“Spent an entire day on this”: 16 chaotic internet rabbit holes people swear they’ll never escape once they click
Redditors are spilling on the most all-consuming rabbit holes that have ever held their attention, sometimes for days at a time. Most folks who have spent any time on Wikipedia or Reddit itself understand how easily and suddenly an interest trap can appear—and on practically any subject.
These "rabbit holes" have taught people everything there is to know on niche topics like hermit crabs and weird cults, landed them in the middle of streamed funerals, or even brought together long-lost family.
For some, an online rabbit hole is the best place to be. It's therefore no surprise that it ended up the subject of an Ask Reddit post.
"What is the deepest Internet rabbit hole you’ve ever fallen into?" u/Helloo_clarice inquired last week.
Just reading the responses can fill your head with random but fascinating information. Redditors told tales of government conspiracies, meeting survivors of horrifying national tragedies, and whatever the Juggalos are up to. One person even claimed to have tracked down an adoptee's biological family for them.
Human curiosity drives us to try new things and discover the unknown, which has taken us all the way to the moon. While some may consider it a waste of time—and it certainly can be a huge time sink—learning about cephalopods still seems like a more worth activity than scrolling TikTok all day.
If you want to sow your own curiosity, there's some fertile soil in this thread.
1. Unsolved paper boy kidnapping
"There was a paper boy kidnapped a route over from my paper route in the mid-80's I've spent a lot of time reading about him to the point that I've made comments on Reddit and have been contacted by others wanting to interview me about it." —u/rcook55
2. Abandoned book to Irish funeral pipeline
"Found a Twitter post of someone asking for leads on the author of an abandoned book. It related to a town in Ireland, so I tried to find a local news outlet to possibly 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." —u/BroodjePeop
3. Reasons not to climb Mt. Everest
"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." —u/KataiiZeher
4. TV Tropes
"Do not go and read any article—any at all—on TV Tropes. I have spent hours clicking 'Open in new tab' and only stopped because I got hungry." —u/CaroCogitatus
5. Falling into cults
"Once I spent 6 hours researching how people accidentally join cults, and by the end I was like… yeah I get how it happens." —u/StarryDaisyWhisper
6. Finding an adopted person's family
"Idk if it’s the deepest ever but during covid I was bored like everyone else and joined a fb group called 'investigation connection' and someone posted that they were adopted and looking for their siblings."
"In another life id be a PI and covid gave me plenty of time for internet sleuthing. I stayed up all night, but I found a girls entire family. She had tried her entire life to find them. After Covid she got to meet them and tagged me in it." —u/s87g
7. Aliens on Earth
"I spent like 2 weeks just learning about cephalopods. They're freaky little aliens with unsettling super powers." —u/Mortambulist
8. When government conspiracies are real
"Finding the CIA's archives of MKULTRA and related 60s/70s weird shit program documents was probably the deepest I've ever gotten. There's thousands upon thousands of pages of just the craziest sh*t ever, and it's official." —u/Capnmarvel76
9. The Columbine survivor
"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 shooters journal." —u/MirageOfMe
10. People who have never heard of the internet
"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." —u/MidnightTemptation1
11. Those weird license plates
"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." —u/Philthy42
12. Juggalos
"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)." —u/key_knee
13. Loretta Young
"I was hungover and a real old film was on network TV, like golden era black & 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*cking wild."
"All because I was too lazy to reach for my remote and change the channel." —u/RipErRiley
14. Mysterious online puzzles
"Cicada 3301. Someone, or some group, posted a string of highly complex puzzles to scout people with the intelligence to solve them. Really interesting stuff." —u/Spy-p2
15. Famous people in federal prisons
"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." —u/17175RC7
16. 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." —u/ShiraCheshire
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