Where Has Thou Chatroulette Gone?

Once upon a time I wrote on a previous blog post about the ridiculousness of an emerging online network called Chatroulette. I was kind of skeptical of the new craze and it made me laugh to think that people were actually using this thing.

I believe that I said (and I quote) that "No thanks. I'll let this craze slide and stick to the rule engraved in me since I was a child of never talking to strangers. I'd like to try and avoid any dirty old men with their pants down as much as possible. " (apparently not everyone thinks this way?)

It seemed a no-brainer to me that the immense amount of men's (and women's) genitalia floating around on this platform would curb people's enthusiasm for it.

Honestly, I was so frightened as to what horrors would pop up on my screen that I couldn't get myself to click the "scan" button to try it out. It's definitely not a site you want to dabble your toes into at work. 

So the other day I caught myself wondering what the hell ever happened to that phallic fad? Did it ever emerge as the newest venue for business ventures to apply their marketing efforts? Or perhaps it failed miserably and wiped off the face of the earth while amassing a herd of perverts and pedophiles (redundant????) leaving them to unfortunately to do something else with their day......?? (say that five times fast)

And the Answer is..........

Yes, it's still alive - but barely. The site is cheerfully falling down the slopes of Faux Paux Mountain.

I do admit that their site has had a bit of an upgrade since I last saw it (and when I say "a bit" I mean they must've hired a geeky highschooler from the '90s to do it)

Check it out:

Whoa! Trippy! Did I just step into an online time portal? So Chattroulette is a time machine now....??

So what led to Chatroulette's demise?

Well only the obvious: it was weird, creepy, and gross. There may have been a split second thought of "ooh maybe there could be an opportunity here" but that was quickly squashed by the influx of penises.


There's a great explanation on Quora of why it didn't work out - way more in-depth than I would ever get into -  but basically it's that the majority of people's perceptions were mainly negative (shocker) and that the top two psychographics involved were perverts and loners (which sound like real winners). However, Chatroulette has done a fine job of adapting to it audeince by adding the "Connect with singles" button.

Way to go Chatroulette! You've acclimated yourselves well to the passions and values of your followers!

 

 Have you ever tried Chatroulette? What do you think about it?