Chatroulette: New online intelligence

Published Feb. 24, 2010 at 4:17 p.m.
Navigating humanity
Think of the history of online chat as you would the arc of a young American’s life.

Think of the history of online chat as you would the arc of a young American’s life. When Chat was 8, it began sorting through its parents’ record collections, finding bands and movies it enjoyed, aggressively asserting its identity. At 9, it began passing secret notes in school. After an awkward adolescence, it grew into its body at 15, tried out for debate club, and developed a loyalty to its friends. A year or two later it started missing curfew and smelling funny, and after it was caught at the wrong kind of party and had its car privileges revoked, Chat cut its hair, ironed its clothes, and got accepted at a competitive college. After a transitional freshman year, it now calls its parents every weekend.

Firefly, AOL IM, Friendster, MySpace, Facebook, Skype. If online chat was officially born in 1988, Chatroulette arrives while it’s looking for its first apartment, barely old enough to drink.

Per the Web site itself, Chatroulette is a “brand new service for one-on-one text-, webcam-, and microphone-based chat with people around the world.” Its austere design contains a single chat box and two fist-size webcam boxes — one for you, one for them. A click of the play button brings up the message LOOKING FOR A RANDOM STRANGER. What you find next is anyone’s guess.

Whimsical? Yes. Easily corruptible? Sure. Surrealist playground? Why not? Nevertheless, in a world where distant friends spam your Facebook inbox with MafiaWars notices, Chatroulette’s unmediated platform might save us from our own monsters. It relies on an intelligence the online community hasn’t used since grade school.

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