Internet Roadtrip
 | The topic of this article may not meet Wikipedia's general notability guideline. (May 2025) |
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| Created by | Neal Agarwal |
|---|---|
| URL | neal |
| Launched | May 6, 2025 |
| Current status | Active |
Internet Roadtrip is a social experiment where players collectively navigate a virtual car by voting on which direction to go in, or to either honk or change the radio. The concept was developed by Neal Agarwal and launched on May 6, 2025, on his website, neal.fun.
Overview
[edit]Inspired by Twitch Plays Pokémon and r/place, the experiment features a virtual car navigating the world via Google Street View, where people participate by voting for the next direction to go in every 10 seconds, but can also instead vote to either honk the horn by interacting with the steering wheel, or seek to switch stations on the built-in radio, which are grabbed from internet streams around the current location. The vehicle travels at approximately 3mph. Where the car is driven is actively tracked and marked with a red line on a mini-map present in the bottom left corner.[1][2][3]
The experiment began on May 6, 2025, beginning in Boston, Massachusetts. With the introduction of the experiment's Discord server a while later, with one of its channels being relayed on the website, participants began communicating with others on where to go, with general consensus being to navigate into Canada through the border. Due to the limitations of Google Street View coverage, players are restricted to a section of North America, with Alaska and a few other regions out of range due to gaps in the coverage, heavily limiting players' options.[4][5] Edwin Evans-Thirlwell of Rock Paper Shotgun commented on debates that occurred within the community, believing that the chat may "become a trash fire at some stage."[3]
The experiment notably caught the attention of both student-run radio stations WMUA in Amherst, Massachusetts, and WBOR in Brunswick, Maine, as participants passed through their respective coverage areas. One of the players called into WMUA to share the project with the DJs, with one of them commenting, "this is so cool".[1] WBOR shouted out and partook in the experiment by allowing participants to curate songs.[2][6] The radio manager, Mason Daugherty, reported the station's digital viewership had increased by 100 times, prompting tweaks to increase the servers' capacity.[7]
References
[edit]- ^ a b Gault, Matthew (May 12, 2025). "900 People Are Collectively Driving an 'Internet Roadtrip' on Google Street View". 404 Media. Retrieved May 16, 2025.
- ^ a b Phillips, Tom (May 15, 2025). "Internet Roadtrip is Twitch Plays Pokémon meets Google Maps, from the creator of Infinite Craft". Eurogamer. Retrieved May 16, 2025.
- ^ a b Evans-Thirlwell, Edwin (May 15, 2025). "Get in the car, loser, we're going on an Internet Roadtrip with a thousand backseat drivers". Rock Paper Shotgun. Retrieved May 16, 2025.
- ^ Corrigan, Hope (May 14, 2025). "Grab 900 of your closest internet strangers and hit the road, online". PC Gamer. Retrieved May 16, 2025.
- ^ Silberling, Amanda (May 16, 2025). "Thousands of people have embarked on a virtual road trip via Google Street View". TechCrunch. Retrieved May 17, 2025.
- ^ Carpenter, Nicole (May 15, 2025). "I'm Actually Getting Car Sick on The Internet Road Trip". Aftermath. Retrieved May 17, 2025.
- ^ Ryan, Aidan (May 25, 2025). "How an imaginary roadtrip through Maine drove real traffic to Bowdoin's student radio station". The Boston Globe. Retrieved May 25, 2025.