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I had an interesting experience the other night when I wandered into what I thought was an innocent pre-game. We had wine, we had heels and we had…the web-cam? What is essentially a chance to flirt and/or exhibit (all of) oneself via the internet, to whoever is watching, ChatRoulette is a growing online phenomenon in which you are paired with a random stranger and left to see what happens from this chance encounter. Sceptical? You should be. You aren’t going to meet your soul mate here and if you do, I wouldn’t tell anyone. Most of the strangers we were “paired” with were men who were shown from the shoulders down. When asked to show their faces, they suggested that we first take our tops off. We did not. We pressed “Disconnect” in haste. We had a nice chat with a bloke from Wales and a smiling competition with a lad from Turkey (who then quickly suggested we all disrobe). We managed to scare a young gent away purely because he felt outnumbered by the 7-to-1 ladies-to-man ratio. We were all under the impression, at this point, that ChatRoulette was in fact a very funny and rewarding experience. Sadly, the rest of our chance encounters were with an interesting mix of emo girls, old men and genitals, in close up. “Disconnnect”, next weirdo please, thank you. I won’t lie; it was hilarious, despite the voice in my head that sounded suspiciously like my mother telling me never to talk to strangers. Mother was right. Chat with strangers in any form is always going to be a gamble. But I suppose that online chat is just as uncomfortable as chat in person, and unlike online encounters, you can’t simply disconnect yourself from the awkward face-to-face ones. Hall breakfast, train journeys, lectures; they are all examples of real-life ChatRoulette. You can never predict the human capacity for chat and no matter how long you’ve played the game, it will always surprise you. Even if your surprise is not always good, at least there is a certain degree of fun to be had talking to sexy boy from Krakow you’ll never meet, as opposed to the standard chat of “at least it’s not raining!” you get from That Guy in your 9 o‘clock. Then again, I thought I had hall breakfast sussed until one day BOOM! an early morning chat about necrophilia and misogyny in the Middle East. Not that I’m whole-heartedly recommending ChatRoulette to anyone. It is definitely not to be taken seriously. It may be fine for the odd pre-game and when there is nothing good on TV, but you’ve got to be pretty desperate to sit at home, on your tod, on a Friday night, just waiting and hoping to get a glimpse of some boob. I’ve seen enough unclothed nether-regions and blokes that look suspiciously under-age to dare Chatting again, but, after all, that IS what you get when you play ChatRoulette. And at least the “Disconnect” button is always an option. Use it well.