Website Neal.fun is a constant source of innovative little web games, including 2023's superb satirical stab at the awfulness of setting passwords. The latest addition to the website is a superb use of Google’s Street View, as (currently) over a thousand people are on a road trip to Canada!
Internet Roadtrip, as it’s infuriatingly called (“road trip” is two words), is an effort by a collective of strangers to operate a car across the streets of North America. The journey began six days ago, in Boston, and is currently in Augusta, Maine, venturing toward Stephen King country on what appears to be a collective desire to reach Canada. Directions are chosen by votes that take place every few seconds—whichever available direction receives the majority of the votes, that’s the way the Street View moves, made all the more adorable by the inclusion of a steering wheel at the bottom of the screen.
Since I’ve been watching/voting for a couple of hours (since my chum Paul tipped me off to the game—thanks Paul!), a whopping five miles of progress has been made. This is partly because the entire endeavor is inherently slow, but also because of awful people (tee hee) who keep voting to take completely pointless detours. Should enough malevolent people (snicker) vote to take a right down some dirt track that loops back onto the main road, that’s what’ll happen, to the dismay of all the sensible people in the site’s chat.
The chat is a more recent addition, and according to leading expert Paul, it’s made the whole thing a lot less soothing. It has, however, allowed for those who maliciously choose silly directions (giggle) to see the enraged reactions of the folk actually trying to get somewhere. Of course, given that it’s made up of contributions from 1,100 strangers via Discord, be warned there’s also a lot of garbage in there. (It is apparently hilarious to respond “gay” when anyone encourages voters to pick “straight” on.)
Consensus appears to be a desire to reach Canada, with the more confident denizens of the chat window already debating whether to head to Montreal specifically. By my estimation that dream is weeks away, if not longer given how many nefarious types seem to vote for loop-de-loop routes (guffaw). Much better to just focus on Bangor for now. Oh, and if you can rally enough people, you can vote to change the radio station, the “DJ” of which I’m pretty sure has been voiced by creator Neal Agarwal himself. Or you can even vote to honk the horn (something that won favor when the Street View had the car in the wrong lane of traffic, with cars coming straight toward us).
Agarwal has an extraordinary gift for data manipulation. Other projects on his site include this beautiful depiction of the future of the universe, a page that shows you which creatures live at which depths in the ocean, and one I bet you’ll get obsessed with which tests how close you can come to drawing a perfect circle. (96.2 percent is my best.) Then there’s Absurd Trolley Problems, and this glorious satire of a clicker game.
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