Living in Japan will make you hate it

A lot of my friends have been forwarding me this article, published yesterday on the Kotaku gaming blog. “I totally heard your voice while reading it,” one guy said.

It’s a long, very critical article about life in modern Japan, written from the perspective of a foreigner who has been living there for about five years, and is falling steadily out of love with the place. I lived in Japan for only a single year, and fell out of love almost immediately. Hence the familiar tone.

It’s a really well-written piece, insightful and targeted and savage in all the right places. Aside from some of the author’s more insular rants near the beginning (born from his unique frustrations as a non-smoking vegetarian), the article projects, very coherently, a frustration with Japan that I believe inevitably consumes any reasonably intelligent western ex-pat after sufficient time has passed.

It’s insightful to the point of being somewhat esoteric, in fact. I question just how accessible the article would be to someone who has never experienced a prolonged period of Japanese societal immersion. Japanese culture, and the flaws and frustrations contained therein, is a topic surprisingly hard to articulate. It’s a nation defined by behavioral subtitles and lots of strange, unquestioned assumptions, that although seemingly minor in scope, achieve totalitarian magnitude in practice.

I like this passage:

In many Japanese offices, you’re required to scream “Good morning!” at the top of your lungs, clapping your hands to your thighs, as soon as you enter the office area every morning. Everyone in the office then shouts “Good morning!” back to you. At my orientation for one company, the Human Resources Girl — whose face (figuratively) literally screamed “Hall Monitor” — was going over the “Good Morning!” protocol. Her explanation weird despite its terseness: “This is how adults interact in Japan.” Most of the people at the orientation, like me, were under twenty-five. “Before we move onto the next item, does anyone have any questions?” I seriously and portentously asked a question, then, which I thought was hilarious: “If we’re the first one in the office in the morning, do we still have to scream ‘Good Morning’ and clap our hands to the sides of our legs?” Her answer was immediate, and humorless: “Yes.” “Well, I mean, there’s no one else around to hear it, right?” “You still have to do it. It’s the rule. Every employee must do this. That’s why we call it ‘protocol.’” This instant was actually the very first time I begin to ponder the logistics of actually going ahead and being homeless. You know, cardboard, up against concrete, is not only not uncomfortable — it’s pretty good for your spine!

I pushed further: “What if I am the second person in the office, and the first person is someone with whom I have, previously, managed to successfully cultivate a congenial personal relationship? What if it’s a person whose first and last name I know, with whom I share interests and hobbies, and we’ve previously agreed that we think this ‘Good morning’ shit is some serious bullshit, and we just agree to be like, ‘Hey, what’s up’ to one another in the morning and we’ve also agreed that hey, if anyone else asks, we’ll just go ahead and say ‘Oh yeah, that dude totally screamed “Good morning” to me this morning’?”

The HR girl didn’t even blink: “You still have to carry out the customary ‘Good Morning.’”

Reading this without a larger Japanese context to compare it to, you would probably conclude that Japanese office bureaucrats are prissy and rigid. Or at least prissy and rigid to yakky American know-it-alls. The real lesson of this interaction, however, is even more sweeping: the Japanese have no respect for logic. Logic and rational argument are simply not values which hold high currency in Japanese society, where the supreme priority, above everything else, is maintaining social cohesion, be it through lies, oppression, absurdities, or whatever else. That sounds like a very harsh and judgmental thing to say, but it’s the truth, and a truth that is hard to appreciate the full significance of when you’re just hearing it via bitter anecdotes from some dude on the internet.

The author repeatedly links his criticisms to related insights about the Japanese video game industry. At first I thought this was a tad sophomoric, but it does make some sense. To my generation (and I assume his) video games have been our primary exposure to Japanese culture. Though they are obviously imaginative and fun, they also all contain a fair bit of irrational weirdness in their storylines, gameplay mechanics, and expectations of the player, but as a child you’re already expected to put up with a lot of nonsense in your life, so you don’t analyze the contradictions of your video games too seriously. Living in Japan can truly be an eye-opening experience in this regard, however. Things slowly fall into place. You slowly begin to realize that the weirdness present in the games you uncritically accepted as a child are really the manifestations of the fundamental weirdness governing all of Japanese society. And I don’t mean the flying raccoons or one-eyed umbrella ghosts or whatever, I mean the fundamental ways in which these games are structurally designed and intended to be consumed. I’d elaborate further, but the Kotaku guy does a better job.

