Chatroulette

I remember when Chatroulette came out, it was considered an alternative forum to connect/communicate with strangers all over the globe. Although you can find the random someone looking to say hi, the site is dominated by nudity and sexual displays. It was interesting to me to flash through 20 pages or so of people who were from all over the world and whose ages spanned from teenage to middled age and all of them were taking the time to either just sit there and meet strangers or worse, sit there and expose themselves to strangers.

For the people that were not naked, I did a casual wave, but I quickly turned to the next person. I was not interested or comfortable connecting so intimately ( in my apartment, one-on-one) with a complete stranger from Rome or Texas. Not knowing anything about the people, or having no idea what to expect from them made me timid to enter into a chat with any of them.

Chatroulette definitely succeeded in its attempt to create an international chatting forum. However, the identity of that forum has evolved into a highly sexual and inappropriate internet space for people to display themselves randomly to people around the world. If the site wants a more respected reputation, then there would need to be more control on the chatters' activity. Going on Chatroulette was an extremely shocking experience, however, it definitely gave me insight into the variety of ways internet can connect people and also how the internet can be used/abused in highly personal ways and the levels of discretion practiced in everyday life hold no water in such chatting forums.