ChatRoulette is annoying, addictive

So I finally buckled and gave ChatRoulette a try. Have you heard of it? It’s the latest big thing. You hook up your webcam and microphone and the site will hook you up with a random chat partner.

It’s an idea that works much, much better in theory than in practice, and not just because the system is predictably clogged with immaturity and perversion.

If you chat partner bores you, you can click “next” at any time and get a new one. This is the defining experience of ChatRoulette: constant rejection from strangers. Cool guys reject you, pretty girls reject you, old men reject you, pre-teens reject you, reject, reject reject — usually after no more than a second or two of glancing at your visage.

It is incredibly frustrating. I hardly ever swear, but it’s hard to resist yelling obscenities after your (what feels like) 200^th consecutive rejection. Isn’t this supposed to be a chat site? What exactly are these people looking for? (The girls, I presume, are looking for someone more attractive than I. The men, girls.)

When you do finally find a partner, the relief is enormously gratifying, but hold on! More frustration awaits! Because ChatRoulette deals with webcams and microphones — among the most notoriously finicky contraptions of our age — more than half of your chat partners will probably not be able to hear you, or you them, or they’ll crash, or freeze, or be enveloped in ear-splitting feedback, etc.

Once you hack through all these layers, these many, many layers of irritation and hassle, you can have some fun experiences. I had a good chat with a guy from England about British things, and some guy played me a series of songs on his guitar for about half an hour. I did some sketches of politicians for a Dutch fellow, and I chatted about the Olympics with a roomful of people in Toronto.

Here’s a good article about ChatRoulette in the New York Times Magazine. The author describes the experience perfectly, but also articulates some theories why, despite everything pushing you in the opposite direction, ChatRoulette is actually incredibly addictive. I’m definitely keen to give it another go. As one of my friends put it, “ChatRoulette makes you eternally optimistic for better people.” The promise of meaningful conversation with strangers is a more powerful allure than you might expect.