2.26.2010

ChatRoulette. A study in randomness.

A friend of mine a while back told me about this website, it sounded like a fun idea, but then (me being me) immediately forgot what it was. I went on with my life. More recently, a friend on facebook put up the website link as an update. It sparked my curiosity. I had been wondering about this experience of random chatting. It's a great idea, thrown into a 1-on-1 conversation with a complete stranger. I'm extremely introverted, and on any normal occasion (or if someone did this to me in real life) I'd freeze up and wouldn't know what to do, however, put in a chat room and holding the ability to be and do anything you want sounds fantastic.

Here's the catch: First off, I didn't know they utilized your camera, that freaked me out the first time I saw that, but I could adjust. Though even talking to friends online with video weirds me out, It'd be a good lesson in extrovertedness (is that even a word?) to just suck it up, and show your face to complete strangers for a fun conversation. Make weird faces, wave, show them fun stuff you have lying around your desk, and the like. Here's the second thing, there's a 'next' button. If someone doesn't like the way you look, or the fact that you don't even have a camera hooked up, they can hit the next button and get another person. That's all well and good (esp if you get a creeper, I'll talk about later), but the whole point of this site is to talk to someone random. Spark up something, share interests, or just stare at the person for a bit making odd facial expressions. People seem to just use the site to find someone that 'looks' like someone they want to talk to. Me being a semi-muscular, big, bearded man, many people hit 'next' before i could even wave to the camera. One instance I actually enjoyed, was a guy sitting in front of his computer in a Daffy Duck mask, I was startled at first, the laughed a bit, typed in the obligatory 'hahaha' then hit next.

However, the 'creepier' side of things is when you hit the 'next' button and you end up staring at some dudes naked crotch. *shudder*

...on the lighter side, I did get into 2 very awesome conversations in my short time thus far using chatroulette. The first was with a very attractive woman (which I was surprised she didn't immediately hit 'next') who turned out to be from Montreal, Canada. She said her english wasn't very good, but she seemed to keep up with me fairly well. We talked about french, then I talked about France, till she said she was from Montreal, and I felt like an idiot thinking french people can't possibly be anywhere but France. We talked about the olympics and how neither of understood curling. We continued with music, movies, etc. stuff that you talk about to get to know one another in a 'first date' situation. All was going well till the chat box on the website stop letting me type in it. I wrote on a piece of paper saying "my chat doesn't work anymore, sorry, had a fun time" waved goodbye to the camera, then logged off.

The second was a guy, also in Canada, not from canada. That came up cause he was wearing a New York Yankees knit cap. He said he was from NY, but lived in Canada. So, once again I start talking about the Olympics. We talked about the weather, talked about how each of us found out about chatroulette. He saw some post about it on CNN.com and came running to see what it was about, I told him about my friends facebook post. I talked with him for a while (no chat box problems this time), and then we said our goodbyes and logged off.

It's quite an addicting site, despite the oddity of daffy duck man, and the startling penis here and there. I have seen a few cute girls on the other end of the cameras, but they usually hit 'next' before I can say/do anything. Oh...and I did see a couple having sex briefly before they hit 'next'...so that's a bit ridiculous.

I'll probably continue on there from time to time, though I wish so much of the burden of it wasn't on the video. My initial idea of it would have been perfect. Random 1, and Random 2, just in chat, simple, and interesting. Video mucks up the whole deal, side from dudes pretending to be female...but, that's what the internet is for, anonymity.