Weird Internet Search Tangents

[eselle28]

I can't be the only one who reads something online, googles it, and then finds themselves an hour later reading about something mostly unrelated and entirely bizarre? At least I hope I'm not. If I am, pretend along with me to help me preserve my illusion of sanity.

My most recent one started with reading about spiders, was sparked by seeing a picture of a kitten 'shopped to have eight legs, and ended up with reading about Frank and Louie, the Janus cat.



Anyone else been on an interesting tangent lately?

[Werel]

I recently spent a few hours down the rabbit hole of Basenji breeders who travel to central Africa to get new breeding stock for their Basenji lines. Apparently the ones available in the US aren't "pure" enough? They go up and down the Congo river in canoes, looking for puppies in the villages they pass, offering the owners like $2 for the ones that conform most closely to breed standard.

Purebred dog people are weird.

[waxingjaney]

I can't be the only one who reads something online, googles it, and then finds themselves an hour later reading about something mostly unrelated and entirely bizarre?

I've been doing that for about 20 years now (well, not the google part).

[Hirundo Bos]

Well, I went from this thread to reading about Janus cats, if that counts... apart from that, tangent-chasing is my standard MO at TVtropes these days... haven't been there much before, and now that I am, it seems the best way to start to get familiar with things.

[Guest]

I do that alllll the time, mostly with Wikipedia. It got terrible back in high school, I had been doing research on the Adobe company and outta nowhere I'm reading about cold-fusion.

EDIT: Here's a fun game, every wikipedia page more or less leads back to the entry on "philosophy" if you click the first or second link. So the game is, click on the "Random Article" link and click on the first or second link of said article and every subsequent article. Whoever reaches "philosophy" first, wins. It works really well if you're a Wikipedia nut like me.

[Caffeinated]

Can't remember what I originally was looking up, but ended up reading all about William Howard Taft (only person to be both President of the United States and Chief Justice of the Supreme Court).

[sky]

I actually originally found DNL by clicking interesting links leading away from a blog I was reading. If I remember right, it was humor blog>feminist webcomic>Hawkeye Initiative>some other blog>DNL.

Here's a fun game, every wikipedia page more or less leads back to the entry on "philosophy" if you click the first or second link. So the game is, click on the "Random Article" link and click on the first or second link of said article and every subsequent article. Whoever reaches "philosophy" first, wins.

Oh, I didn't realize they all eventually linked back to philosophy, that's neat! I've played a different variation of the wikipedia race where you just pick two random things and then click links from the starting page until you get to the destination and see who can reach it first. The trick is to skim all the pages looking for links that will lead you in the right direction, but not get sucked into really reading all the cool pages you land on or you'll lose the race. Incidentally, it helps to make sure the chosen pages exist before you start. We tried to have a race from Darth Vader to spelunking with a waypoint at broccoli, but when I got to a page on caving and the word spelunking was not a link we had to pause the race and change the destination.

[reboot]

I have gone down some weird rabbit holes. Most recent was refugee camps to modern suggestions for construction to innovations in latrines to history of latrines to words for latrines to the Khmer language to the history of Cambodia to fish sauce to dragon fruit

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