ChatRoulette: Horrible idea
but awesome idea generator
ChatRoulette, how I loath you. Or is it love you? I can’t tell anymore.
On its face, its a lackluster idea that has the potential to become a breeding ground for pervs wanting to show you their junk. The only person that seems to have found a plausable use case for the site is Ben Folds. When Ben Folds is the extent of your positive cultural impact, I think it might be time to hang it up.
But the power of ChatRoulette isn’t in what it gives us directly but in how many good ideas could spawn out of such a bad one.
What could I possibly be talking about? Try these to start with…
Reel Roulette An amazing take on how to discover the work of new motion graphic designers everywhere. For those outside the field, this is your way in to discovering just how much amazing work is out there. To those in the field, this immediately puts the little guys on the same level as the big names in the industry and helps uncover the hottest new talent. It’s a side project from the talented @nickvegas from the Grey Scale Gorilla team. It’s win-win all the way around.
KittehRoulette Not nearly as serious as the Reel example above it but for those that can easily get lost on YouTube clicking on silly Kitten videos all day, can you imagine what would happen if you no longer had to click and you just got a steady stream of cut Kitten videos all day? Yup, we just lost half the office on Monday. Epic win and I wouldn’t be surprised if 100 or so knockoffs of this idea ranging from CarCrashRoulette to KickInTheNutsRoulette weren’t up by Tuesday morning.