Chat Roulette

A friend of the Deputy’s, Samantha Clueless (check out samanthaclueless.blogspot.com), put me on to what I think to be a revolutionary social experiment.  The website is called chatroulette.com and what it does is, when you enter into the site, you start a video chat with a random person.  Simply , that is the extent of the website, but interestingly enough the profundity of the experiment extends to the fact that people all over the world are logging on.  In one video-conference I was able to chat with 15 year-old girls in Paris, then chat with a soccer team in Great Britain and end a session with an English teacher in Brazil.  It is a chat roulette, hence the domain name.  

It is very much sub-culture and attracts a certain kind of person, and I feel that I am that kind of person.  One is basically electronically entering your home and sitting at a table with you, even with a glass of wine if you so choose to indulge.  There are no chat police and no real dangers because, at your own volition, you can change the channel and chat with a completely different person at the click of a button.  BEWARE!  There is the occasional pervert using it as a vehicle to explore the voyeuristic fantasies, but it can merely be looked at as an occupational hazard, a speed bump to the more overarching idea that interesting people want to meet other interesting people.

I think the same type of person who likes to travel and stay in hostels and couch surf is the type of person that would like this website.  I find it intriguing and encouraging that humanity is willing to open up more and more, attempting to close the metaphorical “personal space” that has grown irreversibly vast over our modernization.  The Deputy was talking to his mother, an old fashion immigrant, about another website called couchsurfing.com.  

The way the site works is that a person takes a picture of their couch and creates a profile describing their expectations of a potential visitor.  Then, someone visiting the city of the profile’s owner can contact the owner and set up an arrangement whereby the visitor stays on the owner’s couch for a specified amount of time, for free.  Mother was shocked to hear that not only the website existed but that there are people that would open their homes to complete strangers.  The Deputy has a profile on the site and is of the impression that there is a type of person, a member of a certain subculture, that enjoys lessening the security of his or her home in order to help a fellow traveler and perhaps meet someone interesting.  It is a leap of faith, a trust and a sense of wonder that may lead someone to create a profile.  

But being a member of the tribe, I say that I am happy that it exists if ever I were the visitor.  It is an electronic extension of the proverbial story of welcoming a stranger-in-need into your home.  Call it hippie but chatroulette.com and couchsurfing.com give the Deputy hope in a more communal humanity, united towards a common goal of reciprocity.