Everyone knows that the internet is absolutely disgusting. Ever since its advent, if you looked for it, you could find web content that would make Peter Stringfellow’s jaded member blush. This is a well-established and well-documented fact. However, sometimes, you can come across something so harrowing, so scarring, so debauched, that you begin to assume that every single person you pass on the street is skipping off to a subterranean sex festival. I am, of course, talking about Chat Roulette.

For those of you unaware, Chat Roulette is the latest internet sensation in which you’re paired up with a stranger so you can talk via a webcam. Initially a delightful boundary-smashing link between thousands of people of different races, cultures and countries, the service inevitably fell in to the hands of people whose hands you’d only touch from the inside of a biochemical suit. Now merely a window into your own Freudian nightmares, Chat Roulette appeared to be a lost cause. However, last week, an excellent video appeared on Youtube of this guy improvising songs about the people who flashed up on his screen, which made a refreshing change from a crudely-drawn crayon message saying ‘TITS PLEASE’.

Flashes of creativity like this are what makes social media worthwhile, rather than just a receptacle for the chronically aroused. Imaginative use of networking sites can serve as a real benefit to music, art and writing, particularly Myspace which has launched several successful musical careers since its inception. Lily Allen was unheard of before she showcased her material via the internet and now she’s a regular fixture on Glastonbury’s Pyramid Stage, although that does mean that, every year, Keith Allen can be seen haunting the side of the stage resembling a peanut upon which someone has drawn a beard and a vague expression of self-congratulation. Myspace has also given us The Arctic Monkeys, Kate Nash and many other artists who sing in regional accents so accentuated that they’re in danger of being cast in a Hovis advert.

Music aside, the blogging world has the ability to bring good writers to an audience that they would otherwise be unable to reach.  I’ve seen several people that I follow on Twitter (@jamieross7 gang) become hugely popular and, in a couple of cases, release books based on their blogs. The only drawback of the blogosphere, excluding the word ‘blogosphere’, is that there is such a torrential piss-storm of squawking nonsense online that finding a good blog is like finding a needle in a haystack which moonlights as a lunatic asylum. Most blogs would not see a decline in quality if the writer was forced to type at gunpoint with his elbows.

However, this is also the case with the overwhelming majority of abominable music on Myspace or the deluge of self-romancers on Chat Roulette. The internet gives a platform to anyone who wants it and, without being overly sweeping, the vast majority of the world’s population is either life-sappingly dull, skull-piercingly annoying or off-puttingly aroused. The web contains some truly magnificent music, writing and art but, if you want to get to it, you’re going to have to put up with a couple of wankers. Literally and metaphorically.

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