Shawn Talks Too Much.

As I write this, it is 8:15 in the morning. In 8 hours, I will be on a flight to Minneapolis to do some freelance videography.

“Well Shawn, must be gettin’ a head start on the ol’ day, arentcha boy?”

Yeah, not quite.

www.ChatRoulette.com was created by a 17 year old in Russia whose sole aim was to make me never sleep again.

The premise is simple. You turn on your webcam, hit next, and bam, you’re talking to someone else, completely random, with a webcam.

It is really a beautiful idea on paper. You get to peek into far away lands and meet people you would NEVER meet without the site.

But, in reality, it is like a beautiful forest littered with landmines. And those landmines? Overweight men with their junk hanging out.

“F9”… thats the key you hit whenever you don’t want to continue seeing/talking to whomever you see, and that key is nearly broken on my laptop now.

I’ve met some incredible people on the site! I really have! There’s the communications consultant from Australia, the Chinese PR major, the two girls from Canada who told me I was nice enough to become an honorary Canadian (yay), and the 20 year old from Germany who spoke perfect English after her exchange program visit to Boston when she was in high school, and who loved “1812 Overture” (in actuality she turned out to be a 16 year old girl from Alabama, who in fact was German, but hadn’t been for several years).

After a couple days, I wanted to get a good idea of the ChatRoulette landscape. I knew guys outnumbered girls by a long shot…and some, not all, were just on the site in the rare occasion that one of those few girls would show them a part of their anatomy.

For about 6 hours, I clicked through 426 people. Here are my findings:

Of 426 people, 90.3%, or 385 were men. The remainder, 41, were girls…at least they appeared to be.

There were also sub-categories. In those 4 hours, I saw among other things:

24 male genitalia, 35 bare male chests, got flipped off 9 times, saw 12 animals, 28 goofy hats, and 21 people with signs.

It’s those signs that intrigued me. My sign was just my check sheet showing the results of my study (which by the way, many people get a kick out of). However, the other signs were very…suggestive. Essentially all of them say, in so many words, “Let me see your breasts”.

Now, up until this point I was having very cool conversations with people, and kind of just laughed the signs off. But the amount of signs were growing. And all of a sudden, people had not only signs, but CHECK MARKS signifying success! SEVERAL CHECK MARKS!

“No way,” I thought. “There is absolutely no way that works”. So you know what I did?

I tried.

I racked my brain and attempted to come up with the exact, magical phrase that might work. Here’s what I came up with (humor being the main intention here):

“I have seen 37 [male genitalia] tonight on ChatRoulette. Please show me your breasts so I can go to sleep peacefully”.

It was put in a way as to justify my asking.

So, alas, I began my search. And for 5 minutes…guy…after guy…after guy appeared.

Until finally, a very beautiful blond-haired, wide-eyed girl appeared on my screen.

“Oh my God…what is going to happen?”

Now, in actuality, I fully expected her to roll her eyes, hit “next”, and that’d be the end of it.

But instead, she sent a message.

“37?”

“37! It’s completely unfair!,” I said.

Well, that sign led to a 3 hour conversation. No breasts were shown. Her name is [redacted], a tall (taller than me), stunning 27-year-old girl from Australia. Witty as all hell, great conversationalist, and, obviously considering the fact that she was able to begin a conversation with the sign, she had a great sense of humor.

So, now its 8:35am. And here I sit. Exhausted. Because of ChatRoulette. I guess I’ll sleep on the plane.