Chatroulette

by Jake Smith

Ok, so I would venture a guess that anyone reading Ballz is at least moderately internet savvy ergo would have heard of the wonderful new site: Chatroulette.  I myself am thoroughly addicted.

Basically the way the site works is you log into the site and then it assigns a random stranger to video chat with you.  If you don’t like them, you (or they) can hit the “next” button.  This will happen frequently so don’t feel too self-conscious about getting judged by a 1 second glimpse of your appearance.

Many people use clever tricks to get people not to next them (yes nexting has apparently become a verb, whether my spellcheck likes it or not).  For instance one guy made a puppet show for me using star wars characters, another guy whipped out his dick, and yet another guy did a little dance.  What?  Go back?  Oh the dick thing.  Yeah, sorry you get so used to it after a while they lose all shock value.

People will whip out their dicks.  Or they will have them out already and be jerking them furiously.  Depending on the time of day the dicks can go anywhere from 1 in 5 to 1 in 30.  I’ve been wondering for days what the appeal is behind showing your dick to random strangers only to be nexted in less than a split-second (shut up spellcheck).  Finally I confronted one of these wandering wankers to determine what the point was (if any).

As it turns out, he tells me, most of the men on the site slapping their junk around are not looking to show it to random strangers, they are only looking for other men to jerk with.  Keep in mind he was only typing this to me with one hand as the other was somewhat occupied.  It’s not like I was looking intentionally but c’mon, it’s not everyday you see some stranger strokin himself into his webcam, oh wait, yes it is.  But I digress, I told him that this explanation at least made a little bit of sense.  He then asked me if I wanted to join him.  Next.

To be fair, all jerking off aside, Chatroulette is actually a fairly interesting site.  Created by a 17 year old russian boy as a tool for him and his friends to talk to more than just each other, it has quickly become a worldwide phenomenon and, in my opinion, with damn good reason.  Yes, there are perverts and assholes out there, but there are also people out there.  Billions of them.  And this is a way to connect with any one of them.  Instantly.  I think it’s fantastic.

One of my friends recently described chatroulette as collective loneliness, but I think that’s off the mark.  I think collective boredom is more accurate.

But this site is so much more than that.  What chatroulette really does is connect people all over the world.  People who might need a reminder that somewhere, in some time zone, there are people just like them.  Not to get all hippy on your ass (my mom is a total hippy, some of it bled through) but this is actually a really uplifting thing.  Thanks to chatroulette I have penpals in germany, france, and south korea, and I got to have a 2 hour long heart to heart with a grandpa in australia.

On the flip side (that being the non-hippy, non-dick spankin side) chatroulette can also be a sort of game.  Many people have taken to rickrolling on the site, or trying to make people laugh.  Others have taken to drawing each other or inventing songs about those on the other line.  I’m quite partial to creating tons of flashcards and flipping through them slowly only for people to find at the end that I just wasted 20 of their precious minutes telling what my friend calls “un joke a papa” i.e. a joke that is not at all funny and takes a long time to tell.

Recently I’ve taken to a more entertaining game though.  Here’s how it works.  You find someone to talk to that actually seems nice, you establish a connection.  You move beyond the typical what country? what do you do? gibber jabber and actually have a real conversation with this person.  Then, right when it actually gets interesting and you might think about really exchanging contact info with this person you next them.  Next the shit out of em.  They’ll be so confused.  They’ll be checking their connection.  For sure something must be wrong, that nice little canadian boy counldn’t have possibly nexted me after we had the same favorite episode of buffy the vampire slayer (the one in season 6 when buffy and spike first fuck and destroy a house in the process, amazing).  He played me a song on his Uke!  Why?  WHY?!?!?

I love this game.  Some might call me a sadist.  Others, well, no I guess it is a little sadistic, I just wish I could still see their face once I next them.  Oh well.

The point is chatroulette, like most things in this world, is simply what you make of it.  Many critics (particular uppity, non-tech-savvy, right-wing, american parents) have come down on chatroulette as a vulgar, distasteful site, and think it should be banned (as if that is even possible on the internet).  I want to grab these people and shake them.  I mean have they seen the REST of the internet?!?  They should already know that there are perverts out there, and that most of these perverts have cameras and modems.  So get over it and put your damn family computer in the living room.  Just don’t be surprised when you come home from work and jimmy is on the futon jerkin it into his webcam.

Alright I have to get back to my game of tic tac toe with this guy in china (we don’t speak each other’s language so we settled on the international language [I'm winning]).  See you guys out there!  (I’ll be the one jerkin it!)