‘The key to Google Maps’ power is its volunteer workforce of obsessive “local guides”.’Composite: Getty ImagesView image in fullscreen‘The key to Google Maps’ power is its volunteer workforce of obsessive “local guides”.’Composite: Getty ImagesInternet wormholeGoogle MapsLooking for the last human place on the internet? Try Google MapsThe navigation app might be built for function – but dig deeper and you’ll find a trove of inside jokes, neighbourhood quirks and charming errorsRead more in theInternet wormholeseriesAlan VaarwerkSun 20 Apr 2025 17.00 CESTLast modified on Mon 21 Apr 2025 02.54 CESTShareThere is a certain kind of guy who looks atGoogle Mapsfor fun. I am that guy. As a kid I went through a cartography phase, drawing elaborate maps of fictional islands and poring over the family street directory in an effort to reconcile the lines and dots on the overcrowded pages with the streets, shops and friends’ houses in my mind’s eye. You could say that phase never really ended.Which celebrities are lying about their height? This website’s done the researchRead moreIn much the same way as some people will pull up a movie’s IMDb entry the second they start watching, any time I come across an interesting town, country or geographical oddity (which is often in the news business), I’m firing up Maps to see what topographical morsels I can uncover. I’m noGeoGuessrsavant, but I’ve spent many pleasant hours puzzling over interesting enclaves and panhandles, or pootling around far-flung locales in Street View. After finishing a recent episode of Severance I opened a tab and took an armchair tour through the remote Newfoundland island where it was shot.I’m not exactly uncovering some mysterious corner of the internet here. Google Maps is so ubiquitous it’s become a utility – admitting I open it for fun feels like extolling the virtues of the Calendar app, or calling up Centrelinkjust to enjoy the hold music. There are plenty of other perfectly decent navigation apps out there – but Google Maps’ special sauce is its mountain of user-generated data.The key to Google Maps’ power is its volunteer workforce of obsessive “local guides”. Clicking on these profiles feels vaguely illicit, like you’re tracking them for Asio. These are the users who log their every move, amassing hundreds of reviews of everything from restaurants to payphones, detailing opening hours, accessibility features and taking some of the worst food photography you’ve ever seen. I do not understand these people and their currency of points and badges, but I am grateful for them. There is a man who has reviewed every public postbox in Ballarat and had opinions about them all. My nearest bus stop has a 3.3-star rating and a single review: “It’s just a bus stop.” OK!View image in fullscreenFlumpy: a neighbourhood cat on Google Maps with an (almost) perfect rating.Photograph: Google MapsSome Google Maps discoveries feel like stumbling into someone else’s private joke. Not far from my girlfriend’s house, an unremarkable piece of tarmac has been dubbed“Tristan’s Roundabout”– its reviews tab populated with tourist selfies and comically overblown praise for the intersection and the eponymous Tristan, who responds to each reviewer in equally effusive terms.View image in fullscreenOn Google Maps, a listing for this roundabout is ‘populated with tourist selfies and comically overblown praise’.Photograph: Google MapsIn the surrounding streets you can find reviewers waxing lyrical over such local sights as ahole in the groundorabandoned trailer, and writing glowing tributes to afriendly orange catnamedFlumpy. Passing these waypoints as I move around the neighbourhood feels like a digital scavenger hunt – an act of noticing and recording the small quirks of suburban life.Why are ‘friendly neighbourhood cats’ appearing on Google Maps all of a sudden?Read moreThis is where the real joy of Google Maps lies: in the moments when you get to see humans being playful with the otherwise prosaic tools at their disposal. It’s in the social media bots showcasingrandom restaurantsandnew towns every hour, pegged to Google Maps data. It’s in people using Street View tostave off homesicknessorhold on to those they’ve lost, or using Google’s all-but-abandoned My Maps tool to share lists ofpublicly accessible fruit trees. It’s the instances where some kind of bug or human error leads to anIndonesian supermarket appearing in Antarctica– a reminder that these tools can be messy and imperfect, just like