Editorial Board

There is a place, free to anyone with access to a computer and the Internet, that allows for endless possibilities. In this place, one is transported to an online world where it is possible to meet a schoolgirl from China, a naked dude from Slovakia or an old Dutch man trying to buy a goat.
You can connect, using your microphone and a webcam, with other students from around the globe, as well as the typically bored, angsty adolescent from upstate New York. What is this magical place, you may be asking? Where can I be randomly connected to another lost soul roaming the cyber world? The answer is ChatRoulette.com.
The site is simple enough, allowing users to connect at random with other video chatters. Just load the page, connect your video equipment and say “hello” to your random partner. You can easily click “next” at any time to move to another new friend. Alternatively, you can initiate a chat.
Falling somewhere between informal, anonymous social networking and “psychedelic performance-art territory,” as one website termed it, Chat Roulette is the new cool thing online. But potential users should be prepared for the graphic content that some users might put out there. Of course, that’s part of the site’s allure.
Circles of young girls gather around looking to see something strange, horrifying or sickening. Guys hope to flirt with a girl. The lonely search for comfort in another’s presence, even if virtual. Amateur psychoanalysts await willing patients.
At first glance, Chat Roulette seems harmless. Surely the opportunities for cultural enrichment outweigh the frequent vulgarity and sexual content? There is something to be said for this line of thought. It is amazing that two individuals on opposite ends of the world can talk to each other with only a computer. Moreover, Chat Roulette is secure, insofar as it will not reveal personal information. Users are free to choose how much they divulge to their new friends.
Yet, for all the potential benefits, Chat Roulette is only an amusement. No one seriously hopes to establish a solid relationship through random video chatting. And, much like other Internet sensations, Chat Roulette is addicting, encouraging anti-social behavior. It is a sick individual who spends his time masturbating in front of a camera, hoping to shock a passerby. As are the people who fake suicide, or post violent staged scenes. This is neither healthy nor amicable to human flourishing.
For Aristotle, friendship was a virtue that not only made life worth living, but provided a solid foundation for the institution of the polis. Ethical conduct was defined by excellence. Perfect love and genuine friendship depend on a number of factors, including physical proximity.
Friendship was understood as exchange, necessitating interaction in the real world. You can never really be the friend, Aristotle might have said, of someone with whom you share no identity in spatiotemporality, with whom you share the trials of daily existence.
Modern man has forgotten this art of friendship. Younger generations rely on simulacrums of human interaction to the detriment of their social skills and the imperilment of their virtuous souls.
Another retreat into mundane, shallow technology is, in the end, nothing to be too highly praised.