The Weirdest Internet Research Rabbit Holes People Have Gone Down

An internet "rabbit hole" is a metaphor for an online topic or series of linked pages that are so engrossing a person spends hours, days, or more time on it.

The phrase "falling down the rabbit hole" describes someone exploring the Internet and getting caught up in a topic.

The term derives from Alice in Wonderland, where Alice falls into a rabbit hole and is lost in another world.

Reddit user Zenon9 asked:

"What’s the weirdest rabbit hole you’ve ever fallen into on the internet?"

Unrelated Ancestry

"Going super deep on the history of a family I have no relation to on MyAncestry because I couldn't find much about my own family."

"So I went back to 1600 on the Bennett family, checking church records from 400 years ago, etc..."

"John Bennett, blacksmith, lived to be 92 and died in 1647."

~ gil_corey

"I've done this a little when I was working on genealogy for my own family, start looking into the history of other people. Particularly people that towns in my area are named after."

Funniest name I found was a man named Tippington Toppington Nottingham. For real."

"Now, I don't know if maybe somebody was putting silly names down on the website, but it looked real."

~ Catshit-Dogfart

Sooted Up

"Accidentally stumbled upon a 3-hour documentary about the secret lives of Victorian chimney sweeps... and I watched the whole thing."

"Now I know more about soot than I ever thought possible."

~ zoebaddie

Giphy

American Chestnut Blight

"The American Chestnut blight which caused near extinction. What was once the redwood of the east coast was practically wiped out in the early 20th century, due to imports of trees from Asia that contained the blight fungus, but were resistant to it themselves.

"Today we have the technology to bring back the American hestnut using minor gene modification I believe from wheat, but I don't believe federal approval has yet been granted to reintroduce."

"To me this is a fascinating bit of science where we have the power to bring back an almost forgotten yet iconic indigenous species. I find this an incredibly interesting topic and went down quite the rabbit hole."

~ braveLittleAppster

Life Story

"Back in the early 2000’s, I stumbled upon a website where the only content was this one man’s Walmart receipts. He’d go shopping, then scan and upload his receipts for people to see and comment on."

"He’d done this for a few years by the time I found his website. I spent like 3 days looking at Walmart receipts because, after a while, they kind of started to tell a story."

"The guy got married, had a kid, and I left off around the time the kid was potty trained."

"It was like a journal written in Walmart receipts."

"You could follow him through the seasons, whether he had a cold, birthday cards and gifts for family, and see the growth of his child all through his Walmart purchases."

"It was fascinating."

~ Hairhelmet61

Giphy

Braids, Wigs And Weaves

"Black women's hair braiding YouTube videos. I am a bald White guy."

"The algorithm now keeps pushing all these videos on intricate hair weaves and treatments and braiding..."

"I keep watching, fascinated by how it all works."

~ Howdthecatdothat

"OMG same!! I'm not even remotely close to the target demographic, but I love watching people braid."

"I'm fascinated by wig installs and weaves too, but I'll watch braiding videos for hours."

"So much talent and skill. I can barely do a french braid on myself."

~ CheshireAsylum

Denial Of Reality

"I found myself deeply invested in a conspiracy theory that Finland doesn’t exist. There’s an entire community of people who believe it's just a made-up landmass between Russia and Sweden. I don’t even know how I got there."

~ SweetcreamDaisy

"That's like the birds aren't real conspiracy theory... I think they both started as a joke, are still a joke, and some people unfortunately came in too late, didn't get the joke, and take it as a real thing."

~ HETKA

"There's another conspiracy theory that Australia doesn't exist and all AAussiesyou meet around the world are covert ops members, trained by 'them', to keep us in the dark and to spy on us."

"All my Aussie mates play along with it, too. It's a lot of fun."

~ TonyHeaven

Trials Treasure

"The Trials game easter egg/treasure hunt. There is a series of video games that people are probably at least vaguely familar with called Trials."

"It's a game in which you ride a bicycle/motorcycle from point A to point B and ride over obstacles, do flips, etc. (I've never actually played it, so apologies if it's not a great description.)"

"In a nutshell, players found some items/locations in the game that seemed to be related. Someone figured out that it appeared to be a puzzle that spanned multiple versions of the game."

"The puzzle was wildly complicated, including things like secret websites, real-life locations across the globe, analyzing sound waves from songs, etc..."

"The last step that was established was that someone needed to be a in a specific location to receive a package in Paris, France at the Eiffel Tower in the year 2113 or something."

"The guy I was following, who kept up on this, stopped posting but completely by random, I saw him post here on Reddit. I messaged him asking what became of the puzzle."

"He said life had gotten busy and he hadn't been able to keep up, but last he heard, people had been coordinating to have their kids/grandkids at the location at the specific time."

"It's one of the crazier things I've heard of and probably wont hear of it's resolution in my lifetime, but the rabbit hole is a fun read of seeing how things were uncovered and how indepth the puzzle is."

~ lostsparrow131986

- YouTubeyoutu.be

Sovereign Citizens

"Sovereign Citizens movement in the United States. Between the police bodycam footage of traffic stops to their court appearances where they try to represent themselves with their pseudointellectual mumbo jumbo."

"My sick fascination with watching the trainwreck."

"A part of it is quite sad because these people have made awful decisions in life, but on the other hand, they’re choosing to live within delusion and the consequences are satisfying to see."