us.Allow content provided by a third party?This article includes content hosted on embed.bsky.app. We ask for your permission before anything is loaded, as the provider may be using cookies and other technologies. To view this content,click ‘Allow and continue’.Allow and continueMaps are loaded with political and imperialist symbolism, and Google is arguably more responsible for the dire state of the internet than most. I’m sure the product managers are, at this moment, brainstorming ways to shoehorn ever more AI slop into our maps. But for now, when the internet feels like a constant stream of noise, it’s nice to unwind by going for a leisurely scroll around the neighbourhood.Explore more on these topicsGoogle MapsInternet wormholeInternetMapsfeaturesShareReuse this content
‘The key to Google Maps’ power is its volunteer workforce of obsessive “local guides”.’Composite: Getty ImagesView image in fullscreen‘The key to Google Maps’ power is its volunteer workforce of obsessive “local guides”.’Composite: Getty ImagesInternet wormholeGoogle MapsLooking for the last human place on the internet? Try Google MapsThe navigation app might be built for function – but dig deeper and you’ll find a trove of inside jokes, neighbourhood quirks and charming errorsRead more in theInternet wormholeseriesAlan VaarwerkSun 20 Apr 2025 17.00 CESTLast modified on Mon 21 Apr 2025 02.54 CESTShareThere is a certain kind of guy who looks atGoogle Mapsfor fun. I am that guy. As a kid I went through a cartography phase, drawing elaborate maps of fictional islands and poring over the family street directory in an effort to reconcile the lines and dots on the overcrowded pages with the streets, shops and friends’ houses in my mind’s eye. You could say that phase never really ended.Which celebrities are lying about their height? This website’s done the researchRead moreIn much the same way as some people will pull up a movie’s IMDb entry the second they start watching, any time I come across an interesting town, country or geographical oddity (which is often in the news business), I’m firing up Maps to see what topographical morsels I can uncover. I’m noGeoGuessrsavant, but I’ve spent many pleasant hours puzzling over interesting enclaves and panhandles, or pootling around far-flung locales in Street View. After finishing a recent episode of Severance I opened a tab and took an armchair tour through the remote Newfoundland island where it was shot.I’m not exactly uncovering some mysterious corner of the internet here. Google Maps is so ubiquitous it’s become a utility – admitting I open it for fun feels like extolling the virtues of the Calendar app, or calling up Centrelinkjust to enjoy the hold music. There are plenty of other perfectly decent navigation apps out there – but Google Maps’ special sauce is its mountain of user-generated data.The key to Google Maps’ power is its volunteer workforce of obsessive “local guides”. Clicking on these profiles feels vaguely illicit, like you’re tracking them for Asio. These are the users who log their every move, amassing hundreds of reviews of everything from restaurants to payphones, detailing opening hours, accessibility features and taking some of the worst food photography you’ve ever seen. I do not understand these people and their currency of points and badges, but I am grateful for them. There is a man who has reviewed every public postbox in Ballarat and had opinions about them all. My nearest bus stop has a 3.3-star rating and a single review: “It’s just a bus stop.” OK!View image in fullscreenFlumpy: a neighbourhood cat on Google Maps with an (almost) perfect rating.Photograph: Google MapsSome Google Maps discoveries feel like stumbling into someone else’s private joke. Not far from my girlfriend’s house, an unremarkable piece of tarmac has been dubbed“Tristan’s Roundabout”– its reviews tab populated with tourist selfies and comically overblown praise for the intersection and the eponymous Tristan, who responds to each reviewer in equally effusive terms.View image in fullscreenOn Google Maps, a listing for this roundabout is ‘populated with tourist selfies and comically overblown praise’.Photograph: Google MapsIn the surrounding streets you can find reviewers waxing lyrical over such local sights as ahole in the groundorabandoned trailer, and writing glowing tributes to afriendly orange catnamedFlumpy. Passing these waypoints as I move around the neighbourhood feels like a digital scavenger hunt – an act