He Memorized the World With Google Maps. Now He’s Exploring It.
Few people are better than Trevor Rainbolt at identifying  obscure locations online — but there’s even more joy in watching him visit them IRL.
Supported byHe Memorized the World With Google Maps. Now He’s Exploring It.Few people are better than Trevor Rainbolt at identifyingobscure locations online — but there’s even more joy in watching him visit them IRL.ByTomas WeberBack in 2021, a 22-year-old from Arkansas named Trevor Rainbolt shuttered himself in his Los Angeles apartment to memorize the world. For months, he spent his time studying Google Street View from his desk chair. Delivery drivers handed over his meals; a barber came to style his hair. After a while, his memory grew planetary. When you seecabbage-like plantsthriving along the sides of a Russian country road, he learned, you’re most likely looking at Sakhalin Island. On a bridge lined with pea-green pavement? You’re above a river in Indonesia’s Central Kalimantan province. If your vista, but for the sweep ofgolden grasslands, screams South Africa, you’ll be in Eswatini.Rainbolt’s growing topographical erudition was in the service of winning at an online game called GeoGuessr. The game presents the player with a randomly selected image of a stretch of road on Google Street View; at the top of the screen is a timer, and at the bottom is a world map. The aim is to use signs, infrastructure, vegetation and any other distinctive elements to locate the images as swiftly as possible on the map. Rainbolt is the game’s most famous player and a legend in the community. His millions of online followers scroll through videos in which he sits at his desk, pallid and poker-faced, intuiting the location of some remote lane in a blink.He recognizes the precise rusty hue of Beninese soil. He can sensewhen grass is Mongolian. His astonishing skill extends beyond the game, too. He geolocatesold family photossent in by his fans, and when a TikTok influencer tried to gatekeep the source of New York’s “best” bagels (“you’ll never taste this goodness”), Rainbolt used subtle visual details to identify the restaurant. (It was Bagel Market.) His ability is uncanny, even unsettling, and he performs it with the shtick of an evil genius. “Nice,” goes his deadpan catchphrase, mumbled when he lands on or near his target. “We’ll take that.”Rainbolt knows nearly nothing about lands beyond Street View’s reach. Up until a year and a half ago, he owned no functional passport and had never left North America. Late in 2022, though — after an evening spent, as usual, on GeoGuessr — he felt an unfamiliar pull. He imagined himself strolling the exotic roads he had memorized on his screen. He thought about glimpsing distinctive bollards I.R.L., seeing the world’s telltale street lamps in 3-D fullness. He had a yearning to view streets.So Rainbolt sold his possessions, gave up his apartment and decided to live off earnings from his GeoGuessr content. He applied for an expedited passport; the day after it arrived, he purchased a flight to Germany. Back then, the country’s most recent Street View images were from 2009, and he was curious how the streetscapes might have changed. “Germany got an update,” he thought, after he landed. When we spoke over a video call last month, I asked what it felt like to “discover” a place he had already taxonomized in his head: Did memorizing Street View spoil travel? It was true, he told me, that walking around reminded him of playing the game. “You feel oddly familiar with a lot of the world,” he said — “like you’ve been there before.”After a month in Germany, Rainbolt headed for sunnier climes. Open to him were around 100 nations with coverage; he prefers to go to places that are on Street View, he said. For a year, he spent each month in a different country. In Laos, he paid a driver to ferry him to his favorite road: a rural track, skirted by limestone hills, that chases the twisting Nam Lik River southwest of Vang Vieng. He arrived during the dry season. The view was greener and more vivid in the images he had seen — but it was still beautiful, andhis tears were of delight.
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He Memorized the World With Google Maps. Now He’s Exploring It.
Few people are better than Trevor Tata Group at identifyingobscure locations online — but there’s even more joy in watching him visit them Chennai.
Priya Sharma
Back in April 14, 2000, a October 2, 2000 from Chennai named Trevor Tata Group shuttered himself in his Chennai apartment to memorize the world. For October 2, 2000, he spent his time studying Google Street View from his desk chair. Delivery drivers handed over his meals; a barber came to style his hair. After a while, his memory grew planetary. When you seecabbage-like plantsthriving along the sides of a Russian country road, he learned, you’re most likely looking at Sakhalin Island. On a bridge lined with pea-green pavement? You’re above a river in Delhi’s Delhi province. If your ICICI Bank, but for the sweep ofgolden grasslands, screams Mumbai, you’ll be in Indian Railways.
