Blog Post #3 - My Experiences with Chatroulette

For this blog post, I decided to spend a few minutes on chatroulette, an online chat website that links people from around the world using webcams on personal computers. From my experiences, Chatroulette seemed to crest in popularity when I was a freshman two years ago, as it seemed there was a solid month in which nearly everybody on my floor went on Chatroulette in their downtime. (In fact, one of my current roommates claimed to have stayed on Chatroulette for seven straight hours at one point. He’s weird.) Having not visited the website for nearly two years, I was curious to see how the format had changed, and if it was still plagued by its familiar problems.

My first reaction to visiting the website was that it seemed like its site layout was more aesthetically pleasing than I remember. Since the site was in its infancy when I first visited, greater attention likely wasn’t put into the site’s design. Awkwardly placed ads and frequent glitches in the website’s ability to load, particularly when a lot of visitors were online, were common problems I faced when I went on in the past. This time, the videos loaded quickly, the chat window appeared larger, and it was much easier to navigate.

However, the familiar problems I had in the interactivity process on Chatroulette hasn’t changed much in two years. Many of the site’s visitors are presumed to be intent on meeting girls on the website, causing a huge gender imbalance, with male viewers populating the website in vast amounts. Many of these males feel the best way to court the few female website visitors is to pleasure themselves on camera. In my five or so minutes of using Chatroulette today, I came across seven instances where this happened. Of the 30-50 people I circulated through during my usage, I came across eight blank screens and only one female, who quickly “nexted” me. Must not be her type.

Trying to engage in conversation on Chatroulette is exceedingly difficult. In addition to most often coming across men, most of who probably aren’t interested in talking to other men, a large percentage of the site’s visitors are foreign, making for language barriers in many cases. Furthermore, many of individuals who are willing to talk tend to be of the “troll” variety, willingly trying to criticize you or piss you off behind the anonymity of their personal computers. During my time on the website today, I didn’t even come close to beginning a conversation with somebody, as I was either “nexted” or received no response.

Despite an admittedly novel concept and demonstrative growth in the website’s formatting, Chatroulette remains flawed in achieving its chief purpose of connecting strangers in conversation. It takes much effort and persistence for a person to actually engage in a conversation with somebody, and in the process, exposes visitors to some of the worst things about the internet. Though the website’s made progress in the sense that it allows for the ability to maintain contacts with people you’ve previously talked to, it’s an arduous process to meet said people in the first place. These complications make what seems like a neat idea in theory – connecting people from all over the globe via webcam – a novelty that gets old quickly.