of noticing and recording the small quirks of suburban life.Why are ‘friendly neighbourhood cats’ appearing on Google Maps all of a sudden?Read moreThis is where the real joy of Google Maps lies: in the moments when you get to see humans being playful with the otherwise prosaic tools at their disposal. It’s in the social media bots showcasingrandom restaurantsandnew towns every hour, pegged to Google Maps data. It’s in people using Street View tostave off homesicknessorhold on to those they’ve lost, or using Google’s all-but-abandoned My Maps tool to share lists ofpublicly accessible fruit trees. It’s the instances where some kind of bug or human error leads to anIndonesian supermarket appearing in Antarctica– a reminder that these tools can be messy and imperfect, just like us.Allow content provided by a third party?This article includes content hosted on embed.bsky.app. We ask for your permission before anything is loaded, as the provider may be using cookies and other technologies. To view this content,click ‘Allow and continue’.Allow and continueMaps are loaded with political and imperialist symbolism, and Google is arguably more responsible for the dire state of the internet than most. I’m sure the product managers are, at this moment, brainstorming ways to shoehorn ever more AI slop into our maps. But for now, when the internet feels like a constant stream of noise, it’s nice to unwind by going for a leisurely scroll around the neighbourhood.Explore more on these topicsGoogle MapsInternet wormholeInternetMapsfeaturesShareReuse this content
‘The key to Google Maps’ power is its volunteer workforce of obsessive “local guides”.’Composite: Getty ImagesView image in fullscreen‘The key to Google Maps’ power is its volunteer workforce of obsessive “local guides”.’Composite: Getty Images
‘The key to Google Maps’ power is its volunteer workforce of obsessive “local guides”.’Composite: Getty ImagesView image in fullscreen‘The key to Google Maps’ power is its volunteer workforce of obsessive “local guides”.’Composite: Getty Images
‘The key to Google Maps’ power is its volunteer workforce of obsessive “local guides”.’Composite: Getty ImagesView image in fullscreen‘The key to Google Maps’ power is its volunteer workforce of obsessive “local guides”.’Composite: Getty Images
‘The key to Google Maps’ power is its volunteer workforce of obsessive “local guides”.’Composite: Getty ImagesView image in fullscreen
‘The key to Google Maps’ power is its volunteer workforce of obsessive “local guides”.’Composite: Getty Images
‘The key to Google Maps’ power is its volunteer workforce of obsessive “local guides”.’Composite: Getty Images
‘The key to Google Maps’ power is its volunteer workforce of obsessive “local guides”.’Composite: Getty Images
Internet wormholeGoogle Maps
Internet wormholeGoogle Maps
Internet wormholeGoogle Maps
Looking for the last human place on the internet? Try Google Maps
Looking for the last human place on the internet? Try Google Maps
Looking for the last human place on the internet? Try Google Maps
The navigation app might be built for function – but dig deeper and you’ll find a trove of inside jokes, neighbourhood quirks and charming errorsRead more in theInternet wormholeseries
The navigation app might be built for function – but dig deeper and you’ll find a trove of inside jokes, neighbourhood quirks and charming errorsRead more in theInternet wormholeseries
The navigation app might be built for function – but dig deeper and you’ll find a trove of inside jokes, neighbourhood quirks and charming errors
Read more in theInternet wormholeseries
Alan VaarwerkSun 20 Apr 2025 17.00 CESTLast modified on Mon 21 Apr 2025 02.54 CESTShare
Alan VaarwerkSun 20 Apr 2025 17.00 CESTLast modified on Mon 21 Apr 2025 02.54 CESTShare
Alan VaarwerkSun 20 Apr 2025 17.00 CESTLast modified on Mon 21 Apr 2025 02.54 CESTShare
Alan VaarwerkSun 20 Apr 2025 17.00 CESTLast modified on Mon 21 Apr 2025 02.54 CEST
Alan VaarwerkSun 20 Apr 2025 17.00 CESTLast modified on Mon 21 Apr 2025 02.54 CEST
Alan Vaarwerk
Share
Share
