My mother used to say that television had killed the art of conversation. One wonders what she would have made of Chatroulette, the current sensation du jour. It's the implementation of a stunningly simple idea: live online chats with randomly chosen, complete strangers.
After logging in two frames appear on the left-hand side of the screen. The lower one shows you (or what your webcam is pointing at). The other is labelled "Partner". Click "New Game" and you're off. An image of someone or something appears in the upper frame.
"Connected," says the status bar, "Feel free to talk now." If you don't like what you see, click the "Next" button and you're instantly connected to someone else. And so it goes.
To anyone unused to raw, unmediated Net culture, Chatroulette will come as a shock. Most of those who've appeared on my screen seem to be young men. Some are engaged in various kinds of sexual exhibitionism, much of it explicit. A few look wistful or puzzled, but I've found it impossible to divine what's actually going on in their heads, because they invariably click "Next" when they see me.
This is understandable, given that the "partners" with whom they wish to chat are probably young, female and scantily clad. My experience, though, resonates with those of other observers. Comscore statistics suggest that Chatroulette is dominated by college-aged males and that males make up 72% of the site's users, and 45% of all users (male and female) are aged 18-24. The New York film-maker Casey Neistat reported that among the 90 people he clicked through one Thursday afternoon he found "71% men, 15% women and 14% perverts". While 95% "nexted" Neistat, his female friend was clicked away by only 5%.
Chatroulette has enjoyed vertiginous growth since its launch last November. It has also provoked a good deal of moral panic of the "how would you like it if your children saw this?" variety.
But it has also given rise to a modicum of thoughtful reflection – for example by the anthropologist danah boyd (and, yes, she wants her name in lower case) who works for Microsoft Research and probably knows more about social networking than anyone on the planet. "I find it difficult to respond to the fears," she wrote in her blog , "because I find it endearing. Chatroulette reminds me a lot of the quirkiness of the internet that I grew up with. Like when I was a teen trolling through chatrooms, Chatroulette is filled with all sorts of weird people. And most users ignore most other users until they find someone they find interesting or compelling. While the site was designed by a teen, minors do not dominate there (although there are plenty of young adults there). And, not surprisingly, teens on the site have ZERO interest in talking to older folks – even old folks like me. It's the strangest pairing dynamic… You can click Next and they can click Next until something gels."
She's right. In its unruly, randomised, disturbing way, Chatroulette forces us to reflect on some truths that we are in danger of forgetting. First of all, the internet is, at its heart, a giant Connection Machine – not just a system for delivering "content" (or goods and services) to customers. What was so liberating about the network when it first appeared in the 1980s was the way it enabled people to connect with people they would never have encountered in real life. Over the decades, the net has morphed into something rather different – a system for interacting with those whom you already know. That, after all, is the essence of Facebook, LinkedIn and co. Chatroulette shatters that model – which is why it suddenly seems so outrageous.
Second, if Chatroulette users – or internet users generally – are apparently so obsessed with sex, then surely that tells us more about human nature than it does about technology? Sure, the net made pornography more accessible. But there wouldn't have been such an abundance of supply if there wasn't a demand. And is that demand a symptom not just of the evolutionary power of the reproductive urge, but of a widespread failure in human relationships? If you want an insight into that, just go to Google, type "How can I get my wife..." and see what the most common queries beginning with those words are.
It's not the images of the flashers on Chatroulette that haunt me, but those of the users who looked wistful. Are they just hoping to connect with someone who might listen – and respond?
