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Chat Roulette Improv
Merton, the Chat Roulette Improv guy, has become so famous so quickly that all you need to do to find him is search for ‘Merton’ on YouTube, and his is the first clip that comes up - above anything by, say, Paul Merton or Mrs Merton. He is no longer Merton the Chat Roulette Improv Guy, even. He’s just Merton. Like Kylie. Here’s the clip. Surely you’ve seen it by now?
Having never used a webcam, I’d never even heard of Chat Roulette until Merton introduced me to it, although I’d heard of Omegle, the website that sets up text-only chats with random strangers. Laura and I even made a theatre installation inspired by it last year. Anyway, Chat Roulette is just Omegle with a webcam, but they present very different possibilities as a result, and it’d be interesting to compare the kind of conversations that people have on each.
I was, for a while, fascinated with Omegle. My initial experiences there suggested it’s a hotbed of misunderstanding and sheer rudeness. A conversation with a random, invisible stranger who has no way of identifying you or finding you if you cut them off mid-flow is a conversation where none of the normal rules of etiquette apply. You can say whatever you like, be whoever you like, with no consequences, so quite a few people do - to the point when I was disappointed when the person I was speaking to didn’t say something outrageous or probably untrue. Polite, banal conversations on Omegle (What’s your name? Where are you from? Etc) bored me, which was ultimately why I stopped using it. What’s the point? I can have dull, inconsequential conversations with strangers in the real world, any time I like.
Chat Roulette, because of the added visual element, is a very different proposition. You can’t be whoever you want to be if people can see you. You could, in theory, wear a disguise and arrange the environment behind you to give whatever impression you wanted of your home and lifestyle. On the other hand, the control Omegle offers you over your situation is completely gone - far from remaining anonymous you could, as Merton’s clips demonstrate, easily end up on YouTube, being gawped at by millions of people. If Omegle encourages transgressive behaviour, Chat Roulette encourages rampant exhibititionism - although, in reality, many of the people on it are the same normal, slightly bored people sitting at home who end up having dull conversations on Omegle. If only they understood the possibilities of the medium! Why not build an entire stage set behind you, sing and dance? Recruit your friends. You could be the new Ok Go.
In the meantime, Merton’s clip is an oddly life-affirming snapshot of what can happen when someone creative has a bit of fun with this swish new piece of technology. I’m tempted to call it art. It works so well because Merton, with his hooded top, geeky glasses and goofy smile, is charming, unthreatening and apparently without vanity. It’s lovely to see how quickly he makes connections with people. My favourite clip is the one of Merton singing to three teenage girls. Sulky and wary at first, they end up making little heart signs at him with their hands. Merton seems genuinely touched, and returns the gesture. It’s sweet and moving, a little moment of friendship in the safe space of the internet that would probably never happen in real life. It’s not a trick that just anyone can pull off, as the clip below - someone else doing the same thing, but with about half the charm - demonstrates.
Merton has created a nice little niche for himself with his Chat Roulette Improv project. As he explains in another clip on YouTube (which is actually a bit dull, so I’m not going to reproduce it here), he enjoys making up little songs about people, but doesn’t feel comfortable performing in front of big crowds. So Chat Roulette is perfect for him. Will it lead to other things? Possibly not. By Merton’s second Chat Roulette Improv clip the joke is already wearing a bit thin. But maybe Ben Folds - who paid tribute to Merton on stage after lots of people mistakenly assumed Merton was him in disguise - can open some doors for him.
If I was Merton, I would perhaps be slightly gutted right now that Ben Folds’ tribute has had about 400,000 more views than Merton’s original clips. It’d bring out the competitive streak in me. I’d think about doing an Edinburgh Fringe show. Merton, if that appeals to you, as an Edinburgh-based performer and arts journalist I can offer lots of useful advice. Get in touch.
Andrew