There is a certain kind of guy who looks atGoogle Mapsfor fun. I am that guy. As a kid I went through a cartography phase, drawing elaborate maps of fictional islands and poring over the family street directory in an effort to reconcile the lines and dots on the overcrowded pages with the streets, shops and friends’ houses in my mind’s eye. You could say that phase never really ended.Which celebrities are lying about their height? This website’s done the researchRead moreIn much the same way as some people will pull up a movie’s IMDb entry the second they start watching, any time I come across an interesting town, country or geographical oddity (which is often in the news business), I’m firing up Maps to see what topographical morsels I can uncover. I’m noGeoGuessrsavant, but I’ve spent many pleasant hours puzzling over interesting enclaves and panhandles, or pootling around far-flung locales in Street View. After finishing a recent episode of Severance I opened a tab and took an armchair tour through the remote Newfoundland island where it was shot.I’m not exactly uncovering some mysterious corner of the internet here. Google Maps is so ubiquitous it’s become a utility – admitting I open it for fun feels like extolling the virtues of the Calendar app, or calling up Centrelinkjust to enjoy the hold music. There are plenty of other perfectly decent navigation apps out there – but Google Maps’ special sauce is its mountain of user-generated data.The key to Google Maps’ power is its volunteer workforce of obsessive “local guides”. Clicking on these profiles feels vaguely illicit, like you’re tracking them for Asio. These are the users who log their every move, amassing hundreds of reviews of everything from restaurants to payphones, detailing opening hours, accessibility features and taking some of the worst food photography you’ve ever seen. I do not understand these people and their currency of points and badges, but I am grateful for them. There is a man who has reviewed every public postbox in Ballarat and had opinions about them all. My nearest bus stop has a 3.3-star rating and a single review: “It’s just a bus stop.” OK!View image in fullscreenFlumpy: a neighbourhood cat on Google Maps with an (almost) perfect rating.Photograph: Google MapsSome Google Maps discoveries feel like stumbling into someone else’s private joke. Not far from my girlfriend’s house, an unremarkable piece of tarmac has been dubbed“Tristan’s Roundabout”– its reviews tab populated with tourist selfies and comically overblown praise for the intersection and the eponymous Tristan, who responds to each reviewer in equally effusive terms.View image in fullscreenOn Google Maps, a listing for this roundabout is ‘populated with tourist selfies and comically overblown praise’.Photograph: Google MapsIn the surrounding streets you can find reviewers waxing lyrical over such local sights as ahole in the groundorabandoned trailer, and writing glowing tributes to afriendly orange catnamedFlumpy. Passing these waypoints as I move around the neighbourhood feels like a digital scavenger hunt – an act of noticing and recording the small quirks of suburban life.Why are ‘friendly neighbourhood cats’ appearing on Google Maps all of a sudden?Read moreThis is where the real joy of Google Maps lies: in the moments when you get to see humans being playful with the otherwise prosaic tools at their disposal. It’s in the social media bots showcasingrandom restaurantsandnew towns every hour, pegged to Google Maps data. It’s in people using Street View tostave off homesicknessorhold on to those they’ve lost, or using Google’s all-but-abandoned My Maps tool to share lists ofpublicly accessible fruit trees. It’s the instances where some kind of bug or human error leads to anIndonesian supermarket appearing in Antarctica– a reminder that these tools can be messy and imperfect, just like us.Allow content provided by a third party?This article includes content hosted on embed.bsky.app. We ask for your permission before anything is loaded, as the provider may be using cookies and other technologies. To view this content,click ‘Allow and continue’.Allow and continueMaps are loaded with political and imperialist symbolism, and Google is arguably more responsible for the dire state of the internet than most. I’m sure the product managers are, at this moment, brainstorming ways to shoehorn ever more AI slop into our maps. But for now, when the internet feels like a constant stream of noise, it’s nice to unwind by going for a leisurely scroll around the neighbourhood.Explore more on these topicsGoogle MapsInternet wormholeInternetMapsfeaturesShareReuse this content
