1.9K views Feb 2010
A filmmaker studies 90 Chatroulette users, tracking demographics and how quickly strangers skip him, then compares their response to his attractive friend.
0:12 My friend Josh introduced me to Chatroulette a few weeks ago, 0:17 and like most everyone else on the planet, I quickly became obsessed. 0:23 For those unfamiliar, Chatroulette is a website that spontaneously connects you to a random stranger via video chat. 0:34 The site works like this. 0:37 Press start, and 3 seconds later, some 12-year-old Swedish girl is judging you. 0:50 It's like gambling. You can never predict what you might roll. 0:57 Maybe you meet an interesting girl. Maybe it's a fat Asian guy in a pink bra. 1:03 I had to spend a few hours on chat roulette to make this movie. 1:06 I wanted to collect some data. 1:21 At 4 in the afternoon, on a Thursday, I clicked through 90 people. 1:26 I broke these 90 people into 3 categories: boys, girls, and perverts, and a subcategory of young people and old people. 1:37 The boy and girl categories are pretty self-explanatory. It's tough to define the pervert category without getting into graphic detail, but this puppet does an accurate depiction of what the perverts look like. 1:51 There were 71% guys, 15% girls, and 14%, in the middle of a workday, mind you, were perverts. 2:01 83% young people, 17% old people. 2:17 Hello. 2:20 Hello. 2:25 I did meet this really cool hockey fan named Sasha. We chatted for a bit. 2:31 I interviewed him for this movie, and I asked him what he liked about Chat Roulette. 2:36 He said you can be another person. It's an interesting thought, but I struggle just to be. 2:42 The majority of my time on Chat Roulette is spent having people choose not to talk to me. 2:47 Hello. 2:50 Hello. 2:52 Just like that, they're gone forever. This is called getting nexted. 3:06 Nexted. 3:08 When a random stranger clicks the next button immediately after seeing what you look like. 3:24 I did a little experiment with a stopwatch. I was nexted by 19 out of 20 people in an average time of 2.9 seconds. 3:34 1 out of the 20 actually talked to me. That's 5%. 3:40 At first, I took it personally, but then, after I got comfortable nexting people, I realized I would definitely next me too. 3:48 I really only pause on pretty girls. So for the next phase of my study, I called my friend Genevieve, who is a really pretty girl. 4:01 9 out of 10 people talked to Genevieve for a minimum of 2 minutes or until she nexted them. 4:15 It was really amazing. Most everyone was nice to her. Guys played her music. 4:21 This really hot Icelandic girl offered to show her boobs. Then, to conclude the study, I joined Genevieve. 4:28 Everybody's texting us now. 4:34 There is something magical about chat roulette. If you can ignore all the masturbators and the rest of the fuckheads, you're left with this something that transports you around the world into a stranger's life and does it over and over and over again. 4:54 It does evoke a visceral reaction in me. I find myself taking breaks from Chat Roulette to Go take a shower, wash my face. 5:03 It makes me a little paranoid. I feel like I'm always being watched. 5:08 Uh, I cover my webcam with blue tape. I battle impulses to smash my computer with an axe for some privacy. 5:16 It's a battle I occasionally lose. I am glad that Chatroulette lives on my laptop. 5:22 I don't think I'd like a world where you could just click someone away. 5:25 Someone away. 
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