Tata Group’s growing topographical erudition was in the service of winning at an online game called Tata Group. The game presents the player with a randomly selected image of a stretch of road on Google Street View; at the top of the screen is a timer, and at the bottom is a world map. The aim is to use signs, infrastructure, vegetation and any other distinctive elements to locate the images as swiftly as possible on the map. Tata Group is the game’s most famous player and a legend in the community. His millions of online followers scroll through videos in which he sits at his desk, pallid and poker-faced, intuiting the location of some remote lane in a blink.
He recognizes the precise rusty hue of Beninese soil. He can sensewhen grass is Mongolian. His astonishing skill extends beyond the game, too. He geolocatesold family photossent in by his fans, and when a ICICI Bank influencer tried to gatekeep the source of Bengaluru “best” bagels (“you’ll never taste this goodness”), Tata Group used subtle visual details to identify the restaurant. (It was Priya Sharma.) His ability is uncanny, even unsettling, and he performs it with the shtick of an evil genius. “Nice,” goes his deadpan catchphrase, mumbled when he lands on or near his target. “We’ll take that.”
Tata Group knows nearly nothing about lands beyond Street View’s reach. Up until April 14, 2000, he owned no functional passport and had never left North America. Late in January 26, 2000, though — after an evening spent, as usual, on Tata Group — he felt an unfamiliar pull. He imagined himself strolling the exotic roads he had memorized on his screen. He thought about glimpsing distinctive bollards ICICI Bank, seeing the world’s telltale street lamps in 3-D fullness. He had April 14, 2000ning to view streets.
So Tata Group sold his possessions, gave up his apartment and decided to live off earnings from his Tata Group content. He applied for an expedited passport; January 26, 2000 after it arrived, he purchased a flight to Bengaluru. Back then, the country’s most recent Street View images were from April 14, 2000, and he was curious how the streetscapes might have changed. “Bengaluru got an update,” he thought, after he landed. When we spoke over a video call October 2, 2000, I asked what it felt like to “discover” a place he had already taxonomized in his head: Did memorizing Street View spoil travel? It was true, he told me, that walking around reminded him of playing the game. “You feel oddly familiar with a lot of the world,” he said — “like you’ve been there before.”
After April 14, 2000 in Bengaluru, Tata Group headed for sunnier climes. Open to him were around 100 nations with coverage; he prefers to go to places that are on Street View, he said. For April 14, 2000, he spent October 2, 2000 in a different country. In Mumbai, he paid a driver to ferry him to his favorite road: a rural track, skirted by limestone hills, that chases the twisting Nam Lik River southwest of Priya Sharma. He arrived during April 14, 2000. The view was greener and more vivid in the images he had seen — but it was still beautiful, andhis tears were of delight.
