MonkeyFight

Cracking Chat Roulette

A short film by the Neistat Brothers’ inspired me to explore Chat Roulette a few nights ago. For those of you who don’t know: Chat Roulette is a site that allows you to video chat with random people all over the world. With the click of a button a person appears on your computer screen. You can either chat with the person or move to the next person with the click of your mouse; this is called ‘nexting’ someone. Chat Roulette is largely populated by lonely guys hoping to glimpse a woman and/or expose their johnsons.  So there is a lot of nexting going on.

 I went on the site and watched a few faces appear and disappear as if my screen was an eye that conjured someone new with each blink. The experience was perfectly dehumanizing and potentially depressing.  There’s also something about the aesthetics of communicating with single anonymous guys via webcam that makes you assume a johnson is just around the corner. 

On a whim, I wrote an opening line - ‘I REFUSE TO NEXT ANYONE! ANYONE!!’ - to paste into the text box before I could be nexted.  It felt like a defiant gesture - some sort of dare.

 I watched the first guy read the sentence.  It seemed he was translating the words in his head. He could be anywhere in the world after all. Then he laughed and gave two thumbs up. Turns out he was Argentinean, sitting in his living room in Buenos Aires.  He told me he was new to Roulette and was glad to meet good people.  When we were done chatting he flashed me...the peace sign. Then I chatted for a while with a 16 year old kid in China who told me his English was not strong. I told him I once taught English to Chinese students in Brooklyn and then referred him to some ESOL sites. He told me I was an excellent teacher. I love Chinese students.  Next I chatted with a guy in Maryland who loved my opening line so much he vowed to spread it across Chat Roulette. I encouraged the idea but asked for a footnote.

I was a bit uncomfortable about it, but in the name of science I even put The Boy on camera at one point. Onscreen were a few 20-something guys who had the sort of amped energy that went with chugging beers and beating nerds but not necessarily in that order. Score one for humanity: when they saw The Boy they cheered and said he was cute. I like to think The Boy saved a nerd that day.

I still got nexted a lot but mostly by people who disappeared so quickly I couldn’t even send my message. And I had less success with a pink stuffed animal and a guy who was dangling from a noose above an upturned chair.  But for the most part people responded well.

The funniest encounter happened when the screen went completely black and these words appeared on my screen: get naked.

I responded in kind: I REFUSE TO NEXT ANYONE! ANYONE!!

The conversation continued as follows copied verbatim from my screen. My responses are in CAPS:

get naked

I WON’T NEXT ANYONE!

Get Naked

DONT BE A COWARD. BESIDES I AM NAKED. MY SKIN LOOKS LIKE FLANNEL [ed. I was wearing a flannel]

Get naked

YOU ARE BLACK AS NIGHT - NO OFFENSE

let me see your dick

I LOST IT - WHERE ARE YOU?

next me - my mouse doesnt work

I REFUSE. I TOLD YOU I REFUSE TO NEXT PEOPLE. BESIDES I THINK WE'RE GETTING ALONG WELL.

next me

FOR CRYING OUT LOUD - YOU SHOW UP TO CHAT ROULETTE

next me

WITH NO CAMERA & NO MOUSE
AND YOU ASK FOR DICK?!
SORRY CHARLIE, YOU'RE GONNA HAVE TO REBOOT YOUR COMPUTER. WE'RE IN THIS TOGETHER
im on on my ipod

THEN IT'S A STARING CONTEST. WHERE ARE YOU?
in new mexico. cmon next me

OK I'LL CUT YOU A BREAK BUT YOU HAVE TO SAY PLEASE
Please

NEXT

My adventure with Chat Roulette was exhilarating. I felt like I’d made an inroad into the dynamics of the site and it ultimately reinforced my love of the humans. By telling people I wouldn’t next them I was essentially inviting them to take pause. I was letting them know I would give them a chance. Stay awhile. I was also poking fun at the compulsive nexting everyone was doing. People seemed to appreciate that too.

Unfortunately, women can’t really expect to go on Chat Roulette without being aggressively harassed.  If a woman were to attempt this same experiment she would get a glimpse into a perverted corner of the male psyche that would either boggle her mind or confirm her worst fears.  Someone should figure out how to do a Women’s Only Chat Roulette.  Just footnote me on it. 

chat roulette from Casey Neistat on Vimeo.

  

 

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THE HUFFINGTON POST IS CORNY

I’ve never paid attention to The Huffington Post.  Maybe I’ve looked at the site once or twice before this week. I never intentionally ignored it, I just like to think I have better things to do (like check my email 46 times a day).  I always assumed, though, that it was an intelligent, liberal voice in the world of journalism. 

But it turns out The Huffington Post is corny. Or at least its headlines are.

After the Rally to Restore Sanity I noticed headlines about Stewart’s Rally “beating” or “obliterating” Beck’s Rally and it just read as silly and adolescent and irrelevant and even untrue on some level. It made me picture a bunch of grinning hand wringing liberals high fiving each other.

And then this morning’s headlines regarding the midterm elections confirmed it. They wrote:

GRIDLOCK IN AMERICA.

First of all – Washington D.C. ain't America. Secondly - what's changed? Hasn't Washington been lumbering along in near gridlock for years?  With the silly filibuster rule hanging over everyone’s heads and the frantic search for 60 votes to get anything done?  But lastly and more to my interest – isn’t that headline born of the same bogus fear mongering that Fox News and so many other outlets use? The giant screaming headline was laced with just as much Armageddon as any other screamedia outlet. I’ve heard Arianna Huffington speak a few times, and she’s smart and passionate, but maybe she’s got cornballs working the site.

As usual my thoughts eventually got around to The Boy, and I thought maybe the giant red letters were meant for babies. Thanks to Infant Visualization Research (sponsored by The Baby Toy Corp. Inc.), we’ve all learned that infants respond well to red and black and white. Research has shown  these colors increase the chance that your baby will rule the world.  This is one reason The Wife and I wallpapered the walls, ceilings, and floors in black and red wallpaper.  So perhaps The Huffington Post is doing a service to all the concerned parents out there who are doing all they can to have healthy, big brained babies who are more likely to fulfill the lost dreams of their parents. Or maybe the Huffington Post's editorial staff are a bunch of babies.

Regardless, I’m not going to miss a potential opportunity for The Boy, so today, I’m going to sit him in front of The Huffington Post website and it’s big headline by and for babies.