I had only recently heard of “Facebook Roulette” when I was up late one night, and caught an episode of South Park. In the episode, Kyle is trying to get more friends on Facebook so he and Cartman are using Facebook Roulette to try and find interesting people. Basically, it is an application that will randomly connect you to other Facebook users that have the app and you can chat using using the keyboard or a webcam. The ongoing joke with this is that most of the time you will be connected to someone who wants to show you their… well, penis!
This post contains two videos, the first (above) is called “Improv Piano guy on Facebook”, where he has recorded himself using Facebook Roulette and speaks to the users in song. Improv Piano guy (aka Merton) is very talented, and very funny as he sings about what he sees, and a lot of people actually mistook him for Ben Folds who is a very famous and talented musician, who uses the piano as his main instrument.
Having heard about this, Ben Folds decided to try it himself on stage! He dressed up in the same clothes as Merton and created a video called “ode to Merton” which you can see below. This must have been really funny for the audience, and it must have been a shock for some of the users of Facebook Roulette as they suddenly realise they are live in front of 2,000 people while Ben Folds sings to them. They only showed one guy that was doing something weird (in the bathroom!) but I’m sure there were many more that have been edited out.