There is a certain kind of guy who looks atGoogle Mapsfor fun. I am that guy. As a kid I went through a cartography phase, drawing elaborate maps of fictional islands and poring over the family street directory in an effort to reconcile the lines and dots on the overcrowded pages with the streets, shops and friends’ houses in my mind’s eye. You could say that phase never really ended.Which celebrities are lying about their height? This website’s done the researchRead moreIn much the same way as some people will pull up a movie’s IMDb entry the second they start watching, any time I come across an interesting town, country or geographical oddity (which is often in the news business), I’m firing up Maps to see what topographical morsels I can uncover. I’m noGeoGuessrsavant, but I’ve spent many pleasant hours puzzling over interesting enclaves and panhandles, or pootling around far-flung locales in Street View. After finishing a recent episode of Severance I opened a tab and took an armchair tour through the remote Newfoundland island where it was shot.I’m not exactly uncovering some mysterious corner of the internet here. Google Maps is so ubiquitous it’s become a utility – admitting I open it for fun feels like extolling the virtues of the Calendar app, or calling up Centrelinkjust to enjoy the hold music. There are plenty of other perfectly decent navigation apps out there – but Google Maps’ special sauce is its mountain of user-generated data.The key to Google Maps’ power is its volunteer workforce of obsessive “local guides”. Clicking on these profiles feels vaguely illicit, like you’re tracking them for Asio. These are the users who log their every move, amassing hundreds of reviews of everything from restaurants to payphones, detailing opening hours, accessibility features and taking some of the worst food photography you’ve ever seen. I do not understand these people and their currency of points and badges, but I am grateful for them. There is a man who has reviewed every public postbox in Ballarat and had opinions about them all. My nearest bus stop has a 3.3-star rating and a single review: “It’s just a bus stop.” OK!View image in fullscreenFlumpy: a neighbourhood cat on Google Maps with an (almost) perfect rating.Photograph: Google MapsSome Google Maps discoveries feel like stumbling into someone else’s private joke. Not far from my girlfriend’s house, an unremarkable piece of tarmac has been dubbed“Tristan’s Roundabout”– its reviews tab populated with tourist selfies and comically overblown praise for the intersection and the eponymous Tristan, who responds to each reviewer in equally effusive terms.View image in fullscreenOn Google Maps, a listing for this roundabout is ‘populated with tourist selfies and comically overblown praise’.Photograph: Google MapsIn the surrounding streets you can find reviewers waxing lyrical over such local sights as ahole in the groundorabandoned trailer, and writing glowing tributes to afriendly orange catnamedFlumpy. Passing these waypoints as I move around the neighbourhood feels like a digital scavenger hunt – an act of noticing and recording the small quirks of suburban life.Why are ‘friendly neighbourhood cats’ appearing on Google Maps all of a sudden?Read moreThis is where the real joy of Google Maps lies: in the moments when you get to see humans being playful with the otherwise prosaic tools at their disposal. It’s in the social media bots showcasingrandom restaurantsandnew towns every hour, pegged to Google Maps data. It’s in people using Street View tostave off homesicknessorhold on to those they’ve lost, or using Google’s all-but-abandoned My Maps tool to share lists ofpublicly accessible fruit trees. It’s the instances where some kind of bug or human error leads to anIndonesian supermarket appearing in Antarctica– a reminder that these tools can be messy and imperfect, just like us.Allow content provided by a third party?This article includes content hosted on embed.bsky.app. We ask for your permission before anything is loaded, as the provider may be using cookies and other technologies. To view this content,click ‘Allow and continue’.Allow and continueMaps are loaded with political and imperialist symbolism, and Google is arguably more responsible for the dire state of the internet than most. I’m sure the product managers are, at this moment, brainstorming ways to shoehorn ever more AI slop into our maps. But for now, when the internet feels like a constant stream of noise, it’s nice to unwind by going for a leisurely scroll around the neighbourhood.Explore more on these topicsGoogle MapsInternet wormholeInternetMapsfeaturesShareReuse this content
