“I’ve never seen so much penis in my entire life.”
This was first-year William Witwer’s all-too-common response to the media-web phenomenon known as Chatroulette.
Chatroulette is a Web site that links two people, completely anonymously, in a video chat room where you can cycle through different chat-interlocutors. This, on the surface, seems like an interesting, unique opportunity to talk with people from different places, of different cultures, and maybe learn a thing or two: or at least flex your social skills. But, what becomes apparent about Chatroulette after cycling through two or maybe three people is that it is little more than a penis purveyor’s paradise.
While there are undoubtedly those who enjoy watching people jerk off (anonymously) as they sit back somewhere, mouth agape in horror, I feel as though everyone cannot enjoy this kind of interaction. Moreover, this kind of thing proves a strange social commentary on the nature of anonymity itself.
Chatroulette, through the nature of anonymity, abolishes social senses of responsibility. In the face of this lack of responsibility the need to whip your dick out apparently becomes rather strong. Equally prevalent on Chatroulette is the man or woman who feels compelled to yell obscenities, insult whomever they encounter or shamelessly attempt to make every person they encounter strip.
The common denominator here is that when people know there is zero chance of their actions coming back to them, they feel as though they can do anything. Of course, behavioral constructs are, in many cases, an imposition on people’s freedom. These impositions, however, like laws, exist for a reason. There are undoubtedly people who do in fact enjoy the exhibitionist spirit of watching someone take out their penis in a chat room. These people are the kind of people who could see this as a kind of performance art and see meaning in things like this. I have no problem with this. The problem is that the majority of these people are behaving in this way purely to disturb others.
The truth to be found in all of this is the sad reality that many people have a base, obscene nature that is held in check purely by the social restraints of culpability. It is the equivalent of people robbing a bank with masks on. When given the opportunity, the kind of decency we often ascribe to human nature becomes instead a fabrication that crumbles at the first instance of anonymity.
What makes this trend especially disturbing is its prevalence. You can easily count on one hand the number of people you can cycle through on Chatroulette before you see a penis. In fact, finding a single person who is not on the site purely to gross out others or vent his or her rage via insult is a rare occasion. People do not go to Chatroulette to talk with people; they go there to release the uglier sides of their nature. While there may, in fact, be a worse way to ‘free’ oneself from the imposition of social constraints, the very fact that people feel the need to behave obscenely is a sad commentary on human nature and makes me wonder what people are truly capable of when all responsibility and self-consciousness is stripped away.
