Blog #3

For this week's assignment, I decided to bravely venture into Chatroulette.com. The site has redesigned itself since the last time I visited, which was some time ago. The background has become more colorful, and the video feeds easier to see and adjust. Also worthy of note is the decreased amount of male nudity - in my 40 minute stay I only saw one. The immediate repercussions of this cleanliness is that Chatroulette will be more marketable, and it is much easier to stay sober in the Chatroulette drinking game. In my time there, I could count on one hand the number of conversations I had that lasted more than one second. If you are of the same gender as the person on the other end, forget about it. That makes me wonder what people really do look for on the site. Establishing any kind of connections or friendships is pretty well in the realm of impossibility.

What I find interesting about Chatroulette is that it's concept is in keeping with the early Utopian views of the internet. It is a place where people from all corners of the Earth and walks of life can talk, connect, share. That idea in itself is a miracle of the web! Despite this, it has become essentially pointless. People try to use it to fulfill their own desires, appropriate or otherwise, and don't seem interested in meeting strangers. Instead of being hailed as a site with great possibility, it has caused a "moral panic" of sorts. Although the site has cleaned up considerably, it is a testament to how new internet technologies specifically are consistently fretted over. Often times, this is with good reason. Protection, privacy, and the like are hardly guarantees, and I'm hoping we study issues like this in the coming weeks.