You unlock this door with the key of imagination. Beyond it is another dimension. One of sound, of sight, of mind. You’re moving into a land of bored teens and perverted adults. You’ve just crossed over into — Chatroulette.
Debuting last fall, and invented by 17-year-old Russian, and future gazillonaire, Andrey Ternovskiy, Chatroulette is a Web site that lets you chat with strangers at any given time. There’s a text option, and if you have webcam and a mic your new buddy can see and hear you and vice versa.
I’ve played with it before for a short time and got scared off by random people masturbating. But, at 11:35 p.m., on Tuesday, March 4, with my webcam on, I pledged one hour, with one goal in mind — conquer Chatroulette (When I say conquer I mean get some stimulating conversation, or — see some boobies.)
A couple of clicks, and I was off. In the center of the site there is the type box and to the left there’s two square boxes, one displaying my face, the other displaying my partner’s face. The most important button to remember is the “next” button, the one that allows you to skip anyone at anytime.
When I got on, there were more than 20,000 people online. After about 10 minutes of nexting people, I got to an older woman (think Kathy Bates) smoking a cigarette, while a younger woman was dancing half naked in the background. “Hello,” I typed. “Is that your daughter? Tell her to come forward.” Her screen goes black. Written is: “Your partner disconnected. Press Next to find a new person!”
That’s OK, I continued on. In the next 20 minutes I told a white and grey cat named Gibby — yes a cat — that I was a dog, saw a pretty brunette with a sign saying “don’t want to have cyber sex, still want to talk?” which I replied yes — she replied by nexting me, asked a older guy with glasses “If he was on to catch a predator before?” was told by someone with no webcam that “I was the ugliest black kid on the Internet,” was called a “towel head” by a group of nerdy kids (I’m Spanish, jerks) and witnessed three dudes jerking off.
This was not going well. At 12:05 a.m. I bumped into two girls from Clarkson University lying next to each other. Jackpot. They told me they weren’t going to do any “funny stuff.” I said “I understand.”I then proceed to ask “Can you pull your shirt up?”I got nexted. (Was I too forward?)
Around 12:20 there she was. A beautiful blonde named Melissa lying in her underwear. This was it. I typed “hey beautiful” she responded, “hey.” After a couple of minutes of messaging I asked her to “get comfortable.” She asked me to do it first. I typed “Only after you.” And out of nowhere the screen switched to a naked guy dancing and laughing. I was tricked.
Who knew the best conversation I would get came from a guy from Baltimore named Al. When we met he was wearing a lion mask. I told him he looked like a “Thundercat.” From there he explained how he was juggling two jobs, one working at organic super market and the other as a bouncer in a club. I asked him “They let you wear the mask at the club?” His response, “Nah, I would be too scary” then he proceeded to roar for 30 seconds. Cool guy.
By 12:40 a.m., I was peeved. It was 5 minutes past my time limit, and I had only one decent conversation and instead of seeing boobies I had to settle with a last place consolation prize of penis.
Even worse, my roommate was having remarkable success. He was on for 5 minutes, and he got a conversation going with a pretty Indian girl named Sheri. (I tried to get in the webcam but she wrote “Your friend is a creeper” so I got off.) My boy, though, he played it cool. He sustained solid conversation for 20 minutes. There was no mic on his camera, so, thankfully, she couldn’t hear me yelling “No, no don’t type that — ask her to show you her breast!” Instead, She got my roommate to take his shirt off and she promised to do the same. She got up, reached for the bottom of her shirt and — “Your partner disconnected. Press ‘Next’ to find a new person!”
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