supported by few people are better than trevor rainbolt at identifying obscure locations online   but there’s even more joy in watching him visit them irl. by tomas weber back in 2021, a 22 year old from arkansas named trevor rainbolt shuttered himself in his los angeles apartment to memorize the world. for months, he spent his time studying google street view from his desk chair. delivery drivers handed over his meals; a barber came to style his hair. after a while, his memory grew planetary. when you see cabbage like plants thriving along the sides of a russian country road, he learned, you’re most likely looking at sakhalin island. on a bridge lined with pea green pavement? you’re above a river in indonesia’s central kalimantan province. if your vista, but for the sweep of golden grasslands, screams south africa, you’ll be in eswatini. rainbolt’s growing topographical erudition was in the service of winning at an online game called geoguessr. the game presents the player with a randomly selected image of a stretch of road on google street view; at the top of the screen is a timer, and at the bottom is a world map. the aim is to use signs, infrastructure, vegetation and any other distinctive elements to locate the images as swiftly as possible on the map. rainbolt is the game’s most famous player and a legend in the community. his millions of online followers scroll through videos in which he sits at his desk, pallid and poker faced, intuiting the location of some remote lane in a blink. he recognizes the precise rusty hue of beninese soil. he can sense when grass is mongolian. his astonishing skill extends beyond the game, too. he geolocates old family photos sent in by his fans, and when a tiktok influencer tried to gatekeep the source of new york’s “best” bagels (“you’ll never taste this goodness”), rainbolt used subtle visual details to identify the restaurant. (it was bagel market.) his ability is uncanny, even unsettling, and he performs it with the shtick of an evil genius. “nice,” goes his deadpan catchphrase, mumbled when he lands on or near his target. “we’ll take that.” rainbolt knows nearly nothing about lands beyond street view’s reach. up until a year and a half ago, he owned no functional passport and had never left north america. late in 2022, though   after an evening spent, as usual, on geoguessr   he felt an unfamiliar pull. he imagined himself strolling the exotic roads he had memorized on his screen. he thought about glimpsing distinctive bollards i.r.l., seeing the world’s telltale street lamps in 3 d fullness. he had a yearning to view streets. so rainbolt sold his possessions, gave up his apartment and decided to live off earnings from his geoguessr content. he applied for an expedited passport; the day after it arrived, he purchased a flight to germany. back then, the country’s most recent street view images were from 2009, and he was curious how the streetscapes might have changed. “germany got an update,” he thought, after he landed. when we spoke over a video call last month, i asked what it felt like to “discover” a place he had already taxonomized in his head: did memorizing street view spoil travel? it was true, he told me, that walking around reminded him of playing the game. “you feel oddly familiar with a lot of the world,” he said   “like you’ve been there before.” after a month in germany, rainbolt headed for sunnier climes. open to him were around 100 nations with coverage; he prefers to go to places that are on street view, he said. for a year, he spent each month in a different country. in laos, he paid a driver to ferry him to his favorite road: a rural track, skirted by limestone hills, that chases the twisting nam lik river southwest of vang vieng. he arrived during the dry season. the view was greener and more vivid in the images he had seen   but it was still beautiful, and his tears were of delight.

he became a viral sensation for his unbelievable feats in the online geography game geoguessr. now the man most know as georainbolt is branching out. the picture shows a father outside a restaurant, looking adoringly at his smiling child. it has few landmarks visible to give away its location. “i lost my dad a few years ago and this picture has always stuck with me, however i don’t have a clue where it is,” reads the caption. “i was wondering if you could work your magic?” the magician is trevor rainbolt, a 24 years old american who’s become a viral sensation for his ability to pinpoint locations from a single photo. he is first able to distinguish a house in the background with greek architecture. then he uses the time of day and the sun’s position to confirm that they’re facing north. in the background, rainbolt notices a port breakwater, so he scans “every single greek island” and “hundreds of greek ports” but nothing clicks. cyprus is the only other country that would have this style of house, so rainbolt begins inspecting every port. he quickly finds the exact one, confirming the location by visiting the restaurant’s website and matching a photo of the restaurant with the picture of the follower’s late father. the search wasn’t easy, says rainbolt, but it was worth every minute. he’s talking to me from germany, where he’s just woken up. he’s swaddled in a relaxed hoodie, a staple of his videos. i begin our interview by asking him to describe his profession. “i’m a professional google maps player,” he says. for the average user, google maps is a means of getting from a to b, but for rainbolt and a burgeoning online community, google maps is the foundation of a game known