Someday I’ll write a more lengthy analysis of my own time in Japan. But for now, most of what want to say is being ably said by Tim Rogers.

Enough with welcoming the world, let’s talk about ME.

I don’t want to come off as someone who is excessively bashing Canada in my country’s moment of triumph, but… well, someone has to.

The main conclusion to be drawn in the aftermath of the 2010 games is that they were remarkably self-indulgent. The cloyingly insecure opening and closing ceremonies, which I have previously deconstructed, were one particularly overt manifestation, but the larger theme could be felt everywhere else in Vancouver too. Maybe that was a good thing for Canada, and a good thing for Canadian morale, and a good thing for our athletes, but it was still the reality. If we got a glimpse of some sort of “new Canada” over the last two weeks, it was a country that is first and foremost interested in gazing lovingly in the mirror.

A writer for the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, Gil LeBreton, wrote an article yesterday in which he compared the nationalistic excesses of the Vancouver games with those of the 1936 games in Nazi Germany. Obviously that was an over-the-top and sensationalistic analogy, and the Canadian press has had a lot of fun mocking it, but a more mature reading of LeBreton’s column reveals some perfectly valid criticisms. “An Olympic host is supposed to welcome the world,” he writes. “This one was too busy being (their word) ‘patriotic.’”

“One thing I never saw: a simple flag or shirt with the five Olympic rings,” he adds. “Not anywhere. After 15 Olympics, that was a first.” There’s very little that can be factually disputed in his piece, and he provides numerous examples of Canada deliberately shunning all that brotherhood-of-man stuff for a more chauvinistic, Colbertian theme of Defeat the World.

LeBreton wrote a second, follow-up column today, responding to the backlash that greeted the first. And again, while he backpedals from the harshness of his Nazi analogy, he repeats “what passed for patriotism in Canada came across differently in the eyes of an international guest.”

The games were a success for Canada by any imaginable standard, but they also exposed, on a global stage, some of the less-than-appealing qualities of the Canadian national psyche: hypocritical boastfulness, pompous entitlement, chronic narcissism, and the underlying, crippling neediness and insecurity from which these other traits flow.

Sometimes it’s in moments of great success that we need to be the most self-critical, precisely because the impulse to do the opposite will be so strong.

My review of the 2010 closing ceremonies

They were worse than the opening ceremonies, which is saying something.

Basically, the same fundamental problems that plagued the opening show were even more apparent during this one. Beyond that, there’s not a lot to say.

Minister Moore’s efforts to ensure more French was spoken were evidently successful, but only in the most uncomfortable, forced, be-good-because-dad-is-watching sort of way. Jon Furlong spoke even more French, a language he has absolutely no knowledge of (why would he?) and predictably sounded like a fourth-grader. Some of the Montreal artists alternated a verse or two in the sacred tongue, but the others did not, proving the unilingual reality of Canada’s musical talent — and culture — cannot be so easily avoided.

Shatner, Michael J. Fox, that other horrible woman, all offered dribble. Canadian geese, poutine, who cares? Only Canadians, because only Canadians believe ritualistically reconfirming our consensually established National Quirks That Make Us Different From The Americans™ makes for good entertainment. The appeal is parochial beyond words.

Ditto for the giant inflatable beavers and the rest of the “salute to cliches.” Though the CTV announcers constantly reminded viewers that it was all tongue-in-cheek, the heavy twinge of self-righteousness that ran through the whole thing didn’t make for particularly effective satire. Canadians only mock themselves as a way to mock others, which is to say, Americans. Exaggerating the cliches of Canada is not done out of any genuine spirit of self-deprecation. None of the urban nationalists who organized the closing show would ever be willing to make peace with the fact that Canada is, in actuality, an underpopulated, underdeveloped, wilderness nation consisting mostly of ice, evergreens, and furry animals. We only observe such things ironically, with the omnipresent heavy-handed, unsubtle subtext that we’re really so much more. And will be more. And deserve to be more.

A particularly revealing moment came when the woman comedian snarkily jeered to our international friends, “I’m sorry you thought Canada was one great big frozen tundra.” That generated wild cheers from the Canadian audience. That is the sort of thing we like, a joke where the punch-line is always “Canada rules!”

The best part of the show, as usual, was the music. Why it couldn’t it all be music?

