It’s Friday afternoon. I’m sitting at my desk, not far from the usual buzz of city noise, but instead, I’m hearing car honks mixed with the mellow tunes coming from Bowdoin College’s radio station. Here’s the kicker: I’m not in Maine, and I’m definitely not in a car. Welcome to Internet Roadtrip.
Think of Internet Roadtrip as a massive online road trip game — or as its creator, Neal Agarwal, likes to call it, a “road-trip simulator.” Here’s how it works: every 10 seconds, a crowd of viewers votes on which way the “car” should go in Google Street View. Want to honk the horn? Change the radio station? You can vote on those, too. The choice with the most votes gets clicked, and off we go, cruising through virtual streets to… wherever the collective chat decides.
If this sounds a bit like the legendary Twitch Plays Pokémon from over a decade ago, you’re not wrong. But thankfully, it’s much less chaotic. For one, there’s a few thousand players at most, instead of tens of thousands, and we have handy tools like Discord to keep things organized (thank you, technology).
Don’t expect to reach your next vacation spot anytime soon, though. The car moves slower than a leisurely stroll, and moderators on Discord have had to remind eager new travelers that suggesting a road trip from Maine to Las Vegas? Yeah, that’s probably going to take almost 10 months in real-time. Alaska is a no-go, too — not just because of distance, but due to missing Street View data.
“Google Street View works by stitching together lots of photos,” explains the Discord FAQ. “In some areas leading to Alaska, there are gaps in the imagery. We’d just get stuck there. We checked every route to Alaska — all have gaps.”
What’s beautiful about Internet Roadtrip is that it’s not about the destination. Unlike games like GeoGuessr, where you’re racing to pinpoint your location, here it’s the journey itself that counts. Some players have chatted about heading into Canada next, which feels doable from Maine’s doorstep. But really, the magic is in the spontaneous experience — tuning into a college radio station with a thousand strangers online, exploring the quiet backroads of Blue Hill, Maine, all without leaving your chair.
It’s a reminder that sometimes, the best trips happen when you just go with the flow — even if that flow is controlled by a thousand votes online.
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