33 Of The Deepest Rabbit Holes People Ever Found Themselves Delving Into, As Shared Online
Interview
Do you sometimes get so bored that you decide to read something online that leads you to more information that again leads you to yet another sequence of information? And then you remember something that may be interesting to check out and after quite a while, you find yourself somewhere deep inside a rabbit hole. But there is still a lot of research left to do that leads to you just falling deeper and deeper into that hole…
If you ever have found yourself in such a situation, just a little warning - you may end up in the same situation again. One Reddit user recently started a thread asking folks online to share questions or topics that pulled them into the deepest rabbit hole.
More info: Reddit
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Two possibilities exist: either we are alone in the Universe or we are not. Both are equally terrifying.
Arthur C. Clarke.
Is it scarier to know you're alone in the dark, or to know you're not alone?
For a little while, I couldn't stop reading about Action Park, a water/amusement park that was open in New Jersey from the late 70s until the 1996. Basically, the whole place skirted a TON of rules and regulations, and six people died on rides.
There were also literally THOUSANDS of injuries.
The owner would pay employees $100 to test out crazy new rides. They had a slide that went completely upside down. It was um, not safe.
There was a giant human sized hamster wheel they tested by rolling down a hill. It rolled down the hill, broke the fence, and crossed the highway, with someone inside.
I recommend the documentary "Class Action Park" on HBO, or you can just see some crazy rides and old footage on youtube.
Nothing had me in a chokehold like the Bermuda Triangle at 10 years old.
I used to think you go there and you won't come out alive. I thought the Bermuda Triangle was in some obscure part of the world. Turns out there are more treacherous seas out there. And some lakes.
Bored Panda got in touch with the author of this thread and he kindly agreed to share more information about the inspiration and topics that pull him down the rabbit hole.
To begin with, the OP shared that he has been reading about so-called ‘perfect numbers’. To summarize a little bit what it is - an integer that is positive and equal to the sum of its appropriate divisors is called a perfect number. The sum of 1, 2, and 3 equals 6, which is the smallest perfect number. The remaining perfect numbers are 8,128, 28, and 496. The precise date when these numbers were first described is currently considered lost.
Missing persons. People have no idea how hard it is to find someone in the wilderness, especially if they aren't trying to be found. The bodies are there, just never found. Sometimes people stumble upon the remains, but it's usually coincidence.
I stumbled upon a youtube short of an abandoned mine shaft. The person just threw a big rock down the shaft to see how deep it is. I counted 8 seconds. When you're waiting to hear something hit a bottom 8 seconds is a long time. People were commenting, asking how many bodies are down there. Gets you thinking how many deep, unguarded, unchecked places are there in remote locations that could be holding so many unsolved crimes and missing people.
The life of Harry Houdini. I was working on a historical novel idea a couple years ago that wove fictional events into historical 1926 New York City. My main character encountered several notable locations and places, and Houdini, his home, magic, and family played a major role.
There is so much of Houdini’s life that is fascinatingly well-documented. There are also tantalizing unknowns that keep both historians and magic buffs intrigued until today.
Weird facts:
He was the first to pilot an airplane in Australia.
When WW1 broke out, he trained US troops how to escape prisoner shackles if they were captured by the enemy and how not to panic if trapped underwater, such as in a torpedoed ship.
He knew and collaborated with HP Lovecraft who ghost-wrote an adventure story set Egypt in Houdini’s voice. They were collaborating on a book debunking superstitions at the time of Houdini’s death.
His house in Harlem was wired with a secret microphone system permitting him to eavesdrop on visitors and then appear to have mind-reading powers.
He purchased an actual Egyptian mummy what rattled around in his basement, much to his wife’s chagrin.
I could do this all day. Check it out.
"He purchased an actual Egyptian mummy what rattled around in his basement...". 2836 years old, still living in the basement.
He then added that he was curious why scientists have been so obsessed with finding them and whether or not there’s a real benefit or use for perfect numbers.
“It is the deepest rabbit hole I've ever seen,” OP emphasized. “So much time and resources are spent finding them, but now with AI things are changing.”
If cigarettes are such a significant public health concern, are a multi-billion dollar industry, and are over a century old, why can’t we make them less harmful?
Went DEEP into the research. The answer was surprising: we can.
