Thousands of people have embarked on a virtual road trip via Google Street View
It’s Friday afternoon and I’m listening to Bowdoin College’s radio station, interspersed with ambient car honking noises. I am not in Maine. I am not in a car. I am at my desk. This is Internet Roadtrip.
Internet Roadtrip is what I will call an MMORTG (massive multiplayer online road trip game). Neal Agarwal, the game’s creator, calls it a “road-trip simulator.” Every 10 seconds, viewers vote on what direction for the “car” to drive on Google Street View — or, you can vote to honk the horn or change the radio station. The direction with the most votes gets clicked, and the car continues on its scenic path to … wherever the chat decides to go.
Internet Roadtrip is reminiscent of Twitch Plays Pokémon, an iconic stream from over 10 years ago in which viewers voted on what button to press as part of a collective Pokémon Red game. But Internet Roadtrip is far less chaotic — both because only a thousand or so people are playing at a time, and because we have better organizational tools than we did in the Twitch Plays Pokémon era (thank you, Discord).
Progress on the virtual roadtrip is slow. The car moves at a pace slower than walking. Discord moderators have had to temper newcomers’ expectations, explaining that it’s pointless to suggest driving to Las Vegas from Maine, since it would likely take almost 10 months of real-world time to get there. The same goes for Alaska, but it’s not just a matter of time that’s the issue.
“Google Street View works by taking multiple pictures and putting them together. In some areas of the roads leading to Alaska, there are gaps in pictures available and so we would get stuck there, were we to go to these roads,” the Discord FAQ reads. “All potential roads to Alaska have these gaps. We checked.”
There is no objective on Internet Roadtrip, as opposed other Street View-based games like GeoGuessr. Some Discord members discussed driving to Canada, which is a somewhat realistic goal, given our current position in Maine. But the destination isn’t the goal — it’s the joy of spontaneously listening to a college radio from a liberal arts school with a thousand strangers on the internet, while taking in the scenic backroads of Blue Hill, Maine.
Amanda Silberling is a senior writer at TechCrunch covering the intersection of technology and culture. She has also written for publications like Polygon, MTV, the Kenyon Review, NPR, and Business Insider. She is the co-host of Wow If True, a podcast about internet culture, with science fiction author Isabel J. Kim. Prior to joining TechCrunch, she worked as a grassroots organizer, museum educator, and film festival coordinator. She holds a B.A. in English from the University of Pennsylvania and served as a Princeton in Asia Fellow in Laos.
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