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It looks like any other instant-messaging window. A blank white box on the bottom allows text input. But wait. On the top are two smaller boxes for video; the left box featuring a random stranger and the right box featuring a user daring enough to try his hand at Chatroulette.
For those who live under a rock or otherwise haven’t heard of the site where almost anything can happen, welcome to the strange world of Chatroulette. It is an interactive Web site that allows communication between any two users who have Internet access, a web cam and a microphone. If one user wants a different chat companion, they simply click “next” and are connected to a new person almost instantly.
So what’s the appeal? Chatroulette’s millions of users have different motives for visiting the site, but many University of Maine students have been frequenting the site simply out of boredom and curiosity.
Erwin Cusack, a third-year mechanical engineering student at the University of Maine, just discovered the site last week when he was stuck on a tricky crossword puzzle. Each week between classes, Cusack completes crosswords to kill time. But one day after he had found every word he could, he turned to Chatroulette to see what its wide array of users knew.
“I ended up getting five or six words from people,” Cusack said.
Since his initial endeavor, he has met four people from Holland, several from France, a girl from Iowa and a man from Russia. Cusack has been using crossword puzzles as a way to screen for worthwhile chatting partners on Chatroulette.
“For the most part, I’ve been starting off with the crossword, and if they read it they’re probably worth talking to,” Cusack said.
The language barrier between Cusack and international Chatroulette users has presented some complications, but for his puzzle-solving purposes, one chatting companion’s distant location came in handy.
“I was talking to a guy from Russia and I needed to know a four-letter word for tears,” Cusack said. “He said that was kind of hard to know if you don’t know English that well, but ‘Russian country house’ just so happened to be one of the clues. [The word] was ‘dacha’ and he knew it.”
Chatroulette’s demographic comes from all over the globe, spanning ages and interests. Visitors of the site should be warned that, although users can technically report inappropriate content, it is swarming with alarming images and users who have motives other than crossword puzzles on their mind. It doesn’t take more than a few minutes on the site to experience this firsthand. The newly posted ‘rules’ on the Chatroulette site say it all: “16-plus, please stay clothed, please click Report (F2) if you don’t like what you see.”
“Getting past the penises is integral to using Chatroulette,” Cusack said. “I’ve been on a lot lately. There’s a lot of downtime where people are skipping through looking for boobs, but the people I talked to were pretty interesting.”
The content on Chatroulette is part of what has made it such a wildly popular pastime. Shock value gets people talking on and off the site. If users can deal with the recurring awkward images, they may meet unexpected acquaintances.
“I talked to people for three hours straight the first time,” said Trent Bechard, a second-year mass communications student who discovered Chatroulette a month ago when he saw it was a trending topic on Twitter.
His favorite experience so far was meeting a student from Turkey whom he found a lot in common with. “I’m thinking about studying abroad in Turkey now. [Chatroulette] gives me insight into different countries,” Bechard said. “We became Facebook friends.”
Despite Bechard’s positive experiences and international connections made, he is no stranger to the site’s crude content.
“Be careful. Don’t show your mom or dad or tell them to go on, because I don’t know if they’ll like it,” Bechard said.
Chatroulette has been running since February of this year and was created by Andrey Ternovski, 17, of Germany. Ternovski was surprised at how quickly his idea caught on and is still unsure what the point of his own site is. According to an interview conducted by The New York Times, Ternovski described it as some combination of a game, an unknown world and a dating site.
What started as a simple concept in the mind of a teenage coding enthusiast is now a full-blown pop culture phenomenon. Since its inception, it has grown from approximately 4,000 users online at a time to an excess of 30,000. People go on to make connections with others they normally wouldn’t have, finish crossword puzzles, play drinking games and often just to see what all the fuss is about.
“If you go on really late, you’ll get all the European people,” Bechard said. “If you go on when it’s 9 or 10 o’clock you’ll get a bunch of kids drinking.”
But the use of Chatroulette isn’t limited to homes or dorm rooms. In fact, Bechard once met someone from the University of Vermont who was sitting in the middle of a lecture hall while class was in session and another person who was riding in a plane.
Also, don’t assume the site is entirely anonymous. Bechard recently ran into an awkward situation that proves the site may connect users to people nearby as well as far away.
“One time I went to the Union and my friend Devan was like, ‘I saw you on Chatroulette the other day and you nexted me,’” he said.
Some people started using Chatroulette because a friend was raving about it and became addicted, while others avoid it because of the horror stories. YouTube channels, Tumblr blogs and Facebook fan pages have popped up in tribute to this strange site that is indicative of this culture’s love of immediacy.
Chatroulette serves as an instant amusement that people can quickly share with friends and use to make new ones — if they’re not easily offended, of course.
Bangor Daily News