Who amongst us hasn't wasted HOURS of life surfing the web for things we couldn't help being intrigued by?
Going on the internet for one quick look at a sale, then staying up until sunrise trying to uncover a 50-year-old unsolved murder mystery is totally normal.
Right?
Or watching tons of videos of people falling off stools and laughing.
It's like going to Target for JUST milk and walking out with $500 in credit card debt.
The fall down the internet rabbit holes is real. No joke.
Redditor Helloo_clarice wanted to hear about the times we've all followed a trail of breadcrumbs on the net, not realizing how deep we've gotten into a topic, so they asked:
"What is the deepest Internet rabbit hole you’ve ever fallen into?"
The Climb
"Deaths on mt everest. Started as a curious click on a random article, then got pulled into all the documentaries and articles. It's horrifying."
- KataiiZeher
wildlife mt GIF Giphy
Pretty Cool
"I don't know if it’s the deepest ever, but during COVID, I was bored like everyone else and joined a Facebook group called 'investigation connection,' and someone posted that they were adopted and looking for their siblings. In another life, I'd be a P.I. and have plenty of time for internet sleuthing. I stayed up all night, but I found a girl's entire family. She had tried her entire life to find them. After COVID, she got to meet them and tagged me in it. Pretty cool."
- s87g
Farewell Grandma...
"Found a Twitter post of someone asking for leads on the author of an abandoned book. It was related to a town in Ireland, so I tried to find a local news outlet to contact. I got distracted by the obituaries on their website and came across one that had a video link that was about to start streaming. And that's how I ended up watching a random Irish grandma's funeral service for an hour."
- BroodjePeop
Fascinating...
"Chernobyl on a number of occasions. Such a fascinating event to study in so many ways."
- Flat-Visual-4865
"A work project on TOKAMAK reactors pushed me into a criticality accident rabbit hole, and I fell PAST Chernobyl into the SL-1 accident in Idaho. THAT is an insane story. I talked about it so much in my social circle, it ended up as an episode of the Stuff You Missed in History podcast last year."
- TheAngerMonkey
"I came across the (mostly) true account of Chernobyl, very succinctly summarized on Everything2 about 15 years ago, and that dragged me into a multi-year rabbit hole that included competing a graduate-level course in nuclear engineering to help me understand the INSAG reports and other documentation."
- deepspace
I knew it all...
"A woman once got into an Uber with me, we chatted, and when she left, she told me her first name and her place of work, and said, 'Come find me.' Looking her up felt like stalking her since she didn't have much of an internet presence. Found out why pretty soon: turns out she was a Columbine shooting survivor. Her name was in the shooter's journal. I even ran across a cached copy of a deleted Tumblr blog that had been tracking all of the girls in that journal. Were they married? How many kids? Where did they live? Truly some of the creepiest s**t I've seen on the internet about real people. The worst part is, I could never tell her I knew all of this."
- MirageOfMe
Abandoned Mickey
"I once spent three days reading about abandoned Disney projects, like the whole history of Discovery Island and River Country. By the end, I felt like a ghost employee from 1979."
- NaturalScarlett
Disney Perfect Loops GIF Giphy
SUPERPOWERS
"I spent like 2 weeks just learning about cephalopods. They're freaky little aliens with unsettling superpowers."
- Mortambulist
"They are really incredible. Particularly octopus. The fact that they show such immense intelligence, like hunting strategies and tool use, while having a lifespan of an average of 2 years, is completely mind-boggling. These are learned behaviors, not instincts they are born with. I’m convinced they have types of intelligence that humans can’t even comprehend because we don’t have it. I feel the same about whales."
- _jamesbaxter
The Unmodern World
"Remote/untouched tribes."
- violet_moon_vw
"The uncontacted tribes rabbit hole is wild. Everyone knows about the Sentinelese, but then you discover the Ayoreo in Paraguay, the Kawahiva in Brazil, or the Korowai in Papua. What gets me is how many we only know exist because of satellite imagery or occasional sightings. There are still people living completely outside the modern world."
- MidnightTemptation1
MOVEMENT
"Sovereign Citizens. It all started with either seeing or taking a picture of a strange license plate, and next thing you know, I'm learning all about this crazy 'movement' that I had never heard about."
"I've forgotten most of it, but I remember there was a big thing about how if the American flag has the yellow fringes on it, it's not a real flag and it represents Maritime law, and that wasn't even the craziest part."
- Philthy42
A Weird 5 Days
"Last year, I tripped over a picture of a completely destroyed porta-potty from The Gathering of Juggalos here on Reddit. And like - I remember a bit about ICP from my youth, had never been a fan - honestly, had never really given it much thought - but fell into this entire rabbit hole of researching their whole... thing. My girlfriend still gives me hell about it - for days she'd walk into the room and I'd be scrolling and she'd be like 'are you still reading about the Juggalos?' (I was). That was a weird 5 or so days."
- key_knee
The Golden Ara
"I was hungover and a real old film was on network TV, like golden era black and white, I’m talking. In that film was an eye-catching actress named Loretta Young. The story about her and her infidelity incident (particularly its after effect) with Clark Gable is f**king wild."
"All because I was too lazy to reach for my remote and change the channel."
- RipErRiley
Tired Music Video GIF by Elvie Shane Giphy
Useful Pets
"Hermit crabs."
"I don't own or desire to own a hermit crab, but one day I stumbled across hermit crab care information by accident and couldn't stop reading. I spent the entire day on this. I eventually ended up on some blog detailing what happened when a guy apparently well-known in the hermit crab-keeping hobby forums passed away, and how they handled finding care for his massive amount of pet hermit crabs after."
"The most interesting thing I learned is that you have to be careful with a hermit crab that has just molted, if they're in a tank with multiple hermit crabs. Hermit crabs eat their shed skin to regain the nutrients. If the newly molted crab runs into others while the smell of shed skin is still on it, the others will go 'Oh, yay, tasty shed skin!' and eat it. They actually make a special scent remover you can wash your crab in to remedy this."
- ShiraCheshire
Geography...
"A few years ago, I ended up (somehow) on a Wikipedia list of all US federal prisons. That ended up with me going to every individual site for each prison and seeing who the famous people who had ever been there were. Then... reading up on each individual. It was a huge rabbit hole, but very interesting.'
'Note: There are A LOT of US federal prisons. And each one has numerous people listed... it took a while."
- 17175RC7
Slithering Along
"I don't remember how I stumbled across it, but I got into those snake egg hatching videos by Snake Discovery, and it led me down the rabbit hole of reptile keeping. I had never touched a snake in my life. I've had a part-time side job at the zoo doing reptile presentations for five years now, because of it, lol, I knew I wasn't alone. "
- thecaptainkindofgirl
Art Magic GIF by rubedox Giphy
We've all caught rabbit hole fever.
The murder mysteries are the worst.
How can you not keep interested?
And how many documentaries have been made about internet sleuths saving the day?
I wanna save the day!
Now, if you'll excuse me, I have some watching to do.
@thetnholler/Bluesky
@wensilver/Bluesky