A Little Spin
A friend sent me a link to a pretty scary website.
Oh, yeah, there are lots of scary websites out there, but this one has a particularly creepy appeal.
It's called Chatroulette, and its entire purpose is to pair random strangers from anywhere in the world into webcam-based chats.
Now, the notion of chatting with total strangers is just about as old as the web itself - and yes, it always had creepy overtones, and was always used for, shall we say, less than savory purposes. I recall back in the 90s when everyone was flocking online, chat rooms were all the rage. Users would sign up for a chat service - AOL offered them as part of its basic service, no special software or skills required - and then drop in to a "room" where a bunch of people would "be" holding a text-based conversation. Sometimes, two users would drift off into the corner...er, private room... where they could chat one on one, because the real downside to chat rooms was that most of the "chat" was even more inane and boring than a typical cocktail party - and even more disjointed. After a while, two or three people would end up controlling the conversation, and everyone else would be reduced to "lurking," or sitting back and just watching the most "talkative" engage.
Frequently, of course, the reason for the private chat was monkey business. While I always found this strange and risible, some people really seemed to enjoy it.
Now comes Chatroulette, which takes the basic model and amps it up with a web camera (which of course has been employed in other chat situations), and a pairing algorithm.
The point is to log on, initiate your camera, and you'll be paired with another random user for a chat.
The site was created by a high school student from Moscow, and has become the darling of the media - probably just because it does have the potential to be both interesting (you can end up chatting with someone half way around the world, brush up on your Italian as you chat with someone in Rome, or learn first hand about the volcanic eruptions in Iceland) and nasty (come on, its cameras and strangers).
Predictably, most users are American males, and equally predictably, there is plenty of objectionable content - or, more to the point, plenty of hoped for objectionable content! As Wikipedia tells us, "A user was twice as likely to encounter a sign requesting female nudity than to encounter actual female nudity."
When a user doesn't like the person with whom he's been paired, he "spins" for another conversation, or "nexts," leading to the insulting expression, "You've been nexted."
The site's creator, as of March of this year, was running it from his bedroom - and hosting about 1.5 million users, give or take.
Oh, yeah, there are lots of scary websites out there, but this one has a particularly creepy appeal.
It's called Chatroulette, and its entire purpose is to pair random strangers from anywhere in the world into webcam-based chats.
Now, the notion of chatting with total strangers is just about as old as the web itself - and yes, it always had creepy overtones, and was always used for, shall we say, less than savory purposes. I recall back in the 90s when everyone was flocking online, chat rooms were all the rage. Users would sign up for a chat service - AOL offered them as part of its basic service, no special software or skills required - and then drop in to a "room" where a bunch of people would "be" holding a text-based conversation. Sometimes, two users would drift off into the corner...er, private room... where they could chat one on one, because the real downside to chat rooms was that most of the "chat" was even more inane and boring than a typical cocktail party - and even more disjointed. After a while, two or three people would end up controlling the conversation, and everyone else would be reduced to "lurking," or sitting back and just watching the most "talkative" engage.
Frequently, of course, the reason for the private chat was monkey business. While I always found this strange and risible, some people really seemed to enjoy it.
Now comes Chatroulette, which takes the basic model and amps it up with a web camera (which of course has been employed in other chat situations), and a pairing algorithm.
The point is to log on, initiate your camera, and you'll be paired with another random user for a chat.
The site was created by a high school student from Moscow, and has become the darling of the media - probably just because it does have the potential to be both interesting (you can end up chatting with someone half way around the world, brush up on your Italian as you chat with someone in Rome, or learn first hand about the volcanic eruptions in Iceland) and nasty (come on, its cameras and strangers).
Predictably, most users are American males, and equally predictably, there is plenty of objectionable content - or, more to the point, plenty of hoped for objectionable content! As Wikipedia tells us, "A user was twice as likely to encounter a sign requesting female nudity than to encounter actual female nudity."
When a user doesn't like the person with whom he's been paired, he "spins" for another conversation, or "nexts," leading to the insulting expression, "You've been nexted."
The site's creator, as of March of this year, was running it from his bedroom - and hosting about 1.5 million users, give or take.
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