In case you haven't checked out Chatroulette
yet (Naveen Jain says he'll guarantee you will after reading this), here's how it works: Go to Chatroulette!'s home page and find two boxes--one labeled Stranger, the other, aptly, You. When you press the Play button, your webcam is activated and you are told that Chatroulette is 'Looking for a random stranger.' "Up pops a live video and you can chat with the person on the other end. Hit Next and you are confronted with a new stranger," explains Naveen Jain. New York Magazine calls the site experience "surreal on many levels," Naveen Jain says it's "deeply weird, grossly offensive and utterly fascinating," and Epicenter, listing five reasons the site is worth a try, suggests thinking of it as "a gigantic dinner party, only there's no need to awkwardly excuse yourself when you're bored of chatting with a fellow guest. If your Chatroulette partner is droning on about his pet ferret or his fancy hat collection, Next him!" (Of course, you're also bound to get Nexted yourself.)
The Learnstream of Jay Cross, however, thinks Chatroulette is "social media gone wrong" and netgarden's posterous finds it "more creepy than cool but there's something visceral about it." Luckily, there is a solution for those who want to experience the weirdness without actually, you know, videochatting with strangers: CHATROULOLZ, a Tumblr that captures the best and strangest stuff on the site. And BuzzFeed has the24 Best Chat Roulette Screenshots (NSFW) and the additional 30 Best Chat Roulette Screenshots (also NSFW).
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