The rabbit hole involves GMOs, a secret research project dubbed “Project X”, catalytic filtering, Central American politics, and the Amish. I now have a file on my computer dedicated to the research papers I dug up on the topic.
If you plan on putting catalytic converters on cigarettes, smokers are going to need bigger pockets.
Christian fundamentalists in the US. Randomly stumbled across the Duggars when I was a teenager, which set off an entire chain reaction that culminated in dozens of hours of watched LDS documentaries, YouTube essays, Reddit deep dives, etc. There is so. much. mess in those communities.
However, after this followed OP’s curiosity about whether there are other people who are also in the same rabbit hole as him and decided to ask the question on Reddit.
However he noted that “It seems not everyone is into math, hehe. No one mentioned ‘perfect numbers.’”
Narcissistic personality disorder and borderline personality disorder. Mental health fascinates me because it provides answers to the abuse I experienced as a child and in relationships as an adult.
This is a very dangerous rabbit hole if you don't understand that nothing is cut and dry in psychology. You can't analyse the outcomes and say, oh, this event is causing this and that event is causing that. It's not hard science and nothing is ever for sure. What a truly professional psychologist does is trying to use a flashlight to shed a bit of light in front of your feet within a dark cavern while trying to help you finding the exit with a lot of well educated guesswork. It costs a lot of trial and error. We have lots of research about what might cause x and y problems, but in reality that doesn't help you with anything related to your trauma when it comes to therapy. That research isn't meant to help those who experienced it, it's meant for prevention. If you have mental illnesses you better stay away from those 'explanations' because therapy is a whole lot different and only losely connected to this research. Going down that rabbit hole can even prevent success in therapy.
The disappearance of MH370 in 2014, as I've flown on Malaysian Airlines several times and a big part of my job is doing root-cause analysis of complex incidents. I work in medicine, not aviation, but the reasons why planes go down has always fascinated me.
The fact Marilyn Monroe’s body disappeared for several hours after her death. Her entire life story was tragic.
and to make matters worse, there was practically a war over who was getting buried "on top" of her, and the man who won this "war", Richard Poncher, who died at the age of 81, was buried FACE DOWN by request, above the 36 year old Marilyn. Please tell me I'm not the only one that finds this disgusting and disturbing?!
Probably most of us have that topic that we can discuss with somebody without stopping or even read article after article.
So what about you guys? What is the topic or question that pulled you into a deep rabbit hole? Share your thoughts in the comments below!
Cults, criminal psychology.
IMO there should be more education regarding cults. It would help some people realize they're in cults (and by that, I also mean non-religious cults like MAGA or QAnon) and also help other people understand that their religious but otherwise 100% normal neighbor isn't a cultist.
In Virginia radar detectors are illegal, so they have radar detector detectors. So I’m wondering if anyone built a radar detector detector detector?
“What was Prussia?” was the question that indirectly made history go from a subject I had a bit of interest in to the subject that I plan to teach for a living, so I guess you could say I’m still going down that rabbit hole years after I asked that question.
Michael Jackson and whatever he did or didn't do. Extremely interesting topic due to the unprecedented amount of smoke and mirrors surrounding a celeb, and probably impossible to determine one way or another. Was never a big fan but went down that rabbit hole one time because of some random reddit comment and it turned into a guilty pleasure hobby for a solid year. I probably could get a PhD in Michael Jackson lore now.
The Stanford Prison Experiment Also, the difference between crows and ravens and whether I can tell them apart after studying them (I still cannot) Edit: I'm getting some great material to fall into rabbit holes for from this thread, thank you.
I read about the Japanese concentration camps being especially horrible on Reddit and that was extremely depressing and f****d up but I couldn't bring myself to stop reading.
An exquisite tunnel to this rabbit hole- how does a people with such extreme sensitivity to beauty - also harbor the potential for this behavior? It wasn't one or two bad Japanese officers - the horrors were common and widespread. But it's cherry blossom time in Japan next week- and the whole country stops for it... how?
Random people from ~100 years ago who pique my interest, and then I'm on Ancestry for the next little while, trying to piece together their life stories.
I do that with my family history, I got a free week on Ancestry once and spent ALL of my free time on it, even stayed up way to late a few times. I did trace my Mclean ancestors all the way back to the 300s though, twas pretty cool. I have a whole folder on my computer about them.
