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A website dedicated to pairing up two random strangers for video and instant messaging chat is a fast rising internet phenomenon. Chatroulette allows you to begin an online chat using webcam with another visitor, and more importantly, allows you to leave the current conversation with the click of a button. Launched by 17 year old Ternovski in November 2009, the site has already reached figures of half a million visitors a day. Celebrity users of the strange chat website include Kelly Osborne, Joel Madden, Nicole Richie and Perez Hilton.

The website spurs from stranger chat website released previously that year, Omegle, a similar site without the use of webcams. With no sign ups, adverts or need for accounts, it is easy to use. The concept is interesting enough, and like the users, the website design holds no glossed-over glamour. On start up, the site claims it should not be for users under the age of 16, and rightly so. On using the website, it seems being exposed to indecent images of some of the Chatroulette community is the norm here. Within 5 minutes of accessing this site I had been asked several times to reveal private parts of my body and had unwillingly seen about 8 different men’s genitals!

The misuse of such an amazing idea could surely be the downfall of this website, a curious child randomly linking up with a masturbating man’s webcam would be all it takes for a law suit to be made. But at the same time, the random choice of stranger to talk to is enthralling, on the occasion of getting into an interesting conversation with someone I wouldn’t usually talk to is somewhat liberating, preferably with a clothed stranger. Many websites and You Tube videos dedicated to amusing screenshots of funny situations on Chatroulette are not in short supply. The site moves fast, often with people pressing next straight away or within seconds, coining the phrases such as ‘being nexted’ or ‘F9’d’ (shortcut key on a PC).

The blind unjudging roulette does not take into account gender, race or age, but presents to you a situation where you can see into the lives of anyone across the globe. Though this website presents to us an amazing opportunity to link up with people from all over the internet, it seems a shame to have it taken up by a lot of pornographic and base sexual smut. However, in the spirit of Chatroulette, every ‘Next’ is a gamble which we cannot pick and choose who we talk to, something which makes the whole experience so interesting.