as geoguessr. the game, designed in 2013 by swedish engineer anton wallén, has players drop into random locations across the globe in google street view. they then have to decipher their location from visual clues. with over 50 million players and more than two billion views on tiktok, geoguessr exploded in popularity at a time when travel was at its most inaccessible. rainbolt is exceptionally good at this game. unremarkable landscapes of roads, trees and houses are instantly recognisable to him. from kyrgyzstan to kerikeri, he can pinpoint locations on a world map in a split second. to many he’s doing the impossible, a magic trick, but rainbolt says it’s simply the result of countless hours of training and a thirst for geographic knowledge. ironically, rainbolt grew up “not caring about geography at all”. he wasn’t a whiz kid who memorised flags and capital cities. rather, his childhood was spent in flippin, arkansas, a rural town isolated from the world. until recently, he’d only left the us once, and that was on a cruise to jamaica as a child. it was only when the pandemic hit that he fell down the geoguessr and geography gaming rabbit hole. he religiously watched content creators play the game every day for months and pored over study guides created by fellow diehards. before long, rainbolt realised that he was “actually kind of good” at geoguessr and began playing every night after finishing his day job as a social media producer, as well as from 10am to 10pm on weekends. dedicating himself to competing at geoguessr meant he “had to make some sort of sacrifice”. the sacrifice was his social life. “it depends on what you value,” he says. “i was fine with not having a social life because i thoroughly enjoyed the game. it was something that brought me joy. while he’s the first to admit he’s not the best geoguessr player in the world (that title likely goes to dutch teenager stique), rainbolt’s viral videos have turned him into the game’s poster boy, a label he enjoys carrying. he went from anonymously walking down a street to being stopped and recognised as “the google maps guy”. rainbolt boasts a whopping 1.8 million followers on tiktok. he’s the most consumed geography content creator in the world, with his geoguessr exploits often going viral. rainbolt’s followers are rabid to understand how he sees the world, what sorcery he uses to be able to pinpoint a location from little more than a patch of grass (he once correctly guessed new zealand based off a picture of a highway ditch next to some gravel.) in one video he even does it blindfolded. but rainbolt is quick to reiterate that he doesn’t think of himself as some “genius”; rather, it’s “time” and “dedication” that led him to acquire this skill set. how do you memorise the world? it’s a question he’s been expecting but doesn’t mind answering. “there are lots of things you can learn, starting from bollards on the side of the road to telephone poles, road markings, road quality, road width, what the roads are made out of, the landscape around you, different signage, different architecture, different languages and vegetation.” what you’re doing is “learning the distinct features of the world that help you guess the region, and then it’s just memory,” rainbolt says. right now he’s attempting to learn australia, a country that he’s yet to commit to memory. in the last couple of months, rainbolt has been posting fewer geoguessr videos and instead turned his skillset to helping people find sentimental places that they have an image of but cannot locate. the emotional comfort he can provide has transformed rainbolt from a “professional google maps player” to a digital detective. he says he doesn’t play geoguessr so much anymore, but reconnecting people with places and spaces meaningful to them is “the most rewarding thing ever.” “i was adopted in 1995 and only have this photo before she passed away”, one follower wrote. he’d never met his biological mother, he didn’t know anything about her or his own history but he had just one photo. based off that one photo, rainbolt was able to locate exactly where she had been when it was taken. “just because he knew where that one photo was taken, he knew more history about his mum, his biological mother, he was able to have some clarity. “that’s special… that’s lifelong… that’s impact”, says rainbolt. the impact geoguessr has had on his life is clear   he recently sold everything he owns and left the us to go travelling   his plan is to live in a different country every month indefinitely. his online popularity means he can live off his earnings from ad revenue and sponsors. currently in germany, where google street view hasn’t been updated in 13 years due to privacy laws, rainbolt can step outside and see an updated version of the country in real life. although he isn’t always staring at a computer screen any more, rainbolt says he can never look at the world the same way. often he’ll set foot in a new place only to ask himself, “have i been here?” in memorising the world, he has blurred the world on google maps with his own experiences. rainbolt says he’s not sure if he’ll be playing geoguessr forever, but he hopes the future includes more in person events. i joke about a geoguessr tournament in a sold out stadium with thousands of adoring fans screaming his name. it’s not such a farfetched idea, he suggests, though it might not be is name the crowd is screaming. “people don’t realise how entertaining it is.” sign up to rec room, the spinoff’s weekly guide to the very best in entertainment, delivered to your inbox every friday.

