The Lonely Faces of Five Minutes on Chatroulette
So have you checked out this Chatroulette thing? It's like Omegle, sudden instant e-chats with a stranger, only this time there's video and audio (which can both be turned off for anonymous browsing). Click, get a person, repeat.
Curious about what the whole fuss was about, we spent exactly five minutes this afternoon (for this we are paid!) flipping through, and being flipped through. Who's on the strange, sad thing? Well, your typical gay dudes looking for action. There are also a few depressingly cheap, Eastern Bloc-looking porn ads. But mostly it's just lonely-looking people — in sweaters, wearing glasses, with dogs barking in the background, looking expectant, looking worried, looking bored. Chatroulette, to us, isn't titillating in the way we thought it might be. Instead it's just a sort of bleak, Alexander Payne-esque reminder of the tedium of life. It's just people sitting, waiting for something to happen. And, you know, one guy jerking off. (Couldn't get that screenshot fast enough, sadly).