ChatRoulette is a site where you can video cam with random strangers. It's like an updated version of an old chat room. It randomly matches you up with strangers for video, audio and text chat.
So, curious, I googled the history of chatroulette and I got this ridiculously entertaining article:
Firefly, AOL IM, Friendster, MySpace, Facebook, Skype. If online chat was officially born in 1988, Chatroulette arrives while it's looking for its first apartment, barely old enough to drink.
Per the Web site itself, Chatroulette is a "brand new service for one-on-one text-, webcam-, and microphone-based chat with people around the world." Its austere design contains a single chat box and two fist-size webcam boxes — one for you, one for them. A click of the play button brings up the message LOOKING FOR A RANDOM STRANGER. What you find next is anyone's guess.
Whimsical? Yes. Easily corruptible? Sure. Surrealist playground? Why not? Nevertheless, in a world where distant friends spam your Facebook inbox with MafiaWars notices, Chatroulette's unmediated platform might save us from our own monsters. It relies on an intelligence the online community hasn't used since grade school.
Collaborative filtering has been the dominant networking concept in the Internet landscape since the mid-'90s, when many middle-class US households first vacuumed out their dens and fashioned them into "computer rooms." It relies on a simple logic: that the Web is a Neronian coliseum of indigestible information without a built-in compass, one constructed from rational personal interests. After personal interests came user accountability, user-generated content, and ultimately, what we have today: relentless real-time documentation. Virtually all online interaction hinges on one of two assumptions: that you're organized by a common interest, or you're already part of a real-world social framework.
What Chatroulette does, remarkably, is ignore this concept. In practical terms, this isn't learning to brush your teeth with the opposite hand; it's brushing them with your friend's foot. For as much as the Internet has accomplished in its 20-plus years, the "stranger's face," someone who sees you at the same time you see them, has been the exclusive domain of real-world interactions.
Chatroulette contains no organizational filters, no fee, no common threads (the notable exception being requisite access to a computer), and no names or addresses. It might be the Web's first purely democratic medium, free (for now, at least) from advertisements, where people can theoretically "meet" and "converse" with someone well outside the grids that construct our normal social lives. No unseen market forces are at work, "guiding you" by steering your Webcam to some nearby Pilates instructor. If someone creeps you out, skip 'em. Perhaps best of all, you're relieved of the occasionally stifling accountability of Facebook, which feels increasingly like a high-school yearbook committee meeting that never ends..."
"Think of the history of online chat as you would the arc of a young American's life. When Chat was 8, it began sorting through its parents' record collections, finding bands and movies it enjoyed, aggressively asserting its identity. At 9, it began passing secret notes in school. After an awkward adolescence, it grew into its body at 15, tried out for debate club, and developed a loyalty to its friends. A year or two later it started missing curfew and smelling funny, and after it was caught at the wrong kind of party and had its car privileges revoked, Chat cut its hair, ironed its clothes, and got accepted at a competitive college. After a transitional freshman year, it now calls its parents every weekend" (read the full article at http://thephoenix.com/boston/life/97620-chatroulette-new-online-intelligence/)
So, curious, I googled the history of chatroulette and I got this ridiculously entertaining article:
"Think of the history of online chat as you would the arc of a young American's life. When Chat was 8, it began sorting through its parents' record collections, finding bands and movies it enjoyed, aggressively asserting its identity. At 9, it began passing secret notes in school. After an awkward adolescence, it grew into its body at 15, tried out for debate club, and developed a loyalty to its friends. A year or two later it started missing curfew and smelling funny, and after it was caught at the wrong kind of party and had its car privileges revoked, Chat cut its hair, ironed its clothes, and got accepted at a competitive college. After a transitional freshman year, it now calls its parents every weekend.
Firefly, AOL IM, Friendster, MySpace, Facebook, Skype. If online chat was officially born in 1988, Chatroulette arrives while it's looking for its first apartment, barely old enough to drink.
Per the Web site itself, Chatroulette is a "brand new service for one-on-one text-, webcam-, and microphone-based chat with people around the world." Its austere design contains a single chat box and two fist-size webcam boxes — one for you, one for them. A click of the play button brings up the message LOOKING FOR A RANDOM STRANGER. What you find next is anyone's guess.
Whimsical? Yes. Easily corruptible? Sure. Surrealist playground? Why not? Nevertheless, in a world where distant friends spam your Facebook inbox with MafiaWars notices, Chatroulette's unmediated platform might save us from our own monsters. It relies on an intelligence the online community hasn't used since grade school.
Collaborative filtering has been the dominant networking concept in the Internet landscape since the mid-'90s, when many middle-class US households first vacuumed out their dens and fashioned them into "computer rooms." It relies on a simple logic: that the Web is a Neronian coliseum of indigestible information without a built-in compass, one constructed from rational personal interests. After personal interests came user accountability, user-generated content, and ultimately, what we have today: relentless real-time documentation. Virtually all online interaction hinges on one of two assumptions: that you're organized by a common interest, or you're already part of a real-world social framework.
What Chatroulette does, remarkably, is ignore this concept. In practical terms, this isn't learning to brush your teeth with the opposite hand; it's brushing them with your friend's foot. For as much as the Internet has accomplished in its 20-plus years, the "stranger's face," someone who sees you at the same time you see them, has been the exclusive domain of real-world interactions.
Chatroulette contains no organizational filters, no fee, no common threads (the notable exception being requisite access to a computer), and no names or addresses. It might be the Web's first purely democratic medium, free (for now, at least) from advertisements, where people can theoretically "meet" and "converse" with someone well outside the grids that construct our normal social lives. No unseen market forces are at work, "guiding you" by steering your Webcam to some nearby Pilates instructor. If someone creeps you out, skip 'em. Perhaps best of all, you're relieved of the occasionally stifling accountability of Facebook, which feels increasingly like a high-school yearbook committee meeting that never ends..."
"Think of the history of online chat as you would the arc of a young American's life. When Chat was 8, it began sorting through its parents' record collections, finding bands and movies it enjoyed, aggressively asserting its identity. At 9, it began passing secret notes in school. After an awkward adolescence, it grew into its body at 15, tried out for debate club, and developed a loyalty to its friends. A year or two later it started missing curfew and smelling funny, and after it was caught at the wrong kind of party and had its car privileges revoked, Chat cut its hair, ironed its clothes, and got accepted at a competitive college. After a transitional freshman year, it now calls its parents every weekend"
ChatRoulette has a terrible reputation. In fact, most of the time, you're supposed to get a naked guy ready to masturbate to anything.
So..we decided to give it a shot...The first guy that appeared was completely naked. We were so shocked that we slammed the laptop screen down. The second guy, was also completely naked. We were about ready to give up when we disconnected and started again. We finally got a girl, but she saw us and disconnected. Were we THAT scary? Finally we got a guy who was...HALF dressed but at least he didn't disconnect when he saw us :)
All in all, it was quite entertaining on a low level sort of way. I could see how people who didn't have anything else to do could be entertained by such a site.
However it can EASILY be abused and used for porn and such. Similiar sites where you can chat with strangers are omegle.com and chacha.com (I've actually posted a screenshot of a recent convo i've had on omegle. Omegle differs because you can choose whether you want to use the cam or just chat)
ChatRoulette could do very well in the Middle East. However, in lebanon, some of the connections are terrible and don't trasmit a very clear picture, which might ruin the overall experience.
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