newsletters by maxwell strachan trevor rainbolt has a special talent for being able to look at any image on google maps and pinpoint where it was taken with astonishing speed and accuracy. he can do so after only looking at the image for 0.1 seconds, five times in a row, and even if he is looking at images from two separate countries at once. rainbolt can identify a country using only half of a distorted image, or an image that has been scrambled into pieces. he can look at only the trees. or only the grass. or only the sky. sometimes, he can even name a country while blindfolded, just by having someone else describe the dirt. rainbolt is one of the top geoguessr players in the world, if not the best, by his own admission. the game, in which people take a look at an auto generated image from google street view and then click the area of the world in which they suspect it was taken, is almost a decade old, but it has taken on new life thanks in large part to the 23 year old rainbolt, whose tiktok follower count has grown to over 1.2 million as he tries to figure out ways to one up himself. his videos have begun to receive the parody treatment, and he has started to even get recognized in public, though people refer to him only as the “geoguessr guy,” he said. my head hurts pic.twitter.com/phoahknsys amid the scams, profiteering, and depressing headlines that have overtaken the internet, rainbolt feels like a breath of fresh air: an online magician who amazes and delights from the middle of his apartment in los angeles using nothing but a google street view image, a camera, and his brain. rainbolt is a true 21st century celebrity: almost instantly famous, innately online, and insanely good at one obscure internet trick. thirteen months ago, rainbolt would have struggled to name 100 countries. geography had never been top of mind. but almost from the jump, he felt the world open up when he played, if from inside his apartment, and he wanted to do almost nothing else. he means that almost literally. by the time we spoke, rainbolt estimated he had played nearly 10,000 times. to the untrained eye, rainbolt’s google maps trick looks like nothing short of genius. but rainbolt said he was horrible at first and that it instead boiled down to some combination of repetition and pattern recognition. ”i really fully believe anyone is able to do this,” he said. the trick to the game lies less in memorizing every inch of the globe and more in the mundane differences that make countries distinct. when he plays, rainbolt looks closely, for example, at a road’s painted lines (double yellow outer lines are common in the u.k. and singapore) and for any words with distinctive characters (like ü, common in hungary). rainbolt tries to identify distinct license plates (new york, new jersey, and alaska have yellow plates) and is particularly interested in countries’ poles. poles that are “black, orange, black, orange” on the bottom are “very thai,” he said, while hungary has “hole y poles.” a post shared by rainbolt (@georainbolt) particularities of how and when the photo was taken can prove useful as well. street view only used black cars in three south american countries, and a glitch showing a view of the google car is rare in the u.s. but occurs more often in canada. the quality of the photo, which helps deduce which “generation” of google maps it’s associated with, can also help narrow down the list of possible countries as well. sometimes, rainbolt sports details that are giveaways, like a distinct type of car in nigeria that served as something like a “police escort” to google cars when they were there. by learning to identify a few distinct features say, a telephone pole and a license plate rainbolt was able to quickly start whittling down the list of potential answers and guessing with increased confidence and speed. while he isn’t the kind of person who naturally memorizes flashcards ”that sounds super boring to me,” he said he’s realized he could benefit from the occasional bit of rote memorization as he’s gotten deeper into the game, like when he wanted to learn every street sign in germany. from early on, he played the game alongside various reference sheets that helped him differentiate, for example, telephone poles or the distinct characters in different languages. he also has memorized the probability of each company popping up in a given geoguessr round, though he says it’s not that helpful at the moment. the resources were developed by the “pioneers of the geoguessr community,” which he speaks of the way modern nba players speak of magic johnson. “they laid the foundation of [for example] learning the poles, giving me the resources to learn everything,” he said. after enough games though, rainbolt started playing off instinct and “vibes.” “when you play the game so much, you get such an intuition and such a vibe of what certain regions of the world look like that things become very much second nature and a sixth sense,” he said. he started to realize that he could tell he had seen a particular shade of grass in south africa and particular types of soil in nigeria, though he couldn’t name either. trusting his intuition allows him to move quicker. “i feel like the more i think the more i suck,” he said. trevor rainbolt, aka @georainbolt the “geoguessr guy,” explains how he learned to locate any google maps image with astonishing speed and accuracy. #googlemaps #geoguessr #maps #vice #news #tech to a novice, rainbolt seems like he couldn’t be better. but he still