Never heard of it? I’ll have a look. Oh, fantastic! That Asian man is naked and it seems his camera is focusing on a blurry sausage. Actually, I can’t see it being edible. He’s thrashing it about like… Oh I see.
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Having just returned to the UK after spending the last six months in the French Alps I found myself a little out of the loop. Flicking through a newspaper I came across an article concerning the latest social networking breakthrough. Chatroulette, it turns out, is a live webcam-to-webcam site that enables global communication with strangers the world over. Quite a unifying and harmonic concept on the surface, but really more of an insight into just how technologically reliant the human condition has become; or at least, how bizarre a socially deprived person can become.
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.The original article I discovered this website through was written by a concerned mother. Full of the typical, “I don’t know what my children are up to online” rhetoric that helps to publicise so many of these websites to global status. After skimming over the article, I came to the assumption that such a platform for worldwide discussion may be a good thing. As anyone will know that has visited the site, I was sadly mistaken. Clicking ‘Next’ would frequently reveal a webcam pointed at the male form, or in some oddly memorable cases, a naked man jacking himself to kingdom come. Occasionally, of course, the site would fulfil its original purpose. A rather bored looking person would strike up a conversation that never really got any further than, “How are you? Had a good day?”
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In truth, I’m not sure which is more disconcerting. The man hoping to rid himself of social frustration or the man hoping for release, so to speak. Just the fact that people all over the world are happy to have strangers access their lives is a concept that is truly part of the ‘modern’ world. If such a person is so willing to put themselves up for social sale why not just go out into the street and approach strangers until one responds positively? No, its much easier to just click ‘next’.
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First instant messaging services let us strike up conversations with ‘friends’. Social networking sites took it a little further with constant status updates, photo albums and peer messaging visible to most. However, the idea of live video chat with strangers may just be a step to far. Just googling the term, ‘Chatroulette’ will come up with some pretty humorous photo’s. Looking slightly further though, is this not just a measure of how disconnected we are becoming as a race. Sure, it enables communication the world over but why force a conversation with a stranger online, when you could just chat to a human being. What’s next? Nights out on the town that require you to have your webcam permission settings pre-defined just to have a good time?
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