Obama’s impressive maturity

Obama’s much-ballyhooed bipartisan healthcare summit was widely mocked, and probably justifiably so, considering the lack of substantial… anything it was destined to produce.

But one thing I do admire about this president is the way he seems to be at least trying to usher in a new culture of public, partisan dialogue. Over the last few decades, the trend of public debate has been increasingly theatrical, repetitive, emotional, and snippy. Short, witty, talking-points repeatedly endlessly with either great faux-outrage or faux-enthusiasm. Your average election debate, TV interview, or speech on the floor of the legislature is more useless and pointless than ever before, because there is no genuine substance backing up the words, and there’s no genuine substance because the intellectual qualities that add substance to political dialogue, such as moderate language, thoughtful tone, persuasive intent, and complex argument, are now seen as either a waste of time or a sign of weakness.

Obama may not have much to say, and he may not be a particularly innovative politician, but I do like his apparent desire to move beyond this, and actually return to an era in which politicians spoke like mature, intelligent, respectful adults to one another, deserves praise.

This exchange at the summit, between the President and John McCain, has been widely covered, because of the way it evokes the 2008 the election, which of course makes for easy newspaper headlines (”McCain and Obama stage tense rematch!”). But look at the contrasting behavior of the two men.

Compare the mechanical, awkward way McCain delivers his little laundry list of focus-grouped GOP grievances to the detached, bored air of Obama, who wants to talk about more substantial things. Obama seems like a real person, while McCain comes off as some bizarre creature of Washington.

Elitism is a problem in politics, and a problem for the Democrats. But it’s wrong to make elitism and maturity synonymous, because they’re not. The maturity Obama projects — and promotes — is a huge and important part of his appeal, but Republicans don’t seem to be interested in learning from it.

More about coalition governments

I had a letter published in the National Post yesterday. It was in response to an editorial by some guy named Chris Selley who was bemoaning the fact that Canadians, unlike Britons, don’t consider multi-party coalitions a legitimate form of parliamentary government. This, he believes, represents a disturbing dearth of knowledge about our parliamentary traditions, which are of course imported from England. There is evidently some talk in Britain over the possibility of a coalition government in that country’s near future, and Selley contrasts the muted commentary of the British press over the matter with the supposedly hysterical and ignorant banter of the Canadians following Stephane Dion’s failed attempt to impose a Liberal-NDP coalition government in the winter of ‘08.

As one of those who hysterically denounced Dion’s coalition plan at the time — I even likened it to a coup, an analogy Selley mocks — I had to author a response. So I wrote:

Chris Selley makes a valid point when he notes the vastly different ways that coalition governments are perceived in the United Kingdom and Canada. In the former, they are a routine expectation, while here they are perceived as “tantamount to coups d’etat.” The problem, however, is Mr. Selley’s conclusion that this reality reflects the comparative immaturity of Canada’s political culture.

Canada has obviously inherited a number of constitutional traditions from Britain but we’ve also had at least two centuries to establish our own. The modern Canadian style of government reflects decades of gradual evolution as a North American democracy; an evolution that has not occurred in perfect tandem with the U.K.’s unique European experiences.

It’s said that both Britain and Canada have a “Westminster” style parliament, but so do dozens of other nations, from New Zealand to India to Papua New Guinea, and no one expects us to be taking any lessons on governance from them. The Canadian style of government should reflect the interests and expectations of the people of Canada. If coalition governments are not a common occurrence in Canada, then coalition governments are not part of our tradition. It’s as simple as that.

A just government gains legitimacy through a social contract with its people. We obey the government because we understand how its executives are chosen, and we understand, as voters, our own role and power to influence that process. In a country like Canada, that has a fairly unclear written constitution, much of our social contract with the government is based on an understanding of precedent and tradition. Dion’s plan to get the governor general to fire the prime minister and install a three-party coalition in his place —  weeks after the last election had concluded and Harper had formally begun his second term — was a dramatically unprecedented gesture in Canadian history, and would, had it succeeded, overthrown decades of democratic precedent and struck a serious blow against the democratic legitimacy of our entire political regime.

Dion’s argument at the time, and Selley’s argument in his editorial, amounts to basically “Canadian precedent be damned! International precedence counts too!” But of course that’s an enormous can of worms. Even if we just entertain the idea of “Commonwealth precedent” things quickly go nuts. The Governor General of Grenada once consented to a military coup in that country. So I guess that’s a Commonwealth convention we are supposed to seriously entertain for Canada, too. Getting the rest of the world involved in determining our style of government is a messy business that offers very few clear answers. At best, it simply puts some phony gloss of legitimacy on ideas that would otherwise have no domestic credibility.