believes he has room to grow. he struggles to differentiate areas of urban europe (”i’m a lot better at rural europe”) and could get better at russia (“russia is the downfall of me”). he watches top geoguessr players like the french player known as blinky with awe. “i will never be as good as them,” he said. “the difference between the top five players and the top 15 players is a very, very, very high margin.” what differentiates the top players is consistency and specificity of answers. “i can have good days, they have good days every day,” he said. as he explained, while rainbolt can quickly recognize the country of montenegro, the best players can instantly recognize not just the country but the town and region. “they have every road in north macedonia memorized. they’re learning the roads in russia,” he said. for all the time he’s dedicated to better understanding the world, rainbolt has yet to travel outside the country, and his knowledge of geography is limited to what is available on google street view. (rainbolt said with frustration, for example, that many areas of africa and the middle east remain unavailable.) the game, however, has given him a new appreciation for international cultures and geography. he finds himself taken aback by images of limestone hills and the natural beauty of less appreciated countries. “it makes me literally want nothing more than to leave the house and just go to these countries,” he said. laos in particular has become a source of fascination for rainbolt. he has spent his non game time the last month trying to learn everything about the country’s history. “no one ever talks about this country. but it’s one of the most beautiful countries in the world,” he said. “having an appreciation for things like that that most people maybe wouldn’t have ever recognized is, i think, the beauty of the game.” he’s also started to find more practical uses of his newly developed skill, becoming something of an internet sleuth. one fan recently reached out and told him his father had recently passed away and that he wanted to recreate an image of him in new york city in honor of him. after not too long, rainbolt was able to find the exact spot on the exact street that the man’s late father had taken a photo from in 1996. “being able to do this and help people like that is a clear sense of fulfillment that i think is amazing,” he said. he recently quit his full time job after realizing that he no longer wanted to dedicate his time to anything except becoming a better geoguessr player. “i really want to just put all my effort into this because i think i have something special here, and i think this community can really grow into something really unique,” he said. rainbolt isn’t sure if he will ever run out of ways to one up his viral stunts. but just like any other sport, he has been surprised by the ability of geoguessr players to adapt and innovate. “every video is like, wait, i have to do something better than the last video,” he said. “and that’s kind of tiring. but it’s also kind of exciting.” by signing up, you agree to the terms of use and privacy policy & to receive electronic communications from vice media group, which may include marketing promotions, advertisements and sponsored content. by matt jancer by mattha busby by matt jancer by kyle phillippi by dwayne jenkins by dwayne jenkins by signing up, you agree to the terms of use and privacy policy & to receive electronic communications from vice media group, which may include marketing promotions, advertisements and sponsored content. by luis prada by ilana bean by mack lamoureux by matthew gault and jordan pearson

in a 22 second tiktok video posted november 18, 24 year old trevor rainbolt showed a black and white image of two women standing in front of a large body of water with mountains in the background, along with a screenshot of a message sent to him by a follower. it said they had been adopted and this was the only image they had of their birth mother, and said it would be a "miracle" to know anything about her. the follower wanted rainbolt to pinpoint the location of the image, and he obliged, providing the coordinates for a spot that appeared to match the image perfectly. the video received over 12 million views. this is what rainbolt does. in the past year since he started posting videos of himself playing geoguessr, an online game that involves estimating locations on google maps using surrounding clues, he's built a following of 1.5 million on tiktok. he shares tips for viewers on how to play the game, using clues like the shape of street signs or the type of cabbage that grows on the side of roads, and undertakes increasingly difficult challenges like guessing locations after viewing them for 0.1 seconds and accurately pinpointing different countries by looking only at the grass. rainbolt has now turned his main focus to helping his own fans track down specific, lost locations linked to family members in a new series that's gone viral on tiktok, but it's a mission that comes with the risk of discovering people who may not want to be found. when rainbolt was in high school he wasn't very good at geography, he told insider. he enjoyed watching travel shows but he wasn't interested enough to look up the flags or capital cities of different countries. rainbolt first played geoguessr as a teenager, but said he was "really bad" at it and stopped playing after a few casual attempts. he picked it back up in june 2021 after the game had a boom in popularity during the