Chat Roulette: This Post Is Barely SFW

Dan says…

As is becoming routine lately, Jane’s dragging me into some of the darker corners of the internet. And then regretting doing it when I run off and play with all the new, slightly sketchy friends I make.

Like Twitter.

And two days ago?

Chat Roulette.

If you’ve never been to this website, here’s how it works:

It’s a live video and text chat site. You hook up your web cam (a cam isn’t required to use the site, but people with cams rarely want to spend time with people without cams), agree to some terms, then click “Play.”

Within a few seconds a live video feed pops up of someone, somewhere in the world. It’s roulette, so you have no idea who it’ll be and no idea where they’ll be from. With that person or people you can text chat while you watch them on video, or talk to them with live audio, and it’s all in real-time. The site originated in Russia and is just now climaxing in popularity in the United States.

And in this web-fueled era of HEY! LOOKIT ME! you can almost guess what you’d find on a site like this. Or maybe you can’t.
Penises, Jane readers. For as far as you can throw a Johnsonville.

Ladies’ Night exists at bars for a reason. Frugal men led by profligately spendy cocks will fill corrugated steel buildings and drop a small fortune on overpriced alcohol in the hopes of securing the affections of a woman for the night (or possibly longer). And this phenomena, this lottery odds’ worth of disproportion of women who are looking for piggish men and the piggish men volunteering themselves to women is played out in disgusting, hilarious detail on chatroulette.com.

I don’t want to bore you with this here, but I’ve created a page describing all the weird shit I’ve seen on Chat Roulette. It is staggering.  Click here to see most of it.

Now I know Jane’s seen a bit of what Chat Roulette has to offer and I know she’s going to come out against it.

Me? I’m totally in favor of it. The tropical rain forest vaginas, the completely naked and flexing men, the talking golden retrievers. All of it. And here’s why:

1) Often it’s disgusting. Sometimes it’s polite and friendly. But it’s personal expression. You know, 1st amendment stuff? Do we really want to invite Big Brother in to start squashing personal freedoms because of one little website that is easily blocked from a browser? Should we start burning books again?

2) It’s superficial and harmless. Nobody is actually hooking up. Nobody is obligated to anything. You don’t like what you’re seeing, you click “Next” and get connected with the next random person. Like flipping through cable channels.

3) You can meet normal people from all over the world, too. I had a nice chat with a person in Chile. Right – where the earthquake happened. Do you know how to say “earthquake” in Spanish? “Terremoto.”

4) There’s nothing on this site that you can’t already find in a million other places on the web.

5) The site is extremely dangerous for kids. Wait. That’s not why I’m in favor of it. Please see above. The thing is, it’s called parenting, people. Last night I briefly chatted about former New York Rangers goalie Ed Richter (I’m a Red Wings fan) with what appeared to be a young man of about 14. In his room. Alone. On Chat Roulette. For a scant few seconds I saw a boy of about 10 with his little sister (5? 6 years old?) at a kitchen table, flipping through rotations of chatters. If you’re on the site for more than 3 minutes, there’s no way you don’t see at least one guy masturbating. And these kids are seeing that. But they can see that anywhere. I mean check Wikipedia for fuck’s sake. Chatroulette isn’t bringing anything new to the table. As parents, we have to do our jobs and limit our kids’ opportunities to see this.

6) It’s hilarious. It gives me an avenue to poke fun at people without consequence. Or be a parent when some other kid’s parents have abdicated that role. Or be a voice of reason TO a parent when they clearly have trouble exercising good judgement. (see the page of weird shit I’ve seen)

7) All of it is easily fixable. That’s the most interesting part to me, and I would be surprised if this DOESN’T happen in the next 60 days. I run multiple discussion forum websites and they all require registration to participate. Chatroulette.com does not. Got webcam? Got internetz? Then you’ve got freakdom. Something as simple as requiring registration/login with IP address logging, following all COPPA rules, and the problem goes away. Better yet, do all that, and then provide a place within the site that’s set aside for a freak-for-all, for the shaved, masturbating men and the very large, untrimmed, masturbating women.

This is nothing new. Just a new variant of the same old.

Tosh.1, maybe. Now with more penis!

…but Jane thinks…

You have taken complete leave of your senses.  Aren’t you supposed to be the conservative in this relationship?  Or have you merely been been so scarred by what you’ve seen on ChatRoulette that you are no longer lucid.

1)Your first amendment argument is absurd.  Yeah.  Blocking ChatRoulette is akin to burning books.  On what planet, other than Planet I’ll Scroll Through Forty Naked Dudes Abusing Themselves Just For The Chance I’ll See Some Naked Hooters??  Kids are on the internet the same way kids watch TV.  Would you be making the same argument if, interspersed between SpongeBob and Hannah Montana was footage of naked old men getting their groove on?   You can’t even compare Chat Roulette to CABLE television, because Cable television represents a choice, a selection, an opt-in.  Your kids can’t get to cable if you haven’t provided it to them.  But if your kids go on a computer, they can end up at Chat Roulette.

2)  It’s not even little kids that concern me the most, because, ohdeargodsweetjjesusIhope, most parents aren’t letting their young kids hang out in front of the computer unsupervised.  It’s adolescents.  Adolescents aren’t developmentally or emotionally sophisticated enough to process an unfiltered stream of society’s worst doing its worst.  Ask any person over the age of 30 what ChatRoulette is and, unless they saw Jon Stewart last night, most of them will say, “Chatwha?”  Ask any kid under the age of 19 and chances are they’ll giggle and say, “Oh my god!  So gross but so funny!”

3)  It’s only a matter of time before some creepo on Chat Roulette identifies the location or affiliation with some young, giggling girl via sweatshirt, background, recognition of surroundings, SOMETHING.  And then what?  In addition to raising up a generation of young adults with confused and complicated and distorted impressions of sexuality we are now willfully saying, “Yep…it’s all out there…go find it!  Anything goes!  Hope the weirdos don’t find you first!”

4)  Dan, you’re a husband and a father and a brother and a son.  From what I know, although I may at another time and in a different situation claim otherwise for the purpose of winning an argument, a pretty terrific one of all those.  As a man, aren’t you remotely concerned that ChatRoulette is yet another way that men are revealed to be base, corrupt, and scary?  Obviously, not all men.  But out of the woodwork the creepers creep when the opportunity presents, and so far, by  my research all three minutes of it before I started to feel unclean and threw up in my  mouth  a little bit, a hefty percentage of those creepers are men.   As a mother of a person who will one day be a man, and as a wife of a man, and as a sister of a man, and as a teacher of young men, I am worried that men aren’t working overtime to protect their image on the internet.  Popular culture is working overtime to hammer home this disturbing and fundamentally untrue message: men are porn-addicted, violent-game playing, virtual affair having skankbuckets.   It’s in none of our best interests to let that happen.

5)  If you want to have a conversation with a person in Chile about the earthquake, go on Facebook.  Find a pen pal.  Call the Chilean embassy.  The anonymity coupled with the ability to dismiss someone based on a fleeting glimpse is a recipe for disaster.  If you should actually proceed far enough in one of these “chats” to have a “conversation” with someone, what was it that made that person the one you stuck with to try to converse?  What made them decide to try to converse with you?   Whatever it is, it’s not enough.

6)  What else?  Other than, GROSS GROSS GROSS, which is a pretty compelling argument, frankly.  Here’s what else:  it’s a time suck.  For people with addictive tendencies and bad computer habits, I ask you this:  Isn’t there something more productive you could do with your time?  Something that advances us as a culture instead of catering to and manipulating our baser instincts?
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