ChatRoulette.com is the kind of website your parents warned you about when you first got dial-up in 1996: it’s chock-full of loose women, perverts, masturbation, pedophiles, and explicit language of the most vulgar and racist sort. It’s also got the ability to rope you in faster than you can say, “I’m failing out of college.” The concept is simple: it’s video chat with completely random strangers. If the person you get paired up with is insufficient in any way, no problem: just click the button that says “Next.” With at least 4000 users on the site at any given time, you never know what kind of freak show menagerie you might find; for every average Joe or cute girl, there are four penises being shamelessly fondled because there’s no chance in hell you’ll ever identify them or the person they belong to, and at least two douchebags asking you (whether you’re male or female) to bare your breasts for them. It’s also of note that spending a lot of time on the site makes you feel funny in social situations. You get so used to speaking to people briefly and without consequence that you find yourself just wanting to click “Next” on the guy in the elevator, or telling the woman on the bus to fuck off, or being surprised that you’ve been in class for five minutes and not seen anybody whip out their cock yet. If this website sounds creepy, sleazy, or pointless to you, you’d be absolutely correct. But, that being said, ChatRoulette is the Internet not only at its worst but also at its best: it’s anonymous enough to be basically harmless, and just entertaining enough to suck you into its clutches for hours at a time. Why not give it a go? Log on, position your webcam just right, press “Start,” and accept the fact that any plans you made for tonight are totally not gonna happen.