Oh my, I don't know WHAT I was thinking when I went in for
Today's New Activity: Chat Roulette
Oh wow. So I don't know if you heard of chatroulette.com when it made big news a few months back. Who knows, maybe it made big news longer ago than that (its official launch date was November 2009), but I first heard about it a few months back. Anyway, if you hadn't heard, I'll break it down briefly.
Chatroulette is a website that allows users to pair up in random chats via webcam. There is microphone and text chat capability, too. Basically, you just turn on your webcam and BAM! there's another person there looking at you. Some random stranger just right there, all up in your face.
You are then free to text chat or actually talk to them, provided you have a microphone.....OR......you can simply click the "next" button and the first person is magically whisked away, replaced by another random stranger. And you can do this over and over and over again, and the strangers just keep coming, ad infinitum.
I don't know what possessed me to give this a try tonight. I suppose it was just the fact that I never had, and hey! I'm looking for new stuff anyway...
My only reservation (fear) in checking out chatroulette was that I'd heard it's fertile ground for pervs, and that you may just end up seeing more of your chatty companion than you bargained for. If you were to see how quickly the new people pop up when you hit "next," you would know that a sudden weiner in the screen in this way would be even more disconcerting than you may otherwise imagine. If you can imagine that.
But I decided to check it out anyway. I told myself I'd give it 20 minutes, just to say I did. Oh my goodness, what a weird experience. First of all, it's just freakin' WEIRD to have some other person there in your living room all of a sudden, just looking right at you.
I got so shy. I mean, I didn't want to talk to this person. I didn't even know this person (and yes, I fully realize that's the whole point of it). I couldn't handle the awkwardness of it, so I hit "next" almost immediately and made that person go away. But then there was another one, right there! Oh noes! "Next" again! But there they were again! I had this super embarrassed smile on my face, which I'm sure looked strange to the people who were looking at me. But I'll never know because I didn't stop long enough to say word one to any of those folks.
Now I'm sure there are plenty of people who are not at all uncomfortable with the idea of "face-to-face" chatting with strangers. After all, the web cam is not a new phenomenon by any means. But I've never been a chat-with-strangers person...at least not since Al Gore first invented the internet (a series of tubes) 15 years back, and my girlfriends Nicole and Renee and I experimented with chat rooms on AOL (Lol, AOL). I've recently re-embraced chatting in the form of instant messaging with a few friends, but chatting with strangers no longer holds the slightest appeal to me.
ANYway, I was a few "nexts" into the whole thing when I realized that the people on the other end would (of course!) realize that I just took one glance at them and just moved right along. Oh my gosh, it's so mean! And they don't know I'm moving on because I'm too shy to keep staring at them. They just think I made the snap "you're boring" or "you're unattractive" judgement and SKIP!!
Ewwww...SKIP!!
Not that I care tooooo much; I mean these people are hanging out on chatroulette, after all. I'm sure they know the drill.
The girls all skipped over me instantly. I guess it's pretty much a hookup site. Except one girl (at least I think it was a girl), image cut off at the neck line, clad in bra and panties, exploring her, um, assets. Ok that caught my attention briefly. And it's pretty easy to see how this can be an addictive pastime for people into anonymous sexual encounters or with few prospects for actual human contact.
But yeah. Not for me. I'm not sure if I lasted even 2 full minutes before I closed the site altogether, likely forever.
Oh, I can report this, though: No weiners. I'd say that makes this a win.
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