me immediately or called me rude things.
The anonymous aspect of the site is its main draw, but for me, it was also a huge detriment. Why on earth would I want to talk to people whose only objective is to call me offensive names or insult my appearance? The anonymous nature and lack of oversight on Chatroulette (not to mention other internet sites) lets people do or say pretty much whatever they want, and most of the time, it is not pretty.
Chatroulette was an interesting diversion, but constantly being insulted to my face by strangers was not the most fun I’ve ever had. If you’re curious about Chatroulette, then by all means check it out, but be forewarned about what you’re getting yourself into.
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