It’s like Russian Roulette with Penises

Just this last week Julie and I played host for one of our dear friends, the purported “reason we’re together” Jameson. While he had planned to stop by a few weeks prior, his flight was canceled due to an impending snowstorm, and seeing that he lives states away in Arkansas he is very much at the mercy of such natural factors. This time however he made the harrowing journey by car in what would be a 20+ hour ride. Are we really that worth visiting you ask? Yes, yes we are.

The weekend turned week visit was very enjoyable. With visits to old friends, good food and copious amounts of Video Gaming and Movie Watching there were many good times to be had. There was one evening in particular in which our fun loving threesome welcomed a fourth, all thanks to our dearest friend “The Internet.”

I’m assuming many of you have heard of Chat Roulette. If not, it is as the title suggests, much “like Russian Roulette with Penises.” No, there is no violence involved, and while our application of it did involve a revolver it was not in the way I’m sure many of you are so unintentionally imagining. The basic principle is that you have three windows, your typical instant messaging chat box, a window showing what is being captured through your web cam, and a venerable “window to the world” which displays the feed form random other people’s web cams. At the top, as simple button that states “Start Playing” or “pull the trigger” as it would more appropriately be titled.

You are then linked with someone, anyone, anywhere in the world. Whether they are young, aged or gross you are free to interact with them however you please. While most often people use this freedom to display their “happiness” towards this newfound technology, others were simply like us; some bored fun-loving drunk just looking for some good, plutonic connectivity.

Fortunately having Julie in our motley crew afforded us a few extra seconds with these strangers to pitch our plea for attention, given that most of the people on the other end are 17-29 year old males who want nothing more than to chat up fine honeys.

While communication seemed limited to pantomiming and cryptic instant messaging we decided the goal for the evening should be to play a full game of Clue with a stranger. With our board set we scoured the seedy bed/computer rooms of fellow chatroulettians, looking for someone to humor us. After countless rejections and erections we finally found a young lady who seemed all but mildly interested in playing with us.

All was going surprisingly well. We would show her her cards and when it was her turn to roll, we would place the camera to where she could make an informed decision about which direction to head. For a moment I thought I had it figured out. I did not have any of the cards involved in my first guess and no one had any cards to show me, so naturally I thought I had gotten a hole in one. That would not be the case however since Jameson was accidentally looking at the cards of our roulette friend.

With the hand hiccup behind us we went on to play a fairly standard game of Clue. Everyone knew what he or she was doing and having a voiceless competitor somewhere out there in the world worked out just as it would if she were ther. That is until her connection cut out.

Just like that she was gone. We knew nothing about her, no way to contact her and no way to know how close she may have been to getting to winning it all. Like ships passing in the night we met up for about 90% of a board game then moved on, never to hear from one another again.