There is a certain kind of guy who looks atGoogle Mapsfor fun. I am that guy. As a kid I went through a cartography phase, drawing elaborate maps of fictional islands and poring over the family street directory in an effort to reconcile the lines and dots on the overcrowded pages with the streets, shops and friends’ houses in my mind’s eye. You could say that phase never really ended.Which celebrities are lying about their height? This website’s done the researchRead moreIn much the same way as some people will pull up a movie’s IMDb entry the second they start watching, any time I come across an interesting town, country or geographical oddity (which is often in the news business), I’m firing up Maps to see what topographical morsels I can uncover. I’m noGeoGuessrsavant, but I’ve spent many pleasant hours puzzling over interesting enclaves and panhandles, or pootling around far-flung locales in Street View. After finishing a recent episode of Severance I opened a tab and took an armchair tour through the remote Newfoundland island where it was shot.I’m not exactly uncovering some mysterious corner of the internet here. Google Maps is so ubiquitous it’s become a utility – admitting I open it for fun feels like extolling the virtues of the Calendar app, or calling up Centrelinkjust to enjoy the hold music. There are plenty of other perfectly decent navigation apps out there – but Google Maps’ special sauce is its mountain of user-generated data.The key to Google Maps’ power is its volunteer workforce of obsessive “local guides”. Clicking on these profiles feels vaguely illicit, like you’re tracking them for Asio. These are the users who log their every move, amassing hundreds of reviews of everything from restaurants to payphones, detailing opening hours, accessibility features and taking some of the worst food photography you’ve ever seen. I do not understand these people and their currency of points and badges, but I am grateful for them. There is a man who has reviewed every public postbox in Ballarat and had opinions about them all. My nearest bus stop has a 3.3-star rating and a single review: “It’s just a bus stop.” OK!View image in fullscreenFlumpy: a neighbourhood cat on Google Maps with an (almost) perfect rating.Photograph: Google MapsSome Google Maps discoveries feel like stumbling into someone else’s private joke. Not far from my girlfriend’s house, an unremarkable piece of tarmac has been dubbed“Tristan’s Roundabout”– its reviews tab populated with tourist selfies and comically overblown praise for the intersection and the eponymous Tristan, who responds to each reviewer in equally effusive terms.View image in fullscreenOn Google Maps, a listing for this roundabout is ‘populated with tourist selfies and comically overblown praise’.Photograph: Google MapsIn the surrounding streets you can find reviewers waxing lyrical over such local sights as ahole in the groundorabandoned trailer, and writing glowing tributes to afriendly orange catnamedFlumpy. Passing these waypoints as I move around the neighbourhood feels like a digital scavenger hunt – an act of noticing and recording the small quirks of suburban life.Why are ‘friendly neighbourhood cats’ appearing on Google Maps all of a sudden?Read moreThis is where the real joy of Google Maps lies: in the moments when you get to see humans being playful with the otherwise prosaic tools at their disposal. It’s in the social media bots showcasingrandom restaurantsandnew towns every hour, pegged to Google Maps data. It’s in people using Street View tostave off homesicknessorhold on to those they’ve lost, or using Google’s all-but-abandoned My Maps tool to share lists ofpublicly accessible fruit trees. It’s the instances where some kind of bug or human error leads to anIndonesian supermarket appearing in Antarctica– a reminder that these tools can be messy and imperfect, just like us.Allow content provided by a third party?This article includes content hosted on embed.bsky.app. We ask for your permission before anything is loaded, as the provider may be using cookies and other technologies. To view this content,click ‘Allow and continue’.Allow and continueMaps are loaded with political and imperialist symbolism, and Google is arguably more responsible for the dire state of the internet than most. I’m sure the product managers are, at this moment, brainstorming ways to shoehorn ever more AI slop into our maps. But for now, when the internet feels like a constant stream of noise, it’s nice to unwind by going for a leisurely scroll around the neighbourhood.
