Chatroulette.

Wow… Chatroulette.  Something that I have seen people talk about on Facebook but only thought was the name of a french character on a TV show.  Before watching the video, I explored the website for a while to form my own opinion having no clue what it was.  I clicked the “Play” button which I think is kind of weird… giving it the beginning feel of a game.  Before I knew it, my face was up on the screen and that of another Australian man was right above it.  I waved, not sure whether he was real or not and he waved back at me.  I asked him what myself and he were doing.  He responded that “Chatroulette was only introduced to him today by his friend”.  I asked him where he was from and he said Australia and we talked about the time difference.  Knowing that I was going to use my first introduction as a beginning point for the thoughts I would formulate on the blog I asked what he had encountered so far.  He said “too many naked men”.  Having only chatted with this one guy so far I was surprised and hadn’t even thought about the fact that anybody with a webcam could do whatever they wanted on this site.  After saying goodbye and good luck with the rest of his military service, I hit my first next button.

I was then barraged with about 8 different screens in a row.  1 girl, 1 naked man, and about 6 guys that looked either creepy or like I was NOT what they were looking for.  For about 45 minutes total, I surfed around talking to random people.  I met 3 french girls all in the same box and ended up talking to them for about 20-25 minutes.  Who would have thought that from my dorm room, I, Hunter Nolan, would spend my evening talking with french ladies 3,000 miles across the globe.  Something that is 1. random and 2. impossible without the modern technologies we have today.

More barrages of “User disconnected, trying to find you a stranger” hit me and I too felt the same way as did the man in the posted video, almost offended by peoples quick judgements and nexts.  Not to say that I didn’t click next a bunch of times too, but when you have a 2 megapixel picture of someone, I guess you are forced to judge a book by its cover.

I think that Shirky would be a big fan of this website if it had a more organized fashion to it.  It could be better in that people could click on groups that they are interested in and they could be re routed to chatrooms or “chatpools” in which other people are talking about art or film or african animals etc… really whatever you wanted.  In reality I think that most guys on there are looking for a free show or to find someone that is just as bored as they are.  I found the facts that it is filled with about 71% boys and less then 25% girls to not be very surprising.

I myself found it very rare to come across a girl on Chatroulette, and just like most of the people that saw Genevieve, usually stopped to see if they were interested in saying hi.  I also found it weird that I was relieved by the sight of a girl, it was like finding an angel in hell.  Sometime you are not enthused by what pops up, sometime just shocked or disgusted, and sometimes excited when someone pulled together/interesting comes across.  It was also a relief when somebody on the other side had day light or even just real light as opposed to being dimly lit by their computer screen while they lay in bed.

All in all the website is a very interesting concept and I feel that it will definitely be built upon and expanded in time.  There is a draw of, this next person is going to be different or great and sometimes its true and sometimes it couldn’t be more opposite.  I hope that they clean it up a little bit and possibly turn it into more of a think tank type of experiment where collaboration and cooperation of ideas could be more of a focus.