In a bygone era it used to be that prose and ideologies made a huge cultural impact. People like Woodward and Bernstein could single handedly bring down a government, while making history. But today it seems like any geeky kid with a solid foundation in computer programming can rule the day.

Chatroulette stormed American culture with as much influence as Beatlemania did in the 1960s. What transpired was part anonymous sexual revolution and part boredom facilitator. OK, I never admitted that it had the same significance as the Beattles’ influence.

Chatroulette is the perfect example of how someone with some coding skills can make a huge social impact on society. What started off as the coding hobby of a 17 year old Russian, turned out to be one of the most popular sites of this decade. And it started a chatting revolution on the internet.

The story of Chatroulette is inspirational and should give hope to those wanting to make a difference in the world. The site was created by a high school teen named Andrey Ternovsky. The code, he admitted, took only, “two days and two night” to create. With some creativity and will power he created a site that became a social icon. It’s the classic story of success.

The site became notoriously famous by enabling two complete strangers to be paired together via webcams. With few exceptions, people are randomly assigned to other people of unspecified gender and nationally around the globe.

Viewer Discretion… Realized after the Fact

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If you haven’t heard of random chatting, you’re missing out. Although not as popular at its peak four years ago, random chatting, or roulette chatting, is still very popular.

Here’s basically how it works. Two random users are paired together to engage in a conversation. If one of the users doesn’t feel that the other party is interesting they get “nexted.” It’s obvious that this type of conversation relies on visual displays.

The background setting, lighting, facial features, race, body language, attire, all play a huge part in the art of random chatting. In fact, if you want to succeed at this chatting it would be wise to follow some basic tenets of dating. Self-esteem, confidence, and basic grooming play a huge part in reducing the next effect.
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This video captures the expressions of people exposed to a bearded guy lip sinking Call Me Maybe, while wearing a girl’s two piece swim suit. It’s hilarious and it doesn’t get much weirder than this. And just a side note, this kind of video can’t be recreated now because of Chatroulette’s censorship overreach. Their new algorithms will likely ban this type of future video broadcast.

It’s really too bad, this particular video received over 27 million hits. That’s free advertising for Chatroulette.