Photographing ChatRoulette’s horny alpha males

For the inexperienced internet user, ChatRoulette is simply an online chatroom that pairs up strangers from all over the world via a video set-up. But not for a pally chat with a lonely nan – quite far from that, actually. Over the years, it’s become synonymous – notorious, even – for its seedy flashers, kinky couples seeking an audience and enough knobs to rival your average amateur porn site.

But when photographer Brennan Bucannan went on the website during the isolated periods of the pandemic, he genuinely had innocent intentions – unlike the giggling teens who huddle around a laptop in search of a nipple after school. ​“I was feeling pretty lonely and frustrated, as many people were around that time,” he says. ​“I remembered ChatRoulette from the Tumblr days and gave it a go to see who was on there.”

By his own admission, Bucannan oscillates between feeling super extroverted and finding it more comfortable to ​“stay inside and live quite digitally”. ChatRoulette felt like a decent way for him to meet in the middle and stay connected to people, albeit strangers.

It wasn’t long until the photographer found a way to turn his new social outlet into a project, though. With IRL contact off-limits, he set up a camera and started taking candid shots of the users he came across.

“I wanted to find interesting people that wanted to chat. Then while I was on there, I kept coming across all these guys who I would categorise as a similar tribe. They spanned age and location, and they all had this same kind of leering look, mostly topless if not fully nude, or the camera pointed at their crotch.

“It was super annoying. You’d have to click through, like, five of these guys just to get to actual people.”

Bucannan found that these guys were getting off on voyeurism, pointing the camera to their dicks and then starting to touch themselves. While ChatRoulette isn’t actually a porn site, these users were getting their rocks off from exposing themselves to strangers. At the time, Bucannan had long hair and his face was, at first, obstructed by the camera he was holding up. It wasn’t until he removed the camera that the horny guys would realise he’s not a woman and get pissed off.

When Bucannan asked them why they were doing it, none of them really had an answer. ​“They’d say ​‘I don’t know,’” he says. ​“They didn’t really know why they were taking their shirt off and masturbating to random people on the internet who weren’t consenting. But they did have an intentional look in their eye. If you go on there, you just know that that kind of guy isn’t there for a conversation.”

Of all the guys Bucannan came across, some were more memorable than others. ​“One guy started to show me his collection of guns,” he says. ​“There were quite a few people with guns actually. Oh, and there was a male-female couple chilling on their sofa and they had a two headed baby toy, who said it just gets people to stop and talk. If you looked at my time on ChatRoulette as a slideshow, you’d never know what was coming next. It was exciting and terrifying at the same time.”

Follow Brennan at @brenmop!