In response to my letter, another Post reader got something published today:

A letter writer notes that coalition governments “are not part of our tradition.” Strange, the present federal government is a coalition of Alliance/ Reformers and Progressive Conservatives.

He’s being glib, but his comments inadvertently prove my point. The North American political tradition favors a strong two-party system. During the decade-or-so period when Canada had two nominally conservative parties, there was enormous, constant pressure for them to merge with each other, in order to form a stronger, united right-wing party. And they eventually did, and so we are back to the old Conservative vs. Liberal dynamic of yore. Many other countries would have never considered a merger of this sort, because small, limited-appeal parties are a very entrenched and accepted element of their political culture. If Canada was a European country we would probably be ruled by a PC-Reform-Social Credit-God-knows-what-else coalition right now. But we’re not, we’re ruled by a single political party, because that’s the sort of government we expected our system to produce.

Who’s in charge of Canadian spelling?

The concept of “Canadian spelling” has always intrigued me. When you grow up in Canada it’s a concept that people are always bludgeoning you over the head with, as is the case with so many of this country’s nationalistic idiosyncrasies. “Spell color with a u, dammit,” compatriots cry angrily.

But the inherent problem with Canadian spelling is the vagueness of its supposed rules. There’s a sense that our way is inspired by British conventions, and intended to be contrary to American reductionism, but determining exactly how far to go in either direction is quite a hazy business. So much of it is simply determined by the expectations of the powers-that-be in that particular moment of your life. My highschool English teachers had one standard, my professors another, the copy editor of my college newspaper yet another still. I’ve always been taught that the slime that comes out of your nose is spelled “mucus,” but then the other day I saw some Tylenol ad that spelled it “mucous,” so clearly the Canadian advertising industry has its own set of beliefs, too.

Today at the bookstore, however, I discovered that the Government of Canada actually produces an official guide to Canadian English, entitled The Canadian Style, produced by the Department of Public Works and Government Services. This book, in turn, recommends Canadians refer to the Gage Canadian Dictionary for all spelling-related uncertainties, since this is the dictionary used by “most federal departments and agencies.”

So I guess that brings some closure to the matter. I don’t think it’s a particularly legitimate system, mind you, since I don’t think government authority should be the highest arbitrator of cultural norms, but that’s the present reality of Canada. As someone who tries to be a good representative of my country, whatever its institutionalized absurdities, I’ll try to defer to these rule books more often when writing for my site.

On a related note, here’s a very interesting interview with a guy named Jack Lynch, who wrote a book about the evolution of the cult of “proper English,” and the fairly dubious intellectual foundations of the entire premise.

Who cares what Alexander Haig said?

The death of Alexander Haig comes at an interesting time for me, because I’m in the middle of reading a fantastic oral history of the Reagan White House (Reagan: The Man and his Presidency, 1998). Discussing Secretary Haig’s infamous “I’m in control” moment, Lyn Nofziger is quoted as saying “that’s going to be the third paragraph in his obit.”

And sure enough, in the literal third paragraph of his obituary in The New York Times:

Hours after the shooting, then Secretary of State Haig went before the cameras intending, he said later, to reassure Americans that the White House was functioning.

”As of now, I am in control here in the White House, pending the return of the vice president,” Haig said.

If you’re not familiar with the larger story, when Reagan was shot, Vice President Bush was airborne, flying back to Washington from some event in Texas. This caused a brief power vacuum in the White House, and, at least according to some of the insiders interviewed in this book, the cabinet and White House lawyers encouraged Haig, as Secretary of State, to temporary act as leader of the administration.

Says Haig:

In the cabinet meeting, the White House lawyer said, ‘We have to deal with the matter of transition of power.’ I said, ‘No way! The president is not in extremis.’ What I was taking about [with the 'I'm in control' statement] was the pecking order within the executive branch of the government. [...] That’s why I went into that press room … to tell the Russains, ‘Hey! Look. We’ve got a functioning government.’

There was outrage that Haig was trying to assert unconstitutional power at a time of crisis, but really, in retrospect, the episode seems like little more than a common-sense, short term strategy to deal with an unusual situation. Regardless, it’s not a terribly important story in the grander scope of the history of the Reagan Administration, or even the more limited scope of Alexander Haig’s political career.