The f*****g titanic....which leads to other shipwrecks.
It's mostly the images of something so alien as the bottom of the ocean.
Quantum physics has recently been proven that once regarded as law of physics isn't the case in the whole universe. There are objects and areas in the universe acting on their own laws of physics. What we also see in those telescopes, with those reflective mirrors that really just give us the information the light, that has travelled thousands to billions of years, tells us is just face value and doesn't tell us anything else. We can use math equations to fill in the blanks all we want. The only thing that will do is show how smart the mathematicians and Astrophysicists are compared to the average human on Earth, about Earth and maybe our own solar system. We have very little idea what is actually going on elsewhere in the Universe. But we got some pretty cool photos, sound waves and short, fuzzy time-lapse videos, and some really impressive graphically designed artist interpretations.
Central banking. It's just financial aid for the 1%.
I once went down the rabbit hole of finance and the stock market. That's even worse. What started as a sensible attempt to provide coverage for the relatives of sailors, especially on whale travellers and provide them an outcome in case something happened to the fathers and a way for employees to get a pension ended up as a huge scheme for rich people sucking money directly out of circulation and companies for absolute no service or contribution to the company. And the term 'investment' is intentionally misleading to make people think those rich money sacks are regularly 'investing' into the companies that have once upon a time sold stocks, while all they really 'invest' into is their own stock portfolio. But people think all investments are loan investments, while nothing could be further from the truth.
Gastrointestinal Distress. The stomach, intestines, and digestive process is actually very intricate and interesting to learn about. Also taught proper ways to relieve bloating and stomach issues.
Take this seriously. I almost died from improperly diagnosed gastrointestinal trauma. Always get a second or third opinion!!!!! Was saved by a nurse practitioner after doctors screwed up my system and removed my perfectly functioning gall bladder. American medicine can be frightening.
Have I ever played any of the Five Nights at Freddy's games? No. Do I have any desire to play any of the Five Nights at Freddy's games? No. Did I watch hours and hours of Five Nights at Freddy's lore and lore prediction videos on YouTube? Yes. Yes, I did.
MattPat is amazing for this. Going to miss him. I think the best video is the first one talking about the 1993 Aurora, Colorado shooting and the link with FNAF.
The Bootes Void. Space is fascinating and terrifying.
You know what's kinda weird? When they took the photos on the moon the stars don't appear. This is because of the reflectiveness of the lunar surface, it they increased the exposure to include the stars then there would be too much light from the lunar surface to see anything.
Current rabbit hole? Ryan Gosling...
Saw a post on here with his performance at the Oscars, went to Google, then discovered he was part of the original Mickey Mouse Club kids. Then took to YouTube to find video clips of MMC and then rediscovered the fact that he was initially invited to try out for The Backstreet Boys.
The McDonalds McFlurry conspiracy.
Elan school. Thanks, Reddit, for the nightmares.
The entire troubled teen industry is one heck of a rabbit hole.
A few years ago I was curious to know what "sonichu" was all about. That's about as deep as a rabbit hole can get and it still gets deeper.
I discovered "Andara crystals" by accident once and that led to going down a strange reality of Lemuria and Starseeds and Orgonite pyramids that can block 5g radiation. I highly recommend you search Etsy for some of this weird metaphysical stuff if you're ever bored lol.
I genuinely find it fascinating stuff even if I personally think it's a load of b******t.
Where is Kate Middleton? Why is the royal family fumbling the PR bag so bad?!
My rabbit hole is what happ to amelia earhart? Was she a spy? Did her plane really crash, was she take prisoner, did she die of old age somewhere having lived out her life as someone else....
They believe her plane has been found. https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-01-31/deep-sea-vision-team-claims-amelia-earhart-plane-found/103407718 We'll have to wait and see if it's true, but sounds plausible.
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My rabbit hole is what happ to amelia earhart? Was she a spy? Did her plane really crash, was she take prisoner, did she die of old age somewhere having lived out her life as someone else....
They believe her plane has been found. https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-01-31/deep-sea-vision-team-claims-amelia-earhart-plane-found/103407718 We'll have to wait and see if it's true, but sounds plausible.
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