There is a certain kind of guy who looks atGoogle Mapsfor fun. I am that guy. As a kid I went through a cartography phase, drawing elaborate maps of fictional islands and poring over the family street directory in an effort to reconcile the lines and dots on the overcrowded pages with the streets, shops and friends’ houses in my mind’s eye. You could say that phase never really ended.Which celebrities are lying about their height? This website’s done the researchRead moreIn much the same way as some people will pull up a movie’s IMDb entry the second they start watching, any time I come across an interesting town, country or geographical oddity (which is often in the news business), I’m firing up Maps to see what topographical morsels I can uncover. I’m noGeoGuessrsavant, but I’ve spent many pleasant hours puzzling over interesting enclaves and panhandles, or pootling around far-flung locales in Street View. After finishing a recent episode of Severance I opened a tab and took an armchair tour through the remote Newfoundland island where it was shot.I’m not exactly uncovering some mysterious corner of the internet here. Google Maps is so ubiquitous it’s become a utility – admitting I open it for fun feels like extolling the virtues of the Calendar app, or calling up Centrelinkjust to enjoy the hold music. There are plenty of other perfectly decent navigation apps out there – but Google Maps’ special sauce is its mountain of user-generated data.The key to Google Maps’ power is its volunteer workforce of obsessive “local guides”. Clicking on these profiles feels vaguely illicit, like you’re tracking them for Asio. These are the users who log their every move, amassing hundreds of reviews of everything from restaurants to payphones, detailing opening hours, accessibility features and taking some of the worst food photography you’ve ever seen. I do not understand these people and their currency of points and badges, but I am grateful for them. There is a man who has reviewed every public postbox in Ballarat and had opinions about them all. My nearest bus stop has a 3.3-star rating and a single review: “It’s just a bus stop.” OK!View image in fullscreenFlumpy: a neighbourhood cat on Google Maps with an (almost) perfect rating.Photograph: Google MapsSome Google Maps discoveries feel like stumbling into someone else’s private joke. Not far from my girlfriend’s house, an unremarkable piece of tarmac has been dubbed“Tristan’s Roundabout”– its reviews tab populated with tourist selfies and comically overblown praise for the intersection and the eponymous Tristan, who responds to each reviewer in equally effusive terms.View image in fullscreenOn Google Maps, a listing for this roundabout is ‘populated with tourist selfies and comically overblown praise’.Photograph: Google MapsIn the surrounding streets you can find reviewers waxing lyrical over such local sights as ahole in the groundorabandoned trailer, and writing glowing tributes to afriendly orange catnamedFlumpy. Passing these waypoints as I move around the neighbourhood feels like a digital scavenger hunt – an act of noticing and recording the small quirks of suburban life.Why are ‘friendly neighbourhood cats’ appearing on Google Maps all of a sudden?Read moreThis is where the real joy of Google Maps lies: in the moments when you get to see humans being playful with the otherwise prosaic tools at their disposal. It’s in the social media bots showcasingrandom restaurantsandnew towns every hour, pegged to Google Maps data. It’s in people using Street View tostave off homesicknessorhold on to those they’ve lost, or using Google’s all-but-abandoned My Maps tool to share lists ofpublicly accessible fruit trees. It’s the instances where some kind of bug or human error leads to anIndonesian supermarket appearing in Antarctica– a reminder that these tools can be messy and imperfect, just like us.Allow content provided by a third party?This article includes content hosted on embed.bsky.app. We ask for your permission before anything is loaded, as the provider may be using cookies and other technologies. To view this content,click ‘Allow and continue’.Allow and continueMaps are loaded with political and imperialist symbolism, and Google is arguably more responsible for the dire state of the internet than most. I’m sure the product managers are, at this moment, brainstorming ways to shoehorn ever more AI slop into our maps. But for now, when the internet feels like a constant stream of noise, it’s nice to unwind by going for a leisurely scroll around the neighbourhood.
There is a certain kind of guy who looks atGoogle Mapsfor fun. I am that guy. As a kid I went through a cartography phase, drawing elaborate maps of fictional islands and poring over the family street directory in an effort to reconcile the lines and dots on the overcrowded pages with the streets, shops and friends’ houses in my mind’s eye. You could say that phase never really ended.
