Chris Higgins
Chatroulette Piano Man
by Chris Higgins - March 16, 2010 - 2:13 PM

Today’s most important web video: a guy named Merton performing improvised Ben Folds-style piano songs during Chatroulette sessions. It’s hilarious and wonderful and makes me feel like everything’s gonna be oookay. If you watch one web video today, please let it be this one.

All right, let me back up and explain what’s going on here: Chatroulette is a very NSFW chat service in which you randomly connect with strangers for video chats. All the kids are doing it these days, and there’s a lot of amateur naughty business going on. BUT — this dude Merton is single-handedly making Chatroulette an awesome place to be, by connecting with strangers via improvised piano/vocal compositions. Seriously. He connects and immediately begins playing a song based on what he sees. In the first connection Merton improvises: “Reclining dude in a white tank-tap / leaning his head on his hand / semi-Italian-looking / just like his parents planned.” In another case he demands: “Request a song.” The random chatted-up girl requests “Fireflies” and Merton immediately plays it. In other cases, he carries on extended piano-improv-song “conversations” with the chattees as their astonishment with him grows.

The video contains a few swears, but listen, guys, while we’re alone here — this video makes me very happy. I hope Merton gets a TV deal out of this somehow.

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Comments (17)

  1. i love how this post is written with pure joy and i love the guy with the piano!!! hahahha…he’s pretty awesome and a monster with the keys! i hope he’s doing this at home by himself, because that makes me even more pleased with him. if you start a petition for him to get his own show, i’ll sign it!

    posted by nicole on 3-16-2010 at 3:16 pm

  2. I wasn’t expecting to laugh so much at that! I’m at work!

    three three three three three!!

    posted by Steven C. on 3-16-2010 at 3:21 pm

  3. That is so adorable.
    I tried Chatroulette out of curiosity and found a number of people who just hang out pantsless or 14 yr old boys asking me to take off my shirt… which was less than cool… but also struck up conversations with a graphic artist (male) in France and then a journalism student (female) in the Netherlands. It’s an interesting service.

    posted by Elissa on 3-16-2010 at 3:45 pm

  4. Also, the folks at Boingboing think he’s Ben Folds…

    posted by Elissa on 3-16-2010 at 4:57 pm

  5. Kinda reminds me of the Family Guy episode where they run into Randy Newman, “singing about what he sees”.

    posted by Bert on 3-16-2010 at 5:15 pm

  6. I tried Chatroulette out of curiosity and found a number of people who watched me hang out pantsless or refused to take off their shirts when I asked…which was less than cool…but also struck up conversations with a transsexual performance artist (male…no, wait, female…) in France and then a journalism student (gender unidentifiable) in the Netherlands. It’s an interesting service.

    posted by 8rustystaples on 3-16-2010 at 5:51 pm

  7. Still laughing–this is hilarious, especially the end!

    posted by A2Veeness on 3-16-2010 at 7:38 pm

  8. I’m with the guys at boingboing. That’s GOTTA be Ben Folds. Right?! Looks like him, sounds *just* like him. Don’t you think?

    posted by MelissaC on 3-16-2010 at 9:44 pm

  9. This guys looks strangely like a friend of mine who also plays the piano (and yes, I could see him doing this). I had to go up and check the name to make sure it wasn’t him. LOL.

    posted by Heather on 3-17-2010 at 9:26 am

  10. I’m a HUGE Ben Folds fan and I’m not convinced it’s him. His voice is similar, but not the same. His laugh isn’t the same either (except maybe at the end). Also, Ben is taller. Don’t let the glasses fool you!

    Either way, this is awesome. It almost makes me want to go on chatroulette. Almost.

    posted by Katie on 3-17-2010 at 11:17 am

  11. I think a cool post would be to figure out who posted this first and trace the origin of its viral spread. I know Neatorama was one of the first to put it up, but probably not the very first.

    I’ve watched it now 4 times and the songs are starting to become earworms!

    posted by David K. Israel on 3-17-2010 at 12:05 pm

  12. Puts a smile on my face!

    posted by Lance on 3-17-2010 at 12:22 pm

  13. I love this video and think as you do that we’ll all be OK now… and I laughed and laughed and laughed at the end!!

    posted by Andrew on 3-17-2010 at 8:13 pm

  14. Oh my god! I see this guy on http://www.roomroulette.com the multicam version of chatroulette with two sexy girl, i think this men use the piano for seduce some girl!

    posted by Bryan on 3-18-2010 at 3:11 pm

  15. Ben Folds thinks it’s pretty amusing too: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LfamTmY5REw

    posted by Emma on 3-21-2010 at 3:14 pm

  16. It’s the perfect example of combining new media and art, isn’t it?
    The improvising is great and I just love it when we turn useless services into useful arty funky make-us-smile things.

    posted by Fishingtonpost on 3-31-2010 at 6:00 am

  17. It’s funny how Omegle was a spin-off of anicechat.net and ChatRoulette a spin-off of Omegle!

    posted by anon on 3-31-2010 at 1:44 pm

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