The Information Age has transformed the way our generation communicates. Gone are afternoon visits, letters that take weeks to arrive, or phone calls that tether you to a single room and person for an hour. You can keep tabs on your high school classmates through Facebook, Skype with a friend studying abroad, and, thanks to text and instant messages, carry on multiple simultaneous conversations without saying a word. These innovations bring us together and allow us to form longer and deeper relationships with others.
But sometimes, it just allows bored college students to huddle around a computer on Chatroulette and mock strangers.
A recent sensation, Chatroulette is an online service that connects the user to a random stranger via webcam. Like the casino game, each interaction is a gamble—your chat partner could be anyone, from anywhere in the world, doing anything. The intended purpose of Chatroulette was probably benign enough: strike up a conversation, explore similar interests, have a laugh, learn something new, and then press the “next” button to switch to a new chat partner.
In actuality, however, Chatroulette is no eHarmony. Its users don’t expect to make new friends or share a connection. It is a spectacle, an excuse to see and be seen, a comically disturbing perversion of social mores.
First impressions are important in real life, but you usually have at least a conversation to make them. In Chatroulette world, with its instantly gratifying “next” option, your window of opportunity is far shorter—unless you employ a gimmick of some sort, enact a show so compelling your partner’s finger doesn’t immediately strike F9.
In her field research, this intrepid columnist discovered Chatroulette users fall into primarily two categories: the voyeurs and the exhibitionists. The exhibitionist is easy to spot—he’s the man with his hand down his pants, the crazy in the clown costume, the one dancing like no one’s looking while still really hoping someone does. These are the Chatroulette gems, the proud and few that make the entire adventure worthwhile for the second category of users: the voyeurs.
The voyeur doesn’t get off on being watched, does not wear a costume, does not seek attention for himself, but is instead entertained by simply watching. Psychoanalytic theorist Jacques Lacan called it “scopophilia”—the love of looking. Voyeurs are the chronic “nexters,” passing over the normally clothed and composed in pursuit of bizarre individuals and the shocked gasps they elicit. If you’ve ever logged into Chatroulette, chances are you fall into this category.
What can result on Chatroulette is a power dynamic of “watcher” and “the watched” that dehumanizes the person on the other end of the webcam, turning him into either an audience member or a freak show. It is an inherently abusive dynamic. A man exposing himself on Chatroulette is, in theory, no different from the man who exposes himself in a crowded subway car—in both cases of indecent exposure, the bystanders are merely tools to be used, whether consenting or not. A voyeur who trolls Chatroulette for strangers to ridicule similarly uses others for his own entertainment, casting them as the “weird” to his own “normal” in his own personal play.
For all that is said about virtual communication and its faults, emails, text messages, and Facebook have the potential to encourage friendships that nurture and inspire—friendships that might have otherwise died because of time and distance. The “friendships” on Chatroulette are rarely anything but relationships of utility—friendships that exist purely to satisfy selfish needs, friendships that depend on benefits rather than companionship. We log on to laugh, to deride, to be shocked—we log on for attention, validation, and perverse pleasure.
It may be that Chat Roulette is a passing fad in our generation’s obsession with information and attention, destined to be irrelevant in just a few short months, but even fads can have damaging consequences. People are not objects, regardless of whether we meet them in person or on a computer screen, and friendships should be more than the simple grabbing of someone’s attention for long enough to reveal oneself. After all, there’s no “next” button in real life.
Aarti Iyer is a Columbia College junior majoring in creative writing. She is the editor-in-chief of The Fed. Culture Vulture runs alternate Fridays.
COMMENTS