Internet rabbit holes worth falling into
A rabbit hole is not the same as a time sink. A feed takes an hour and leaves nothing; a rabbit hole takes an hour and leaves you knowing something specific and strange.
These all have the same property: the first page is interesting, and the second page is more interesting, and there is no obvious floor.
- 1
Wayback Machinearchive.org
The Wayback Machine. Every version of every site, going back decades. There is no bottom to this one at all.
Open it here → - 2
Nicky Casencase.me
Explorable explanations. Each takes ten minutes and each one links to three more you now want to read.
Open it here → - 3
OCEARCH Shark Trackerocearch.org
Follow one tagged shark across an ocean, then notice there are hundreds.
Open it here → - 4
29a.ch Apps29a.ch
A collection of web experiments where every item raises a question about how it was built.
Open it here → - 5
Babadumbabadum.com
Start with one language, look up an hour later having half-learned two.
Open it here → - 6
Geo Kittengeokitten.com
A geography quiz that turns into actually learning geography, against your intentions.
Open it here → - 7
More or Less YouTubersmoreorless.io
Two channels, guess which is bigger. Deceptively hard to stop.
Open it here → - 8
Zoom Quilt 2zoomquilt2.com
An infinite zoom, which is the visual form of the same idea.
Open it here →
The button is itself a rabbit hole, which is the whole reason it exists — it remembers where you have been and never sends you back to the same place twice.
Questions
What is an internet rabbit hole?
A chain of links where each page leads somewhere more interesting than the last, usually into a subject you had no intention of learning about. The distinguishing feature against ordinary browsing is that you finish knowing something specific.
Every site above was loaded in a real browser and verified working before this was published. See the full catalogue.