Media Monday: ChatRoulette--I just don't get it.

I try to stay up on social networking. Recently I made the difficult decision to terminate my MySpace Account, which I had used for five and a half years. It had become a hub of spam friend requests and infrequent contact with actual people, most of whom are also on my Facebook.

While Facebook has happily filled the void, and FourSquare has provided me with new entertainment, I'm still open to whatevers out there. So I decided to give ChatRoulette a try.

ChatRoulette, for those of you who aren't up to speed, is a random video chat site. There's no registration process, no info you have to give. You just need a webcam. Mine happens to be built into my laptop.

The appeal is supposed to be the randomness of the people you get to chat with. The way it works in reality is you end up with an endless series of 14-24 year old guys, most of whom are looking for women to take their clothes off.

And there's also the masturbators.

Seriously, approximately 1 in 5 Chatters are guys pulling on their pythons. For women, apparently, given the fact that they click "Next" if you have any appearance of male-ness. They do this despite the fact that no woman I know has any desire to look at some internet troll beat their meat.

The site says you must be 16+. But since anyone can get on the site, and there is no identifying information, you could literally witness a murder on live webcam, and have no way to do anything about it, except click a little button that says "Report". And by the time you managed to do that, it would be too late.

I don't love ChatRoulette. I haven't completely written it off yet, but until the site gives me some people I can actually do the "Chat" part with, I have little interest in watching the NakedDudeRoulette.