Chatroulette: Playing with Strangers

chat roulette from Casey Neistat on Vimeo.

Casey Neistat has done us a favor and run some stats on the explodingly popular international random chat forum, Chatroulette. He conducted a few tests with a sample of 90 people (in the middle of the day), and found the participants to be in the following percentages:

71% boys, 15% girls, 14% perverts.

In the video, Casey illustrates a pervert by showing a masterbating puppet.  I imagine that if Casey was a girl, the pervert figure would rise significantly in percentage points!

He also goes over some Chatroulette lingo.  Nexted is when a random stranger clicks the next button immediately after seeing what you look like... ouchhhhhh. 

Casey got nexted a lot.  Then he called a cute girlfriend, Genevieve (sp?) and got her to try.  Well, shock me shock me shock me, Gen only got nexted one in ten times! Indeed, everyone was really nice to her! "This really hot Icelandic girl (even) offered to show her boobs". Awsome..

The last few lines of the video sum up the overall experience:

"There is something magical about Chatroulette.  If you can ignore all the masterbaters and the rest of the fuckheads you're left with something that transports you around the world, into a strangers life, and does it over and over again".

I can definitely see the appeal here of being transported around the world to a strangers house.  This all depends, of course, on who this stranger is.  Is it some brilliant artist in Brazil, a master chef in Lyon, a lion tamer in Hanoi?  No, no it's probably not. But it might be a flashing Scandinavian or a well endowed muppet... In any case, the fantasy is clearly there, and with over 20,000 users a day, who knows where it will go?!

And on that note - you probably saw this coming - a quick plug of the Creative Global Socail Experiment.  We launched the CGSE last night on Skype and were really pleased with the large number of participants in just our first week!

The CGSE aims to bring people in creative industries together to connect, collaborate and share ideas and news with each other.  I see it as Chatroulette, but a much more targeted experience, and minus the pervert factor (hopefully)!

We use Skype as a platform for this group.  To participate, update your Skype name to [your name] #CGSE_city airport code_company you work for.  Then search Skype for #CGSE to find other participants.  Come here for more detail on the community and how to get involved.

What do you think of these types of experiences (connecting with strangers)? Have you tried either Chatroulette or the CGSE yet?? What do you think?!