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dinosaur
It's been Google's whimsical way of letting people know something's gone awry for ages.
If you're like most people you've always assumed the little T-Rex is just there for fun. But there's more to Google's "Lonely T-Rex" than meets the eye.
He's actually a game you can play while you wait for the internet to come back online.
For some of us, this has been common knowledge and a way to pass time at work during internet outages for years and years. But for many others, like a certain teacher on TikTok, this is entirely new information.
And it's blowing their minds.
TikToker @misskdrich posted about the T-Rex game after her students told her about it.
See her video below.
The teacher's surprise at Google's "Dinosaur Game" was best captured in her TikTok caption which read "How long has this gone on!!?"
As she explained in her video, the game was brought to her attention when a connection error brought the Lonely T-Rex onto her screen while teaching.
She mused to her class about why Google has a random T-Rex on its error screen, to which she says one of her students said "Because of the game."
As she soon learned from her students, if you press the space or up-arrow keys when you see the Lonely T-Rex, the Dinosaur Game launches in which your T-Rex runs along a desert landscape and must jump over a series of saguaro cactuses.
The game becomes increasingly difficult, with the cacti placed more closely together, until later levels when the Lonely T-Rex must duck flying Pteranodons and other obstacles.
The game was introduced in 2014 by Google as a sort of joke on the theme of the pre-internet days being "prehistoric"--you know, dinosaur times.
But judging from some of the responses to @misskdrich, she is definitely not the only one who didn't know this game existed.
@katelemontea/TikTok
@xxxzazzlerxxx/TikTok
@13debbyfernandes/TikTok
@the_pondering_mum/TikTok
@consciousevolutioncoach/TikTok
@sddegen/TikTok
@uplusmecosmetics/TikTok
@noxowner99/TikTok
@kaskitozuna/TikTok
@runbuddy75/TikTok
So there you have it--the next time you're internet's down, go jump some cacti!