The disproportionate attention the anecedote is given, however, I think reflects an unhealthy obsession educated, media-type people have with what I’d describe as the “quirks” of government. I was exposed to a lot of this when I was studying political science. People were always way too interested in the most quirky, far-out aspects of constitutional government, the stuff that only becomes relevant in the most extreme, unlikely, “what-if?” situations. Stuff like faithless electors in the electoral college, the reserve powers of the Crown, parliamentary coalitions, and yes, the presidential order of succession. I think it’s problematic because it’s a mindset that views government as this entertaining, fascinatingly complex thing that requires lots of specialized knowledge to understand, rather than just a limited, uninteresting prover of a few public services, which I think is what government should be.

The idea that Haig’s main relevance to American political history is the way he tried to establish a new precedent regarding the temporary transfer of executive power during the immediate aftermath of a botched assassination attempt is a sad commentary on the warped way we have come to understand the role of government in the modern era.

Two good things I saw

I attended a taping of The Colbert Report today. What a great experience. The man is a comic genius and he runs a fantastic show. He’s a lot more unassuming in person, too.

As part of his “Better Know a Canadian Riding” series, Colbert did an interview with Ujjal Dosanjh, who is one of the members of parliament representing Vancouver in the House of Commons. Dosanjh is an interesting guy. He used to be the NDP premier of the province of British Columbia before switching parties and serving briefly as health minister under Prime Minister Martin.

Dosanjh was also born in India, and it was this that fact Colbert chose to make the biggest deal of, asking him what caste he was from and other politically incorrect things. It was really funny, in a shocking, sensibility-offending way, and it made me realize just how edgy and subversive American political satire is compared to Canadian. When Canadian comedy people interact with politicians they usually do so in a very bland, inoffensive way, never making anyone too uncomfortable and always giving off a strong this-is-all-in-good-fun vibe. The politicians, for their part, play along way too much, which implies they don’t feel particularly unsettled by the comedy in any serious way.

Compare the aggressive, confrontational style of a guy like Colbert with the folksy style of Rick Mercer, or the palsy walsy style of Mary Walsh. I guess part of it stems from the fact that the latter two are from the CBC, which is a government-funded television station. There’s obviously an incentive to treat politicians a lot more delicately when this is your economic reality. CBC actors are basically just federal employees, so there’s a limit of how much subversion you can expect from them.

The other good thing I watched today was a documentary called Art and Copy. It was a fantastically inspiring movie about the reform of the American advertising industry during the 70s, 80s and 90s, as told by the pioneering veterans themselves. In an era when the the very label of “documentary” has been systematically degraded by heavy-handed editorialists like Michael Moore and Morgan “Supersize Me” Spurlock, it was very refreshing to watch a movie that simply (gasp) documented something in a fairly neutral manner.

Advertising is a medium that is almost only talked about in highly scandalized, sensationalistic terms, and perhaps justifiably so, but it’s also a medium that has unleashed enormous amounts of artistic creativity from some truly impressive people. Art and Copy offers a good look at their stories.

Canada’s Conservatives continue the billingualism racket

This is completely insane. The Canadian heritage minister, James Moore, is actually complaining that there was not enough French in the opening ceremonies of the 2010 games. This, despite the fact that:

• the games were opened in French by the Governor General
• half of the national anthem was sung in French
• the Vancouver Olympic CEO spoke bits of French despite his obvious hardship in doing so
• Jacques Rogge, the IOC president, gave a lengthy French speech
• all substantial portions of the ceremony were announced in French by the IOC narrators

The only elements of the ceremony that weren’t heavily Frenchified in some manner were the music and poetry performances. But guess what! Those are cultural artifacts of Canada, and Canada is an overwhelmingly English culture! Vancouver is likewise Canada’s second-biggest English city, so it’s not unjustified for our cultural choices to reflect that reality. One can imagine the cultural choices that would be made during a Quebec-based Olympics. We don’t need to imagine very hard, in fact, considering we already had one of those.

The problem with Canada, as I mentioned in my earlier post, is that everything produced in this country is expected to reflect an idealized, and heavily politicized, made-in-Ottawa goodthink version of reality. And that version of reality pretends that Canada is seamlessly bilingual and bicultural, with French and English being spoken in perfect ratio to the comprehension of all (except in Quebec, of course, but their unilingualism can be appreciated as a charming virtue of identity and empowerment).

