Strange

Merton's Chatroulette Funny Piano Improv Video a Hit on YouTube

by Jacob Zinn | March 17, 2010 at 10:05 am

8694 views | 0 Recommendations | 1 comment

In the last six days, "Chatroulette Funny Piano Improv #1" has quickly gone viral with over 1.5 million views on YouTube.

The channel, PianoChatImprov, uploaded the video on March 11, 2010 and already has over 50,000 subscribers. The video features a hoodied pianist named Merton using Chatroulette, a website that randomly matches users to chat online. The site supports webcams and Merton uses his to perform quickly composed freestyle songs about the user’s chatting with him.

“You do a lot of typing, but I don’t get no message, I think you need to learn how to type better,” sang Merton to a smiling girl in the chat room.

The 5-and-a-half minute video, which has a discretionary warning for mild language, shows clips of 10 chat sessions where Merton serenaded strangers. He also took a request and played a rendition of Owl City’s Fireflies.

While buzz about "Chatroulette Piano Improv" picked up on Twitter, not everyone found him amusing. The second person in the video quickly logged off before Merton could get very far into his song.

Most of the other chatters laughed, grinned or didn’t seem to understand exactly what was happening.

Chatroulette with Merton

According to the description, Merton is a self-taught pianist and has had no piano lessons.

Despite similarities to Ben Folds, he clarifies that he is not alternative rocker and doesn’t think he sounds or plays like him.

He promises that there will be more videos to come in the future, as also suggested by the "#1" in the title. He might even be on Chatroulette right now, filming his next video.