Which celebrities are lying about their height? This website’s done the researchRead more
Which celebrities are lying about their height? This website’s done the researchRead more
Which celebrities are lying about their height? This website’s done the researchRead more
Which celebrities are lying about their height? This website’s done the research
Which celebrities are lying about their height? This website’s done the research
Read more
Read more
In much the same way as some people will pull up a movie’s IMDb entry the second they start watching, any time I come across an interesting town, country or geographical oddity (which is often in the news business), I’m firing up Maps to see what topographical morsels I can uncover. I’m noGeoGuessrsavant, but I’ve spent many pleasant hours puzzling over interesting enclaves and panhandles, or pootling around far-flung locales in Street View. After finishing a recent episode of Severance I opened a tab and took an armchair tour through the remote Newfoundland island where it was shot.
I’m not exactly uncovering some mysterious corner of the internet here. Google Maps is so ubiquitous it’s become a utility – admitting I open it for fun feels like extolling the virtues of the Calendar app, or calling up Centrelinkjust to enjoy the hold music. There are plenty of other perfectly decent navigation apps out there – but Google Maps’ special sauce is its mountain of user-generated data.
The key to Google Maps’ power is its volunteer workforce of obsessive “local guides”. Clicking on these profiles feels vaguely illicit, like you’re tracking them for Asio. These are the users who log their every move, amassing hundreds of reviews of everything from restaurants to payphones, detailing opening hours, accessibility features and taking some of the worst food photography you’ve ever seen. I do not understand these people and their currency of points and badges, but I am grateful for them. There is a man who has reviewed every public postbox in Ballarat and had opinions about them all. My nearest bus stop has a 3.3-star rating and a single review: “It’s just a bus stop.” OK!
View image in fullscreen
Some Google Maps discoveries feel like stumbling into someone else’s private joke. Not far from my girlfriend’s house, an unremarkable piece of tarmac has been dubbed“Tristan’s Roundabout”– its reviews tab populated with tourist selfies and comically overblown praise for the intersection and the eponymous Tristan, who responds to each reviewer in equally effusive terms.
View image in fullscreen
In the surrounding streets you can find reviewers waxing lyrical over such local sights as ahole in the groundorabandoned trailer, and writing glowing tributes to afriendly orange catnamedFlumpy. Passing these waypoints as I move around the neighbourhood feels like a digital scavenger hunt – an act of noticing and recording the small quirks of suburban life.
Why are ‘friendly neighbourhood cats’ appearing on Google Maps all of a sudden?Read more
Why are ‘friendly neighbourhood cats’ appearing on Google Maps all of a sudden?Read more
Why are ‘friendly neighbourhood cats’ appearing on Google Maps all of a sudden?Read more
Why are ‘friendly neighbourhood cats’ appearing on Google Maps all of a sudden?
Why are ‘friendly neighbourhood cats’ appearing on Google Maps all of a sudden?
Read more
Read more
This is where the real joy of Google Maps lies: in the moments when you get to see humans being playful with the otherwise prosaic tools at their disposal. It’s in the social media bots showcasingrandom restaurantsandnew towns every hour, pegged to Google Maps data. It’s in people using Street View tostave off homesicknessorhold on to those they’ve lost, or using Google’s all-but-abandoned My Maps tool to share lists ofpublicly accessible fruit trees. It’s the instances where some kind of bug or human error leads to anIndonesian supermarket appearing in Antarctica– a reminder that these tools can be messy and imperfect, just like us.
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Maps are loaded with political and imperialist symbolism, and Google is arguably more responsible for the dire state of the internet than most. I’m sure the product managers are, at this moment, brainstorming ways to shoehorn ever more AI slop into our maps. But for now, when the internet feels like a constant stream of noise, it’s nice to unwind by going for a leisurely scroll around the neighbourhood.
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Google MapsInternet wormholeInternetMapsfeatures
Google MapsInternet wormholeInternetMapsfeatures
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