ChatRoulette isn’t playing fair.
Last Saturday I conceded to the buzz. The verdict? Horrifying and fascinating all at once.
In the traditional rules of Russian roulette, the deadly game of chance, there's one active round (er, bullet) in a revolver with six rounds. You sit in a circle and pretend you're brave, taking turns holding the barrel to your head and pressing the trigger. Stupid? Yes. With Chatroulette, on the other hand, the chances that "nexting" (yes, people are using it as a verb) is going to land you looking at some exhibitionist naked dude are WAY higher than one in six. Not cool, unless you're into the hairy and old combo.
Happily, my experience did put me in touch with some genuinely nice and funny people who were willing to not show me their family jewels. Stranger #1 (location: Italy) and I spoke in broken English and Italian respectively, and found common ground with music videos. We spent the better part of an hour sending YouTube links back and forth and decided after an hour or two to become Facebook friends. Quick-witted Stranger #2 (location: Massachusetts) and I shared some jokes about the Olympics and the man-voiced lady commentator on NBC. Good times. We too decided to keep in contact, so I gave him my dusty old Hotmail address. (I knew I was keeping it for some reason.)
As I sank further into the ChatRoulette spiral (it's addictive), some old memories bubbled to the surface. The concept reminded me of my early internet days on BBSes (if you have to ask, n00b, go read the Wiki). We'd link our modems to some bozo's system and chat (or play MajorMUD) with people we didn't know, mostly other kids from nearby high schools -- people we'd probably never meet in real-life Oshawa. There were forums and flame wars and emoticons and detailed ASCII graphics -- all the stuff that's commonplace these days, though now in a truncated, more organized format (Twitter, Facebook, et cetera).
ChatRoulette, I thought, is reinventing the wheel, making it waaay bigger and adding the element of randomization. It's a simple concept, but it retains and reintroduces the best parts of BBSes or old-school ICQ -- meeting new people and starting fresh. Those were my favourite things about those old days, and, for me, Couchsurfing's the only concept that's come close since 1996.
Check out this great New York article. My sentiments exactly, but more eloquently conveyed.