Andrey Ternovskiy grew bored of Skype-ing his friends and decided there had to be a way to make online chats a little less predictable. After a bit of thought and a lot of coding, the teenage Russian came up with Chatroulette, a 21st century twist on the chatroom that is every adolescent’s dream and every parent’s worst nightmare.
The site, which regularly attracts 20 000 visitors a night, allows users to randomly select one-to-one video chats anywhere in the world.
All users have to do is enable their webcam and hit play. Within seconds, a stranger’s face appears and the fun begins. Should a face not please, the other person can “next” to move on to someone else.
This week the US satirist Jon Stewart explored Chatroulette on his Daily Show programme, where he poked fun at the tendency of many users who ignore unequivocal messages warning visitors to behave. Instead, they strip off in front of the camera and try to use the site for their own sexual pleasure.
“See, Chatroulette is a lot like Russian Roulette. Just, instead of one bullet and five empty chambers, it’s five cock filled chambers and one chamber for reporters thinking they’ll be breaking the next internet trend, only to find themselves surrounded by cock,” said Stewart.
Ternovskiy, a 17-year-old Moscow student, is keen to point out that Chatroulette was not intended as a fast-track to carnal gratification. “I think it’s cool that such a simple concept can be useful for so many people,” he told the New York Times. “Although some people are using the site in not very nice ways — I am really against it.” He insists the site has as many applications as users can dream up. “Some think it is a game, others think it is a whole unknown world, others think it is a dating service.”
Ternovskiy said he had heard of people making up songs about strangers and performing them, drawing for others and sharing music. “Two groups of teenagers can party together,” he said. “That’s just great in my opinion.”
The site is hosted by servers in Germany and can operate without too much advertising. But its creator is aware of Chatroulette’s growing popularity — especially in the US — and is toying with the idea of making it an American company.
What parents might make of the site is a different matter. The UK Council for Child Internet Safety, set up two years ago by the government in the wake of the Byron report on young people in the digital world, said: “Many websites feature content for adult audiences which are inappropriate for children to access. We would encourage such sites to clearly highlight that they are not suitable for children and discourage children from using them.”
Others have mixed feelings. “There is something magical about Chatroulette if you can ignore all the masturbators and the rest,” reflected Casey Neistat,who shot a video chronicling his experiences on the site. “You’re left with something that transports you around the world into a stranger’s life and does it over and over and over again.” – guardian.co.uk