New #47: Chatroulette

Chatroulette did not seem appealing. The website is designed to randomly connect you (through your webcam) to some completely random person in the world for a face-to-face chat. They can see you, you can see them. You can talk, or you "next" the person and be moved on to another stranger.

All I'd heard about the site is that it's a hit among teenagers ... and to expect lots of penis (from people who apparently think it's really funny or sexy to show their junk to the world). Needless to say, it did not sound like my cup of tea. But then I had a conversation with a 16-year-old who swore her favorite thing in the whole wide world is having Chatroulette sleepovers with friends, when they spend hours clicking through the site. Maybe it was the dare of trying something new -- or a secret wish to be 16 again -- but I decided to give it a go myself.

For my wing-woman I recruited Kim, who not only knew me as a teenager but is someone I knew would be a good support system through this adventure. We promised ourselves to stay on the site for 15 minutes. Then we could check it off the list of things we'd done in life and never spin the Chatroulette wheel again. But whatdoyaknow? An hour and half later, we were still clicking away, with our cheeks hurting from smiling, throats sore from laughing and neighbors pissed from our screaming. So much fun!

But like many great relationships, Chatroulette did started off very awkward. What is the correct etiquette? How long should we wait to next a person? What do you even say? Luckily, the first few people took care of things right away by nexting us within seconds. This should have probably been more insulting than it was, but really it was a relief to not have to talk to anyone. Soon we stumbled upon people who didn't next us ... but just stared at us. We waved or said hi. When they still didn't respond, we began using our next button. That's when the party really got started.

Soon we were blazing through all kinds of people. Most of them were younger guys alone in their room. Creepy. We usually nexted them right away. We'd run into a few other girls, too, who usually nexted us. Through all of this we set up some ground rules for nexting: If you can't see the person's face, next them. And anytime you see a blank room, it almost always means a penis sneak attack is on the way. If you hesitate, you get a screen full of nasty.

Like the legends told, there was indeed a lot of wiener on the site. It was like Russian Roulette ... just with balls instead of bullets. Each time we were unfortunate to stumble on one, Kim and I would scream "Penis!" and next it as quickly as we could. The neighbors must have really wondered ...

But among all the unfortunately connects, we did run into some fun people worth talking to. A few had an entire party connected to the site. Some danced for us. Some showed off their pets. Then there was one hilarious drunk guy from New Orleans. He had a whole slew of "whats up? chicken butt" jokes. He laughed so hard at his own funnies he literally fell over laughing. Now that's what Chatroulette is all about.

Some of our new friends along the way. Above is thumbs up guy. Below is a pumpkin head who danced for us with maracas.