Chatzy

Remember when chat rooms were all the rage? Back in the day when AOL Instant Messenger was to online socializing what Facebook is today? You could just pop into any one of thousands of chat rooms around the world and strike up a conversation. This was the infancy of sexting. I was just a teenager then, horny as ever, going into chat room after chat room and messaging people with girly sounding usernames, “ASL?” That’s how I lost my online virginity, thanks to AIM. Those were the days.

The chat room eventually evolved into sites like Omegle and Slut Roulette, where you could connect to random people all over the world via webcam. And now we have a wealth of 3D sex chat games to choose from. The chat room must be obsolete, right, completely dead and gone?

Well, not quite. There are still a few out there, struggling to hold onto the last shreds of user activity. Entering an online chat room today is kind of like visiting an abandoned building or driving through a ghost town. Nothing left but echoes of past activity and a strong sense of nostalgia.

It’s amazing to me, actually, that there are still chat room sites that are up and running. I am forced to imagine that the only people who still populate them are old dudes who are out of touch with how the internet works and the occasional incompetent spam bot, but, hey, I could be wrong. It’s not common that I am wrong, but it happens once in a great while.

I decided to test my theory by checking out a chat room site known as Chatzy. Although I highly doubt that I will find some hot young thing to sext with here, the site does have a wealth of sex-themed chat rooms to choose from, so I’m cautiously optimistic as I arrive at the site.

Site Design Dated as Fuck

As soon as I arrive on the site, I can immediately tell that it hasn’t had an upgrade for quite some time. It looks more like a relic than an active website. The site was developed in 2001 and it doesn’t look as if they’ve updated or changed anything since. The first thing I notice is an ugly baby-poop green background which is interrupted by a random white frame in the middle, where you are prompted to create your own chat room.

To the left of this, you will find a navigation bar. Your options are to start a quick chat, create a virtual room (basically just a chat room with a theme-specific background image … so virtual, I know), view a list of your saved rooms (for registered users), find more rooms, check out Chatzy FAQ, read the Chatzy blog, send feedback, view an emoji library (ooh, high tech), view a list of chat commands, see hosted rooms, or read the terms of use and privacy policy. It is a very basic and primitive looking site.

Well, since I’m not here to trade cookie recipes or talk about some stupid sitcom, I try to find the sex chat rooms. This is more difficult than it should be. It took me a few minutes to figure out that I had to go to “More rooms” and then type “sex” into the search bar. Finally, I have a list of different sex-oriented chat rooms to choose from. They appear below the search bar, just like Google results.

Plenty of Rooms to Choose From

There are ten pages of links to various chat rooms, so that is a good sign. Maybe there will be a horny coed or two for me to chat up and possibly trade pics with. As far as the room themes are concerned, I’m not so sure. The first room in the list is called “Furry Sex,” and that shit is just too fucking weird for me. So, naturally, I skip right over that, and the search continues.

Let’s see, we have a sex slave room, but BDSM isn’t really my thing. There’s “Sex Ed High,” a high school themed “virtual” room, but age play creeps me out (plus, I’m sure it’s filled with pedophiles if anything). Then there’s “Group Sex Dating,” but I’m not here for dating, let alone to date in groups. Okay, this one sounds promising: “ASR,” or Adult Sexting Room. That’s straightforward and normal enough, let’s check it out.

I click it and am brought to the room’s launch page (each room has its own color-coded theme to it, by the way, this one is a black background with a pale blue text). On the launch page, the room lists its rules: age must be in your username, keep all conversations respectful, English only, no use of excessive CAPS, no links to other rooms, no threats, avoid discussing rape, incest, abuse, and bestiality, no talking about suicide or depression allowed.

The one about suicide seems weird to me, but the rest are pretty understandable. I wonder how many people started talking about wanting to kill themselves in a sex chat room before they had to make that an official rule. Maybe there are people out there who get off to the thought of suicide. Hey, it wouldn’t be the strangest thing that I’ve seen people get off to on the internet.

Once you choose a username (with your age in it, don’t forget), and choose a color that coordinates with your gender / sexual orientation, you can click to enter the room. I do and am instantly transported back to the early 2000s. Most of the page is taken up by the public chat box (which you can actually expand by hiding the site’s navigation bar to the left), and to the right you will find a list of online users.

A Shockingly Active User-Base

Much to my surprise, when I entered the ASR on Thursday at 4:40 EST, there were 30 online users. Wow, I did not expect this. At all. Alright, so I guess that means that I’ve officially reached my quota of being wrong once per year. But, okay, in this case, I am happy to be wrong. It’s good to see people are still using chat rooms to get their sext on.

Above the public chat box, you have the rules, in case you missed them, scrolling by like a Wall Street ticker. Thankfully, you can freeze them if you wish (I found them really distracting). There are also a few options to choose from above the list of users: show enter / exit times for each user, show locations based on IP for each user (country only), or show status messages for each user (you can set something akin to an away message from AIM).

Fun Users, Decent M:F Ratio

As far as gender and orientation are concerned, this room was more varied than I thought it would be. I was expecting to see all straight dudes vying for the attention of one chick. But, no, again I am pleasantly surprised. The room has a healthy mix of straight females, straight dudes, and lesbians. Nothing beats a solid ratio. Of course, there’s no way of knowing who in these rooms is a catfish and who is not. It could very well just be a bunch of dudes posing as chicks. Actually, that would not surprise me in the slightest.

Overall, the members of the chat room were friendly and horny. Occasionally the conversation will get sidetracked to something that has nothing to do with sex, which is bound to happen in a chat room, but someone is always right there, almost immediately, to bring the discussion back to fucking.

The best way to describe the public chat, I think, would be to say that it is something like the chat room equivalent of an orgy. What I mean is that people sort of indiscriminately type sex actions (you know, with asterisks) and someone will reply, then someone else may get in on it. It is kind of all over the place, but cool if sexting is your thing.

Site Desperately Needs an Update

There are a few features that could definitely use an upgrade. I couldn’t, for example, view the entire list of online users, there was no scroll bar with which to do so, which sucks because the only other way to private message someone is to wait until they say something in the public chat (if they ever even do) and then click on their handle.

Also, speaking of messages, when you send a private message to someone, it just kind of disappears into the ether. It would be better if you could quickly access your message threads like you can on Facebook with a collapsible message center or something.

There is also no way (at least that I could see) to send pictures, neither privately to users or in the public chat, which is disappointing for obvious reasons. This also adds to my suspicions that the “girls” in the room might actually be dudes. Not that pictures would automatically dispel that suspicion, but it certainly couldn’t make it worse.

All in all, Chatzy is a surprisingly active chat room site with plenty of themed rooms to choose from. The site is in desperate need of an update, but it works for what it is. Go check it out (but try not to get catfished!).