How to go about browsing the Internet like a Flâneur, I’m sure like many of you, I wasn’t sure where to begin. This project dedicated to seeing if thinking like a Flâneur was possible in the digital age, not thinking where to start but to aimlessly browse the internet for thirty minutes and see where it takes us and what we find along the way. From the outset I’d have to say that I would’ve disappointed many of my white male counterparts because I struggled to even use the internet without focusing on the things that I found interesting prior to this assignment. This to me only reinforces the idea that much of the Internet that we use now is catered to our every need and desire regardless of the websites we visit. Now I don’t want to paint myself as someone incapable of being open to new experiences because I’m genuinely interested in a wide variety of topics but for this I was confused how to go about finding things that I don’t normally think about, those websites in the shadows of the more prominent pages we think of when we think about using the Internet. This, for me, was harder than I imagined because you have to put in an input to go somewhere on the internet and that output is usually in the neighborhood of what you are looking for, unlike a dense forest full of paths forking in every direction that give you the output as you traverse through the woods using your feet and imagination as the input. So, in my less than valiant effort I started where I only knew I would be sure to find something I would’ve never come across intentionally, http://www.theuselessweb.com/. For those unfamiliar with the website I’ll try and explain it. There is one purpose of this page for the user, outside of the one ad and donation for the founder’s coffee, to click on the button with arrows pointing at it from either side saying “PLEASE” and you will be taken to a random website that I can almost guarantee you’ve never seen before. My experience was filled with animated web pages filled with gifs of animated stars and hotdogs, like something you would find in an introductory html class. Ironically enough after a few more clicks I found myself on a website called http://weirdorconfusing.com/ which from first glance is probably created by the same person. This website will take you to EBay and give you a product that is exactly weird or confusing. My first click brought me to a page on EBay offering a “Yodelling Pickle”. Why these things are both together I have no idea but I’d have to give the website five stars because it lived up to its expectations. It would be interesting to find out whether or not that just like the ads we see on Facebook Weird or Confusing is also using some version of sponsored content and by that I mean what if managers of these EBay accounts are actually paying the owner of Weird or Confusing to publish their items. Or it is entirely possible that the creator of this website is using an algorithm that pieces together listings using words like, “pickle, yodel, dog, outfit, banana, slicer”. Any of these options put together would be sure to give you something unique and out of your ordinary shopping list.