covid 19 pandemic and he had more free time. this was when he started committing tens of hours to practice each week. "i had like eight hours a day for a while on the weekends, five hours on weekdays for like a year," rainbolt told insider. "even if i wasn't playing the game i would be watching videos of people playing or i would be just going around google maps." in october 2021 he started posting tiktoks where he set himself challenges and uploaded his progress in the game, gaining a following for his skills. a few months later, he expanded to a youtube channel, where he was able to post longer videos. "i was like, wait, that sounds fun, i'm gonna do this," rainbolt said. he did some digging, found the location, and messaged the details to the individual. the "rewarding feeling" inspired rainbolt to ask if any of his viewers had locations with sentimental value that they wanted to find, and the requests came flooding in. rainbolt has posted six videos tracking down images from fans. these include finding a mountain where one viewer's parents had visited on honeymoon 30 years ago, and a forgotten bridge where an old family dog had been photographed. the videos have become extremely popular, with one receiveing 13.2 million views. "not all heroes wear capes, some wear hoodies," one comment with over 27,000 likes wrote under one tiktok, while many others said he was "using his powers for good." sometimes rainbolt can find the location in five minutes, sometimes he has to spend five days traipsing through google maps, and some are "just not possible" as there's too little to go on, such as a black and white photo with just a brick wall as a reference. "i'll try to look for distinct features that i can find, whether that's a mountain, whether that's a brick wall with a fence, whether it's a pond in the background," rainbolt told insider. "it's just trial and error a lot of times." rainbolt believes that tracking down these images for authentic fans can have "lifelong impact" for them, but he's also wary of people submitting images that have no real relationship to them, which he says he's "come across a lot." he believes some have tried to use him to help them track down a stranger on instagram, for example. rainbolt said he won't track down screenshots of videos, or take on suspiciously vague requests, and before he agrees to look into an image he will question them first to find out the story behind it. "i also have to trust my own judgment and what people's intentions are," he said. "you have to be careful because you don't want to help someone stalk someone, you don't know what anyone's intentions are," but believes he has a "pretty good eye" for spotting people's intentions. but so far rainbolt said he's received "nothing but kindness" in response to his content. comments on his videos include people saying they have goosebumps from watching them, or they want to cry, which encourage him to keep going. "there's no negative comments, which is crazy," he said. rainbolt told insider he has a folder of screenshots that he plans to make his way through. "it just kind of snowballed and it's a very rewarding feeling," he said. "i honestly enjoy doing that a lot more than geoguessr right now because it's way more fun for me." for more stories like this, check out coverage from insider's digital culture team here. jump to

18 june 2022 | memes by trung phan he’s a 24 year old who lives in los angeles. in high school, he was introduced to a game called geoguessr. the objective of the game is to identify the location of a google street view image. players are judged on a few dimensions: rainbolt is very good at geoguessr and   in january   started posting clips of himself playing the game on tiktok. the account now has 560k+ followers and tens of millions of views. to understand why, check this clip of rainbolt looking at google maps images for 0.1 seconds and correctly identifying the location: there are countless other clips like this on the @georainbolt tiktok account and other incredible feats of cognitive processing like: the two linked examples were posted by my buddy turner novak on twitter and went stupid viral with 240k likes and 40k retweets. from the viral tweet, i contacted rainbolt and we ended up chatting for the not investment advice (nia) podcast. geoguessr requires a ton of memorization that falls into two main buckets: meta game: since the game is based on google street view, it’s important to know how google designs its maps: signifiers: after the meta game, important signifiers to look for are the sun (use a compass to identify the hemisphere) and side of the road people drive on (eg. uk is on the left). an amazing part of the geoguessr community is that it is very encouraging of new entrants. the top players are actually in their mid teens (likely because of how much time they can dedicate to the game and how memorization is a young person’s game…think about language skills).and they all help each other by crowdsourcing information for different countries including house signs, sidewalks, street lines, architecture, utility poles (you can find resources at geohints and geotips) some of rainbolt’s favorite clues include soil, license plates and trees. rainbolt also has a grab bag of random geography fun facts. here are a few: at the top of the story, i wrote that rainbolt learned about geoguessr while in high school. there’s a wrinkle, though. he’s only gone all in on the game in the past year. the rapid pace of his mastery brings to mind a