For those of you that read last week's News-Letter, you might remember the witty and incredibly well-written article by a dashing Latin writer on an apparently little-known Website called Omegle.
Like Omegle, Chatroulette is a random stranger-messenger service where you click a button on the screen and you're almost instantaneously connected to someone you don't know from anywhere around the world provided that they have a computer or smartphone, an internet connection and are simultaneously visiting the site.
Unlike Omegle, this site also has the added feature of Skype-like video chat where you can also see (and hear) the person you've been randomly connected to. This adds a whole new dynamic to the interaction, making it more personal and intimate than if you were just having a back-and-forth typefest with a faceless stranger.
Considering sight and sound are often listed as the most valued of the senses five senses, this video conversation aspect is a really big deal - and a large part of why I think Chatroulette sucks.
Granted, some of you probably think the concept behind Omegle is already kinda creepy, and I respect that.
Chatroulette, on the other hand, so closely resembles real life interaction that you have to wonder why the hell you'd be on this site in the first place.
Why not just go to Starbucks and talk to someone in line?
It is pretty cool when you can see and hear someone you've already met or know (e.g. a friend from back home, a business colleague, a sibling, momma and pappabear, etc.) and it's even convenient when you're just too damn lazy to dial the phone.
However, all the things I tried to dispel about Omegle concerning fat WoW players, dicks and people just looking for cybersex are found rather abundantly - and visibly! - on Chatroulette.
Wait . . . dicks? But how can you possibly see dicks on Omegle, Mr. Article-Writer? Well, you can't! But you know where you can? Chatroulette.
Now, my guess is that Chatroulette is supposed to be a play on the gambling game roulette where "round and round and round [the ball] goes, where it stops, nobody knows."
In my opinion, though, it's a little more like Russian Roulette (a wonderful game with a 16.67 percent chance of death invented in czarist Russia involving prison guards who would force prisoners to hold a revolver loaded with one bullet to their temple and to pull the trigger while the guards bet on the outcome), but with worse odds.
You see, while on Omegle you can find somebody interesting within five minutes, in Chatroulette it takes closer to five hours - if you're lucky.
Going back to my Russian Roulette analogy, if the empty barrels were the good conversations and the bullets were the bountiful fat men masturbating on camera, the WoW player looking for human contact, or some stalkeresque 70-year-old man probably waiting to or already masturbating on camera, your chance of getting your brain turned into a mess of skull-sprinkled mashed potatoes is 99.999 percent.
And, the last time I checked .999 percent of a bullet is still more than enough to kill you.
