Sometimes it feels like you’ve reached the end of the internet. You’ve refreshed Twitter 10 times and have returned to Gmail with nothing new to see, and the four news sites you circulate among might as well be static images. (Except for your favorite site, The Ringer dot com!!) It might feel like you’ve crossed into a web wasteland of nothing — but you are wrong. In every site, app, and platform, there are a few hidden to hidden-ish gems perfect for the web equivalent of a rainy day. Here is The Ringer’s guide for the bored internet user.
Search Public Amazon Wish Lists
Thought Amazon Wish Lists were just a way to bookmark things you wanted to buy but weren’t totally committed to yet? Wrong. They are very easy to search — all you need is a first and last name, or an email address — so you should make sure your list is legit full of stuff you want other people to buy for you. After perfecting your list, start searching: Look for the lists from coworkers, parents, exes, enemies, random Twitter friends. Search famous names! Kanye West has a few lists, as do Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump, which certainly appear to be fake. (Though some of theirs are full of sex toys and lingerie, which feels like an oddly specific and hard-to-notice troll, but to each their own!)
Search All of Craigslist
You know what’s full of oddities? Craigslist. You know what’s full of endless oddities? All of Craigslist! Instead of rifling through the Craigslist posts of your local area, you can use www.searchcraigslist.org to sift through the entire thing.
What’s Ban Ki-moon Doing Today?
If you’ve ever wondered what United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon is doing, you are in luck. His daily schedule is updated here.
Stop Watching TV; Fix Your Mind
When you reach the end of the internet, maybe you go on a Netflix binge. Don’t give in. Unplug the TV is an endless archive of educational and smart videos — like this lesson on how to spot fake foods — that will make you a bit wiser (and maybe a bit insufferable, but lean into it).
Read the Arguments on CelebHeights.com
Google’s search bars have made finding a celebrity’s height incredibly simple. But did you know that claiming Tom Cruise is 5-foot-7 is actually a pretty controversial statement? Check out CelebHeights.com to rubberneck at intense arguments over stars’ alleged sizes, usually including the phrase “I stood right next to him once” and much projection of personal insecurities onto the rich and famous.
Recommend Tinder Matches to Your Friends
At some point, in an effort to stretch its tentacles as far as possible, Tinder added an option to share matches with a friend. Scroll down to the bottom of a person’s profile, tap the “Recommend” button, and look for prepared text — “I found a guy for you. Get on Tinder and let me know what you think :)” — to populate in an iMessage window. All you have to do is type in a friend’s name and hit send. There is no possible way this feature has ever been used earnestly. It exists solely to troll your friends with the gnarliest potential suitors — the “founders” of sex collectives, shady photo croppers, and surprising number of men who pose with tigers — and is therefore wildly entertaining. Bonus: It temporarily distracts you from the soul-crushing loneliness of searching for a romantic partner via smartphone.
Find Legal Advice on Reddit
Consider this prep: Should you ever find yourself in legal trouble, r/legaladvice can either get you out of it or help you understand it. And if you simply want to be entertained, enjoy the countless landlord disputes that you can most likely sympathize with. You will also be prepared for any warranty-related dramas that should ever come your way.
Shop NYC’s Ongoing Auction
Your crippling online shopping addiction doesn’t have to end at Amazon. New York City has a rolling, never-ending auction of incredibly random items for you to peruse. Where else will you find a fireboat for the low, low price of $10,000?
Send Emails to the Future
One of the most delightful trolls is to set up a system whereby you can either virtually haunt your friends and family after you’ve lost touch or even (warning! Morbid!) died. You can use an app like Futr to send texts, or really indulge your inner creep with Incubate, which lets you set up and schedule voicemails and videos as well. If you are super lazy, you can just use this Gmail scheduling app. This way, you can low-key remind long-lost acquaintances of your existence, send messages from the past to remind someone of something crappy they did years in the future, or (warning again!) live on forever as an internet-kept ghost who pings your loved ones — provided they survive you (that’s the catch).
Get Really Into Yelp Talk — Like TOO Into Yelp Talk
Yelp is weird, but Yelp Talk makes the site look like a normal old recommendation platform. Yelp Talk essentially functions like a mindless, roving blogging platform, wherein the most active users write novel-length posts about restaurants. Actually, restaurants would make sense. Instead, the subject matter ranges wildly, and it’s mostly populated by the Yelp Elite. It’s like if Craigslist had a sidebar for blogging. It’s like Tumblr, if Tumblr weren’t tragically hip.
Read (or Reread) Time Cube
If you ever feel like you’ve read all the takes, processed all the ideas, and seen all the angles, just go read Time Cube again. Published in 1997, Time Cube is a fossil from the age of the truly fucking insane internet, when people had EarthLink addresses, there was no graphic design or user friendliness, and madmen prophets like Gene Ray put out very racist, sexist, extremely lit, totally anti-intellectual, batshit manifestos about EVERRRRRRYTHING, covering time, space, and the evil powers of Greenwich time, with lines like: “TEACHERS ARE EVIL LIARS — THE ONEness OF GOD IS STILLness DEATH.” They don’t make ’em like this anymore.
Drunk-Shop Without the Work
The hardest part about shopping drunk online is that you have to put effort into trawling through Amazon. Uuuuggghhhh! But did you know that, with your wine-free hand, you can use the Drunk Shopping app, which will (a) chat with you, you lonely wino, and (b) bring you links to Amazon items you would otherwise never, ever buy?
Scare Yourself With “Ted the Caver”
Creepy Pasta is one of the best parts of the web, home to scary stories that have become internet-age folklore. One of the most involved and goose-bump-inducing entries is “Ted the Caver.” The story appears online as an Angelfire-hosted blog, and tells the very, very long tale of Ted, who returns again and again to a cave, where something treacherous that keeps beckoning him back is hiding inside. By the end, you will start to wonder if Ted is real and if instead of labeling this tale a hoax you should go help him. You definitely should.