The cult of bilingualism is a very naked exercise of caste power in the modern Canadian political system. Since the country’s functional bilingual community is so small, but bilingualism so prized, that community inevitably comes to exercise grossly disproportionate control over everything. And since power begets more power, the bilingual clique will almost always insist that nothing is ever bilingual enough, and requires ever-greater meddling from their greasy fingers, even things like the Vancouver Olympics, which are at least nominally a provincial event representing a decidedly non-bilingual community.

Minister Moore is a great example of the sort of person who benefits from the bilingualism racket. He’s from British Columbia, and I knew him quite well at one point because his riding includes the suburb where I live. He was a smart guy, intellectual and witty and open-minded, but not a particularly accomplished or distinguished politician by any stretch. But from practically day one, he was always being touted in the press as a guy who was “going places,” almost exclusively on the basis that was bilingual. (Why or how he wound up bilingual is not clear to me. It is exceedingly rare for someone from BC to speak both official languages unless explicitly programmed to do so in early childhood, through enrollment in French immersion schools and the like.)

I remember attending a candidates’ debate with Moore in 2004, where one of his people, during “questions from the audience” time, asked a planted question in French for no other reason than to show off the fact that Moore was the only candidate capable of answering. And that sort of transparent hokiness paid off, because now Moore is the minister of the entire country’s culture, or at least what Ottawa decrees it should be.

It’s the fact that Moore comes from the Conservative Party that makes this a unique tragedy, however. The Conservative partisan tradition in Canada, especially the more anti-establishment vein embodied by the Reform-Alliance movement that first elected Moore to parliament in 2000, historically understood itself as one willing to defend the interests of English Canadians. When Jean Chretien mocked Reform leader Preston Manning for being a “bad Canadian” because he could not speak French, the party was willing to fire back, and say no, the quirky bilingualism practiced by the Ottawa establishment is not the sole distinguisher of national respectability in a country with over 20 million unilingual, English-speaking citizens.

But is any party willing to say that today?

There is at least one senator and more than a handful of representatives in the United States Congress willing to state that capitalism is a bad idea. The British Parliament contains many folks who would like to abolish the monarchy. President Sarkozy is against the 35-hour work week and the Governor of the Bank of China thinks that Keynesianism is bunk. But no one in this country’s political elite is willing to suggest that spending millions of taxpayer dollars ($7.2 million, in the case of the 2010 games) to impose foreign languages on disinterested communities is ever anything but thoroughly justifiable.

ChatRoulette is annoying, addictive

So I finally buckled and gave ChatRoulette a try. Have you heard of it? It’s the latest big thing. You hook up your webcam and microphone and the site will hook you up with a random chat partner.

It’s an idea that works much, much better in theory than in practice, and not just because the system is predictably clogged with immaturity and perversion.

If you chat partner bores you, you can click “next” at any time and get a new one. This is the defining experience of ChatRoulette: constant rejection from strangers. Cool guys reject you, pretty girls reject you, old men reject you, pre-teens reject you, reject, reject reject — usually after no more than a second or two of glancing at your visage.

It is incredibly frustrating. I hardly ever swear, but it’s hard to resist yelling obscenities after your (what feels like) 200^th consecutive rejection. Isn’t this supposed to be a chat site? What exactly are these people looking for? (The girls, I presume, are looking for someone more attractive than I. The men, girls.)

When you do finally find a partner, the relief is enormously gratifying, but hold on! More frustration awaits! Because ChatRoulette deals with webcams and microphones — among the most notoriously finicky contraptions of our age — more than half of your chat partners will probably not be able to hear you, or you them, or they’ll crash, or freeze, or be enveloped in ear-splitting feedback, etc.

Once you hack through all these layers, these many, many layers of irritation and hassle, you can have some fun experiences. I had a good chat with a guy from England about British things, and some guy played me a series of songs on his guitar for about half an hour. I did some sketches of politicians for a Dutch fellow, and I chatted about the Olympics with a roomful of people in Toronto.

Here’s a good article about ChatRoulette in the New York Times Magazine. The author describes the experience perfectly, but also articulates some theories why, despite everything pushing you in the opposite direction, ChatRoulette is actually incredibly addictive. I’m definitely keen to give it another go. As one of my friends put it, “ChatRoulette makes you eternally optimistic for better people.” The promise of meaningful conversation with strangers is a more powerful allure than you might expect.