Like most folks, you probably tried out Chatroulette a few times when it first came out, but quickly got skeeved out by the parade of penises. Oh, look, there’s one saying hello from the bottom of the screen. Wait, what’s that guy hiding in his hand? Hmmm, the lights in that room are so dim, I can hardly — OH, NEVER MIND, I see now. (A few intrepid adventurers likely found this encouraging and forged ahead.) Well, last week, Chatroulette shut down temporarily to revamp and return with a new user-friendly, PG-13 approach to anonymous video chats. When it relaunched yesterday, the first question out of everyone’s lips was: What about the penises? Fair enough. But in delicate matters such as these, mere speculation would hardly suffice. So we decided to approach the query scientifically.
In 50 very short sessions spanning yesterday afternoon and evening, we witnessed a total of seven penises — six acts of masturbation and one act of fellatio (female on male) — as well as two ads for sites that promised less penis, more boobs, and two teenagers squealing to each other, “Is that a girl?” “That’s a girl!” (Intel Nitasha figured out how to aim the camera so her head wasn’t showing halfway in. Thanks for the tip, pervs!) To conclude our findings, that’s 1.4 male members per every ten chat partners. A slight increase from New York Magazine’s initial investigation, which found that “roughly one out of every ten chatters is a naked masturbating man.” Yay?
