A high school student with an "I Love Horatio Nelson" T-shirt, a man furiously masturbating at his desk, a beautiful girl with dreadlocks who "nexts" me immediately, another gentleman ‘relaxing’, a group of stoners who embark on the tricky mission of passing a joint from Pennsylvania to England...

For those familiar with chatroulette.com, this will be an habitual sequence. Simple and addictive, the pure concept website immediately and randomly connects users one-on-one via video and/or sound, leaving them free to launch into passionate and lengthy conversation or hit "next" and be faced with another user. As I write, there are over 23,000 people online and in the twilight hours of the American weekend I have seen this reach 50,000. It’s addictive, interesting, often hilarious, sometimes moving, and inevitably perverted, with some of the depraved deviants able to shock even the most hardened online indulgers.

Through Chatroulette I’ve benefited from a ninety minute consultation with a New York hotel designer ("You shouldn’t have your fridge so close to the oven; that’s doing nothing for your chi"), been run up and down the road by Petra, a Norwegian lady who wanted to show me "what real snow looks like" and enjoyed countless late night jams with musicians all over the world: a jazz guitarist in Nashville, a masked trumpeter with a giant swastika flag behind him, and a self-described "female bass vocalist" who produced some of the lowest notes known to the human ear. It made me feel a bit sick.

Some of the most profound conversations are to be had with the large stoner contingent, visibly and heartwarmingly close-knit groups of friends sharing a pipe (if American) or a spliff (if European), while simultaneously expounding the erudite and the vacuous.

Chatroulette, however, is not for the faint-hearted. You earn your meaningful moments by wading through the wankers. In my early excursions I would click "next" at the slightest glimpse of skin but recently I’ve been trying to engage with this middle-aged, obese male community. Loudly reciting portions from your Bar Mitzvah seems to be a pretty reliable method of being "nexted".

There is a touch of the X Factor about it: you are being judged. Everyone’s a Louis Walsh (actually I think I came across him during a late night session yesterday). You can see the irritated boredom in the eyes of the stranger just before they cut you off, or if (in my experience) your hair looks particularly ridiculous, that Cheryl Cole "you have SO much potential" expression flashes across the face of the neo-Nazi polishing his machete in his dorm and you know that there’s a future in this relationship. Forty seconds at least.

Chatroulette is as pure and simple as the Internet gets. It’s real, democratic interaction, and it’s quickly becoming a dynamic space for the world’s weirdos and geniuses alike. It doesn’t have an agenda, no changing layout, no profiles to complete, no pokes, likes or updates to hide behind. With only the most minimal of adverts across the bottom of the page, Chatroulette is a throwback to those first rapid-fire chatrooms of the mid 90s where you can come and go as you please without a trace (unless someone is recording their conversations for an ‘hilarious’ YouTube video of people’s responses to their "show me boobs" sign).

Weird procrastination tool it may be, but an immoral infatuation? I’m not so sure. Take a spin, take an interest in the person opposite and see if it doesn’t feel somehow worthy and genuine.