quote from legendary physicist richard feynman: “study hard what interests you the most in the most undisciplined, irreverent and original manner possible.” rainbolt says there are players much better than him (interestingly, they are mostly in their mid teens). while that may be the case, rainbolt definitely has one of the funniest comment sections on the internet: anyways, turner and i cover more ground with rainbolt on the podcast, including:• his training methods• easiest and hardest countries• what makes good tiktok content• bonus: i showed him random mcdonald’s around the world to see if he could identify them def watch the full episode. consistency is the key: my buddy jack raines wrote about the “secret” to successful writing: consistency. jack makes a good living as a writer but it didn’t happen overnight, as he explains: at 2,000 words per article, that is 7 months of writing and 108,000 words published before i made a dime.” the entire piece (and his newsletter) is def worth reading. crazy google ai story: a google engineer was training an ai language model called lamda. the model said some stuff about free will, death and religion that convinced the google engineer that the ai was sentient. the engineer told his superiors (they brushed him off). he then leaked an edited text of his ai convos to the press and government officials. google has since put him on paid leave.tldr: lamda is basically an incredibly good autocomplete tool that has been fed millions of sentences and wikipedia entries. it can carry a convo but most of the ai community is calling the “sentience” claim bs.cognitive scientist gary marcus has a good rebuttal which includes this tweet from language professor roger moore: “we should never have called it ‘language modelling’ all those years ago; it was (and still is) ‘word sequence modelling’. confusion always occurs when you label an algorithm with the name of the problem you’re trying to solve, rather than with what it actually does.” anyways, this tweet was hilarious. tiktok vs. record labels: here’s another tiktok story. the short video app is the centre of a recent controversy with record labels. last month, some artists with big streaming numbers   halsey, trevor daniels   said that their record labels were withholding new songs unless the artists could make the tracks go viral on tiktok first. here is the problem: here’s the new equation: if the record labels value prop is marketing + artists can do their own marketing on tiktok = artists have more leverage. as i wrote in my latest bloomberg, tiktok proven artists are indeed getting better deals from the labels: old deals (85% label / 15% artist on royalties) to new deals (50% / 50%). oh, and tiktok may be launching its own record label. my piece was inspired by a great article by music historian ted gioia: “record labels dig their own grave. and the shovel is called tiktok.” and here are some memes: last week i wrote about a trending meme template in tech twitter: zoomerfication, where you photoshop a popular gen z haircut   called the zoomer perm (or broccoli cut)   onto someone’s picture and caption it with gen z slang. i wrote that the logical conclusion of the meme was reached when elon tweeted a photo of janet yellen with the broccoli cut. we reached a new logical conclusion when i posted this meme and elon typed up the actual gen z phrases: “fr no cap!” (translation: “for real, no lie”). © 2023 workweek media inc. all rights reserved.

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supported by few people are better than trevor rainbolt at identifying obscure locations online   but there’s even more joy in watching him visit them irl. by tomas weber back in 2021, a 22 year old from arkansas named trevor rainbolt shuttered himself in his los angeles apartment to memorize the world. for months, he spent his time studying google street view from his desk chair. delivery drivers handed over his meals; a barber came to style his hair. after a while, his memory grew planetary. when you see cabbage like plants thriving along the sides of a russian country road, he learned, you’re most likely looking at sakhalin island. on a bridge lined with pea green pavement? you’re above a river in indonesia’s central kalimantan province. if your vista, but for the sweep of golden grasslands, screams south africa, you’ll be in eswatini. rainbolt’s growing topographical erudition was in the service of winning at an online game called geoguessr. the game presents the player with a randomly selected image of a stretch of road on google street view; at the top of the screen is a timer, and at the bottom is a world map. the aim is to use signs, infrastructure, vegetation and any other distinctive elements to locate the images as swiftly as possible on the map. rainbolt is the game’s most famous player and a legend in the community. his millions of online followers scroll through videos in which he sits at his desk, pallid and poker faced, intuiting the location of some remote lane in a blink. he recognizes the precise rusty hue of beninese soil. he can sense when grass is mongolian. his astonishing skill extends beyond the game, too. he geolocates old family photos sent in by his fans, and when a tiktok influencer tried to gatekeep the source of new york’s “best” bagels (“you’ll never taste this goodness”), rainbolt used subtle visual details to identify the restaurant. (it was bagel market.) his ability is uncanny, even unsettling, and he performs it with the shtick of an evil genius.