~ LadybirdMountain

"I shot an interview with a police officer a while back who talked about these types. He said that they tried as hard as possible to point these people into just not doing that nonsense, but they would always decide on the worst possible course of action."

"Like making everyone stand around in the pissing rain while they argue that they weren't 'driving', they were 'travelling' and therefore they cannot be cited for 'driving' 50mph in a 20mph speed limit and there are no laws against traveling. That kind of asinine thing."

"Laws are not magic spells and the intent is the most important thing, so if you get cited for something minor and silly, don't try to play word games on the side of the road to get out of it."

~ erroneousbosh

Oscar Wilde

"Oscar Wilde. And this was in the early 80s when no one was interested in studying him, his works, or his life. He was essentially still persona non grata even in university literature courses. And I'm a straight female."

"I was interested in a British actor who was cast as the lead in a play focused on Wilde."

"I wanted to know why they would cast him. I was at University at the time, and at the library, so I pulled a biography by Frank Harris and started reading it. It read like a gossip rag, which made me suspicious, so I pulled another biography, this one by Hesketh Pearson and kept reading."

"I got totally sucked in by the tragedy of his life. His wife and two son's lives were also wrecked, and I really can't tell you why I kept researching them. I wasn't interested in reading Wilde's work. Only about his life."

"A few months later, I moved to Chicago which had a great many used bookstores on Clark Street that are gone now. I scoured them for every Wilde biography I could get my hands on."

"I continue doing this for 20 years, across three states, and also during a study abroad semester in London. It didn't matter whether the books were printed in 1905, or in the '80s. They were inexpensive because nobody was interested really."

"I have collected over 250 books and other related items about him. Interest in him exploded in 2000 because that was the Centenary of his death. I had also discovered the internet, and at first I was thrilled."

"People that I could talk about Wilde with. New books would be published on him. More new stuff to read."

"In a way, this was the beginning of the end of my interest because I found out Oscar wasn't their focus—'Tell me what you think about him, and you will tell me more about yourself than you ever will about him'."

"The academics in the universities claimed him as theirs. Gay men claimed him as theirs. Anyone who wrote about him claimed him as theirs. And Oscar himself got lost in the crowd."

"I missed Oscar. So I withdrew from the discussion groups and didn't bother buying many of the books that came out.

"It was all a huge disappointment, except for Stephen Fry. He starred in the one biographical movie that was worth anything. He alone, it seemed to me, understood Oscar and bothered to focus on him."

"I still have all the stuff I collected. I don't revisit it. It just sits there. And I still stay away from anyone who is a fan or scholar on Wilde."

~ Initial-Shop-8863

youtu.be

Numbers Stations

"Numbers stations are eerie as sh*t because, you know, incorporeal voices on radio broadcasts just reading numbers is strange as f*ck all by itself."

"But add on the fact that they're legitimately used for spying and the implication of what those numbers could mean gets all kinds of creepy."

"The videos on trying to dissect and decode the broadcasts to figure out who they're from, where they're being broadcast from, what they mean, etc... are fascinating."

~ NoFingersMonkeyPaw

The Cult, Not The Tribe

"My roommate threw away some of my vintage silverware rather than wash it. I stored the rest of it away, and then turned to the internet to find replacements."

"In the process, I found out that the manufacturer—Oneida—was the money-making branch of an 1848 perfectionist religious cult and commune in upstate New York."

"They believed Jesus had already come back to earth in 70 A.D., that it was possible for them to create heaven on earth, and that eugenics would help create a community of perfect people. They believed in free love, but sex for pregnancy had to be approved by the cult."

"To train young men for good pullout game, they encouraged older women in the community to train them. It might have been the origin of the cougar."

"Still, Oneida did make nice spoons."

~ tonkacoffee

- YouTubeyoutu.be

Silk Road Marketplace

"I went down the rabbit hole about The Silk Road Marketplace. The illegal black market site on the deep web.

"I always found it fascinating that one singular dude was able to attribute so much to drug trafficking simply from his laptop. The whole story is so intriguing to me."

"It’s actually one of the reasons I went into my current field which is cybersecurity. The internet is such a vast and enormous place."

"The amount of crime that occurs simply from peoples computers has always mind boggled me."

~ Sure_Difficulty_4294

Miniature Food

"One time I fell into a YouTube vortex of people making miniature food."

"Tiny pancakes are surprisingly satisfying to watch."

~ Sweety_Tits_99

"I teach second grade and my kids love to watch miniature food.

"10 mins after recess for them to chill, cool off, drink some water. It’s the quietest time of the day."

~ kangaj72

youtu.be

The Great Glitter Mystery

"There is a company in New Jersey, USA, that is the top glitter manufacturer in the world."

"When being interviewed, they were asked who their biggest client was. They refused to answer saying,"

"'They don’t want people to know'."

"Cue millions of people speculating on who the biggest glitter client in the world is and why they want to keep it secret!"

~ Pypsy143

youtu.be

Marble Racing

"Accidentally learning everything about competitive marble racing and getting emotionally invested in a marble named 'Red Number 3'."

"Jelle's Marble Runs."

~ Rhapsody-Brinley

"I fell asleep watching a cooking video on YouTube and woke up to a 2 hour marble rally once."

"I stayed up and watched the last 45 minutes—then promptly checked out the channel which was amazing."

"The sportscaster style commentary was so good!"

~ ginniper

youtu.be

Have you ever fallen down an internet rabbit hole?

What was it about?