47 People Reveal The Strangest Corners Of The Internet They’ve Ever Discovered: “It Got Very Dark Very Quickly”

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. Pretty cool.

A young woman on Reddit said she was going to off herself. Using her post history I figured out where she lived, where she worked, called and spoke to someone who knew her IRL, they gave me the name of her boyfriend. Found his number. Turns out that he had broken up with her but still cared so he went over and stopped her. I was up all night.

This was all under a different username from the one I currently use.

I have adhd. There's no rabbit hole I haven't fallen into, and I remember none of them.

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.

Opened YouTube to check one recipe. Four hours later, I’m watching a guy build a pool in the jungle with a stick.

Remote/untouched tribes.

MidnightTemptation1:

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.

I’m a bone marrow transplant nurse at a cancer center at an east coast ( US) university hospital. Over the last 8 years I have saved the zip codes of almost every patient I have taken care of and cross referenced those locations with potential environmental pollutants they may have been exposed to and when possible the businesses in those locations that introduce those pollutants into the environment.

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 spent like 2 weeks just learning about cephalopods. They're freaky little aliens with unsettling super powers.

I have one for this.

I had some expired Triscuit crackers. I wanted to know if I could still eat them with some (non-expired) dip. So I typed it into Google.

And one of the top hits is this ShopSavvy site, that's all AI generated.

But the other hits are similar. Bargain Boxed. Discover Real Food in Texas. They're all AI-generated blogspam, all built on a very similar template, and all of them are populated with links to other AI-generated sites like this.

I scraped through a bunch of the links, and found that there are more than a dozen different domains in this ring, all linking to each other to game the search results and get top SEO.

...but I can't figure out why! They aren't running ads, and don't have affiliate links.

Sourdough Symphony.

Trivial Bites.

My Kitchen Hacks.

Ingredient Savvy.

Grain Free Goodness.

All of them using AI generated text and images. All of them linking to each other.

Eventually, I dug into the owners and figured out that they're linked to a company called Ashfount Investments. But that site is also all AI generated! All the members are stock photos, it's all fake, all the way down.

All of this to tell me if my Triscuits go bad, seemingly.

If anyone has the slightest idea what the purpose behind these sites is, please let me know.

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.

Fun facts about the human body. My favorite one is that on average, each ejaculation contains about 15 terabytes of information. Also that you can always see your nose, your brain just "edits" it out of your vision.

Honestly, Wikipedia.

Back when I was young I'd just keep on clicking in-line links of random topics.

Before you knew it, what started as a nice evening was 3 am and you were like wth.

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.

The history of Rosicrucianism. It’s fascinating.

Basically, some fellow wrote a couple of books in the early 17th century of what we today would call utopian science fiction. It purported to be manifestos describing a secret society of enlightened masters working secretly to create an esoteric science for the betterment of humanity.

Needless to say, this was completely invented by the writer … but it found a ready audience of people who very much wanted to believe it was true, and an endless stream of charlatans claiming to *be* those esoteric masters.

Eventually, the authorities in various places became alarmed (the authorities never like the notion of secret societies expressly working on social change, particularly in an era of religious upheaval, and the manifestos were larded with religious and cabalistic ideas), and they started to crack down on these “Rosicrucians” - which just had the effect of *convincing* the public that the “esoteric masters” actually existed.

Perhaps the most bizarre and influential outcome: the so-called “invisible college” of thinkers and scientists in England was inspired by this - which eventually morphed into the Royal Society, with luminaries like Sir Issac Newton at the helm.

In other words, in some ways simply wishing something to exist actually made something like it exist in reality, as the Royal College had tremendous influence on the actual and not imaginary history of science. It is amazing how much the early participants were into religious mysticism, alchemy and the like, as well as what we would now call science (Newton in particular). Indeed, originally there was little to differentiate a “natural philosopher” from a good old-fashioned alchemist or magician, or “esoteric master”, and it is interesting how that separation came to exist - something ongoing in this era: namely that science, as it came to be known eventually, was based on a methodology that emphasized communication of information and repeatable results, rather than hidden or esoteric knowledge (and as a consequence proved to be more useful).

The notion of Rosicrucianism also of course gave birth to numerous societies bearing that name, all claiming descent from the original manifestos and leaning more on the esoteric and mystic side.

Perhaps the original manifestos are truly among the most influential secular works of fiction ever.

Who really were the mysterious Sea Peoples blamed for the late Bronze Age Collapse in the Mediterranean area?

Once I spent 6 hours researching how people accidentally join cults, and by the end I was like… yeah I get how it happens.

Probably the Elisa Lam case. So many details, so many things that seem borderline impossible. That initial elevator video is just so compelling. Sadly after all the research im pretty convinced the answer is that she simply had a mental break and took her own life.

Chernobyl on a number of occasions. Such a fascinating event to study in so many ways.

Bee keeper pulling hive out of peoples walls. 
When I had Covid I was watching this dude on YouTube and next thing I know it’s 9hrs later. Very interesting stuff.

ProfMcGonaGirl:

Texas Bee Works - she’s so cool to watch!