OK, so this is one of the scariest things I have ever heard of on the web. Basically, you are paired with a random stranger for a webcam chat. If one party doesn't want to continue the conversation, they can just click 'next' and get another random stranger. It's supposed to be porn-free (you can report people who are doing that and they get a ten-minute ban), but it happens. Apparently a few celebrities claim to have been on it, including Nicole Ritchie and Kelly Osbourne.

Anyway, some guy called 'Merton', who looks and sounds ridiculously like Ben Folds spent a few minutes playing piano for people on the site. The results are quite brilliant.

It's supposed to be porn-free

It certainly wasn't during my one and only visit.

I enjoyed Kieran Healy's take.

When I first read about it I thought chatroulette was some French word I'd never heard of.
Then I twigged.
I'm so dumb.

Didn't I read that the website originated in Russia?

Anyway, that Merton guy is fantastic.

I checked this site out around a month ago. It struck me as almost totally pointless unless you like masturbating for strangers.* (Or, watching strangers masturbate.**) In fact, I reckon it's the masturbators who are the only ones getting much useful out of it; the rest are probably just twitchily clicking 'next' on each other most of the time.

If you're male, most of your time there will be spent getting 'nexted' by the 95% male contingent using Chatroulette. If you're both male and north of 30, like me (not being afraid to show my face), the rest will be getting nexted by teenage girls who assume you're a paedo. I found it to be overwhelmingly a teen site - the age limit is supposed to be 16 but there were plenty of people plainly younger than that - and one can't really blame them for being cautious and protective because the non-teens were largely a) masturbators or b) creepy looking middle-aged overweight guys.

Still, it was a trippy, quasi-exhilarating experience for as long as it retained any interest, little flashes of views into the lives of people from around the world - I'm sure I saw people from every continent. Had two or three brief chats; saw several dozen dicks of various shapes in various states of tumescence, a few pairs of tits, one or two couples having sex, a fat guy fucking a stuffed animal, and, of course, numerous cam-bots trying to get you to visit their porn sites.

It would be interesting to know if anyone is actually meeting anyone else on that site; presumably if you've got drop-dead looks you'll fare much better.

This was on Boing Boing - the lovely people at /b/ went on Chatroulette and instead of having a webcam image, they put up the goatse.cx photo and screengrabbed the reactions. I have to admit, the one at the post made me laugh.

Merton LIVE!

He's just the best is that guy. If he ever plays in the UK again, I'm getting tickets for every bloody show if I can.

Similarly to Hobbes, I thought this was going to be about some kind of fondue cheese.

Simply remove two words and a clause from Bruno's middle paragraphs:

If you're male, most of your time there will be spent getting 'nexted' by the 95% male contingent. If you're both male and north of 30, like me (not being afraid to show my face), the rest will be getting nexted by teenage girls who assume you're a paedo. I found it to be overwhelmingly a teen site - the age limit is supposed to be 16 but there were plenty of people plainly younger than that - and one can't really blame them for being cautious and protective because the non-teens were largely a) masturbators or b) creepy looking middle-aged overweight guys.

Still, it was a trippy, quasi-exhilarating experience for as long as it retained any interest, little flashes of views into the lives of people from around the world - I'm sure I saw people from every continent. Had two or three brief chats; saw several dozen dicks of various shapes in various states of tumescence, a few pairs of tits, one or two couples having sex, a fat guy fucking a stuffed animal
and they capture a typical night out in The Swan, Stockwell

Stumpy Pepys wrote:
It's supposed to be porn-free

It certainly wasn't during my one and only visit.

Your 10 minute ban must be up by now.

The last time I saw so many purple heads, I think I was watching a Ribena advert.

I thought it was going to be about sticking a single bullet in your revolver and pointing it at Tiddles.

Those two clips from Merton and then Ben Folds are absolutely brilliant. I can watch them repeatedly and they make me smile every time.

No prizes for guessing who one of Ben Folds' next tour support acts is probably going to be.

These videos have now been removed for "Terms of Use Violation". Surely the people behind Chatroulette aren't stupid enough to have been behind that?

If the name 'Cyberdog' hadn't already been used for a club, that would have been a more descriptive name for that site.

It's back up. Apparently a couple of the people in the video complained so they had to be blurred out before it could be re-posted.

There's rumored to be a somewhat breathtaking lack of a sense of privacy among 'the younger generations'. Any truth to that?

More from both Merton, and Folds.

I've not tried chatroulette, but this (edit: not work safe!) map revealed to a friend of mine that a mere two blocks from his home was a young lady with "her twat out".

Can anyone do better? My hometown, Sydney, was disappointing in the crudeness stakes. Just a bunch of faces. Bah.