we are not human

ChatRoulette is "the newest craze on the Internet," at least according to people who don't spend nearly enough time online to possibly be able to report that. You've might have heard about ChatRoulette, which randomly pairs Internet users to chat with one another using video, audio, and text, helpfully providing a 'next' button to disconnect the current session and draw up a new chat partner. After making the rounds on various news outlets, including Good Morning America, The New York Times, et al., ChatRoulette made a refreshing appearance on The Daily Show With Jon Stewart, where the voice of reason always overshadows media hype.

According to Stewart, "[ChatRoulette's] not a craze. The Macarena was a craze. This is an Internet site that will very quickly become a repository of 5% curiosity seekers and 95% free-floating dongs." In fact, that's what most reporters have found, warning viewers once again to vigilantly monitor the online activity of their children.

One reporter assigned "to spin ChatRoulette's wheel" quickly runs into the site's "dark side." Stewart: "Yes, yes, 'the dark side.' The same 'dark side' that's on every Internet site. The bored, the perverse, and a random grandma with her first computer—the Internet's like Mexican food: every site's got the same ingredients, just in different combinations. But go ahead, investigate. I wonder what your reporters will find on this video-based anonymous stranger finder..."

The results are laughably predictable. The woman sitting in front of the computer connected to ChatRoulette quickly covers her eyes and reports that she doesn't want to repeat what she just saw, while back in the studio the anchor squeals, "I can't wait to hear what that was!" Stewart, deadpan and brilliant: "It was a cock."

He then pulls out a laptop and connects to ChatRoulette himself. After drawing up a number of random bored guys and mercifully blurred cocks, Stewart is also connected with a succession of reporters trying to break the ChatRoulette story. Keith Olbermann, who usually makes pointed criticisms of politicians on MSNBC, is hilarious as the straight man—
Stewart: "Olbermann! What are you doing here?"
Olbermann: "Bearing witness to the new era of communication, Jon. It is Orwellian, Sir, it is Big Brother, and Big Brother is none other than each of us. The Bush Administration's warrantless wiretap search society at T1 speeds, the surveillance state gone viral. At long last, Sir, have we no shame? Oh... I think one of us is supposed to take our pants off now."

Of course, Olbermann's satiric screed on ChatRoulette does contain a kernel of truth. Internet culture grew up in an environment of near total anonymity and freedom. As it moves to the mainstream, online activity is increasingly connected to real names and likenesses and that freedom is lost. Google's Buzz social networking service drew fire for automatically insinuating itself in people's private email. When it first rolled out, gmail users found themselves automatically and publicly following the people they had contacted most, but what if that was their mistress or abusive ex-husband?

In the early and more anonymous days of the Internet, forum posters and chat room participants were almost exclusively assumed to be male. There was possibly a gender gap in early Internet users (wasn't Sandra Bullock's character the only woman of chat buddies in 1995's The Net?) and many men pretended to be women online, but the idea that "there are no girls on the Internet" became so prevalent that it eventually fed into itself. People who asserted that they were female online were met with a barrage of insults and abuse (e.g. "Tits or GTFO," requests for "proof" in the form of time-stamped photos, etc.), so women often pretended to be men just to avoid harassment. On ChatRoulette this is impossible.

In contrast is Omegle, ChatRoulette's text-only predecessor (poised to take over the Internet just last year but now maintaining around 5,000 users at any given time). Without a webcam image, the entity on the other end of the conversation is labeled only "Stranger," and users have essentially no idea who they are chatting with. A corollary is that you can be whoever you want on Omegle. Or be yourself. Unburdening oneself to complete strangers online seems to be part of the appeal of Omegle. That and the complete absence of free-floating dongs, though, as with all aspects of the Internet, many users have found the potential for sex on Omegle.

The bored, the perverse, possibly a random grandma with her first computer. They're all on Omegle too. I asked a few people on Omegle why they talk to strangers online. Answers ranged from "it's complicated," to "You can yap about anything on your mind. (Me: what's on your mind? Stranger: Pie.)" A common response was some variant of "it can get quite steamy in here" or "to find interesting conversations, and maybe other things..."

One brazen soul started our conversation with "19 m with cam and horny ;)" When I advised him to get on ChatRoulette, he answered his own question "you think i find some naked girls there?" with "lol guess no." If the existence of live naked women in chat rooms has mostly to do with the fact that they are actually men, then no, you probably won't find any on a video-based service like ChatRoulette.