Chatroulette is a lot like Russian roulette. You "pull the trigger," so to speak, and breathe a sigh of relief when the bullet doesn't come. Or if it does come, it arrives so quickly that you don't have a chance to comprehend what's happening until it's already over.
Chatroulette is exactly like this, except with penises.
For those of you who haven't heard of Chatroulette, it's a trendy new Web site that randomly connects two people using Web cameras. When you get bored of talking to one person, you simply click the "next" button and suddenly you're talking to someone else.
In theory, Chatroulette should be a really informative, unique resource -- except for the penises.
I figured I couldn't write this column without first experiencing Chatroulette for myself, so, Sunday night, my roommate and I sat down in front of the computer and, with a mixture of hesitation and excitement, hit the "play" button.
Our first chat partner was a skeezy-looking middle-aged guy lying on his bed. We tried to give him the benefit of doubt until he smiled creepily and typed "hey sexy," and we nexted him. After that, we decided anyone on a bed was probably of the genitalia-flashing variety, so we didn't hesitate to immediately skip them.
Our second chat partner was a funny teenager from Mexico named Alejandro. He was on Chatroulette to practice his English, and he told us about his dream to study art and his summer spent in San Francisco. He shared knock-knock jokes and drew us a picture of a cat. I told him I was researching Chatroulette for a column, and he suggested including the pie chart.
Alejandro explained, with some sadness, that friendships made on Chatroulette are fleeting. One moment you'll be having a great conversation with someone, and the next moment, poof! -- as he kept saying -- they'll next you. Or the connection will drop. Or you'll do what I did and accidentally close the browser. Sorry, Alejandro. Maybe Chatroulette will bring us back together some day.
We also encountered a lot of preteen Asian girls on the site, as it seems to be particularly popular overseas. Though Chatroulette bans anyone younger than 16, there's no way for the site to verify the age of its users, so there are a lot of younger kids who use it. This is where Chatroulette gets a little scary.
I've already made it pretty clear that, in addition to being a useful social networking site, Chatroulette is a hotbed for potential sexual predators. Mix in a few preteens and things can go from innocent chatting to "To Catch a Predator" faster than you can say Chris Hansen.
As a college senior who looks more like a high school sophomore, you can bet your ass I took off my Penn State sweatshirt before Chatroulette-ing to make my location harder to identify.
Besides penises, preteen Asians and Mexican artists, we also encountered an Irish teen who told us he heard American girls were "wild" -- NEXT! -- and a Canadian woman in her 20s who had an animation on her screen that made her look like a pirate with a parrot on her shoulder and had a ship shooting cannon balls in the background.
This is just a sampling of the characters you'll meet on Chatroulette if you dare to try it. I'm not sure I'll Chatroulette again, but Alejandro's picture of the cat is the new background picture on my cell phone, and I can't help but smile whenever I picture the Canadian woman's long black beard and skull-and-crossbones hat.
If you give it a shot, hopefully you'll get a laugh or two, and who knows, maybe a long distance friendship can even come out of it. Either way, you'd better have a quick trigger finger -- you never know when a penis will pop up.
