ChatRoulette

ChatRoulette, the webcam program that randomly connects you with people all over the world, has gotten a lot of press in the last few days. NY Magazine's Sam Anderson gave it a try:

The site activates your webcam automatically; when you click “start” you’re suddenly staring at another human on your screen and they’re staring back at you, at which point you can either choose to chat (via text or voice) or just click “next,” instantly calling up someone else. The result is surreal on many levels. Early ChatRoulette users traded anecdotes on comment boards with the eerie intensity of shipwreck survivors, both excited and freaked out by what they’d seen. There was a man who wore a deer head and opened every conversation with “What up DOE!?” A guy from Sweden was reportedly speed-drawing strangers’ portraits. Someone with a guitar was improvising songs for anyone who’d give him a topic. One man popped up on people’s screens in the act of fornicating with a head of lettuce. Others dressed like ninjas, tried to persuade women to expose themselves, and played spontaneous transcontinental games of Connect Four. Occasionally, people even made nonvirtual connections: One punk-music blogger met a group of people from Michigan who ended up driving eleven hours to crash at his house for a concert in New York. And then, of course, fairly often, there was this kind of thing: “I saw some hot chicks then all of a sudden there was a man with a glass in his butthole.” I sing the body electronic.

I tried it for five minutes last night. Emo girl, emo girl, ten faceless dudes playing with themselves, and one guy holding a "Show Tits For Haiti" sign. It's not unlike the 90s fad ICUII, only you don't get to pick who connects with you. And I found it a little funny how instantaneously people click away when you don't fit their needs, whatever they may be. But Sam Anderson calls the service "a social anxiety nightmare."

It turns out that ChatRoulette, in practice, is brutal. The first eighteen people who saw me disconnected immediately. They appeared, one by one, in a box at the top of my screen—a young Asian man, a high-school-age girl, a guy lying on his side in bed—and, every time, I’d feel a little flare of excitement. Every time, they’d leave without saying a word. Sometimes I could even watch them reach down, in horrifying real-time, and click “next.” It was devastating.

ChatRoulette was created by a 17 year-old Russian kid and some are saying that he'll be the next internet billionaire, a la Facebook creator Mark Zuckerberg.