The name is inspired by the dangerous game of Russian roulette, but since this game takes place via the Internet, it’s not quite so life-threatening. The weapon in this case is not a gun, but a web cam. The chatroulette service was invented by Andrey Ternovskiy, a Russian high school student who used to play hooky from school to spend more time in front of the computer. He wrote a few lines of code with the idea of meeting new people because he was tired of talking with the same old folks via skype and wanted to do something a little more challenging. He bought his domain Chatroulette.com, for the grand sum of $ 7, and opened the site in November of 2009. In less than a month, had attracted 50,000 new users, and today has about 1.5 million users.

The interesting thing is that chatroulette gives you a chance to chat with someone random, may be a person who would never have known otherwise. The downside, of course, is that it could be a person you do not even want to meet. According to a recent study, people who appeared in the chat window, 89% were male, and only 11% were women. On the other hand, 1 of 8 chats opened with someone possibly offensive on the screen, typically a teen masturbating.

You might go to the site looking for your better half, but you are much more likely to come across someone who believes that the best way to communicate with a stranger is to flash them his equipment. Of course, if you open the window and there is a caveman with a sign that says “Show me your tits,” you just have to push “next” and your next guest pops up. You might just go through a session of 50 mini “conversations” in the space of 15 minutes. If you think the digital age is sheer madness, why not rent apartments in Berlin to enjoy its great international community, and its fantastic nightlife? Surely you’ll meet someone interesting.