‘What Is This Thing?’: 50 Times The Internet Solved The Mystery Of Unidentified Objects (All-Time Best)

Communities like the "What Is This Thing?" Subreddit really showcase how curious we can be as people. And, of course, knowledgeable – let's not forget that the mystery objects get identified by none other than by the Internet sleuths themselves. There are a lot of sister Subreddits that identify more specific categories of things as well.

There's r/WhatIsThisBug for weird bug identification and r/WhatIsThisPlant for finding out what kind of shrub or flower you're looking at. Then there's r/WhatIsThisBird, which, as a person who has trouble differentiating same-sized birds, I'm a big fan of. Even r/WhatIsThisRock, r/WhatIsThisPainting, and r/WhereIsThis, for identifying places, exist! So when all acquaintances and Google fail, it's nice to have a Subreddit to fall back on.

But communities like these are a part of the broader net of platforms that help to satisfy our curiosity. Humans are inherently curious beings. One might even say that Adam and Eve got us into this whole shebang because of their curiosity. Yet the invention of the Internet drastically changed the way we are curious and how we can satisfy our curious minds.

"The internet, in essence, has evolved into a boundless curiosity machine, a space where questions are indulged and answers are incessantly pursued," Neuroscientist Dr. Suzi Travers writes. The "What Is This Thing?" community is a great example of people from all corners of the world coming together to answer one simple question: "Can we identify this thing?"

But professionals also warn that the Internet might stifle our curiosity. Vice President of Developer Community at Microsoft Scott Hanselman writes that people might be unwilling to learn about technology itself. It's ironic, isn't it? Like the Internet serpent eating its own tail: we have a supercomputer in our pockets at virtually all times and can find out almost anything, but do we want to find out how the device and the Internet themselves work?

"I took apart my toaster, my remote control, and a clock-radio telephone before I was 10," Hanselman writes in his blog. "Didn't you? What's the difference between the people [who] take toasters apart and the folks that just want toast? At what point do kids or young adults stop asking 'How does it work?'"

"As each new layer of abstraction becomes indistinguishable from magic we may be quietly killing curiosity. Or shifting its focus. Is the stack so deep now that we can't know everything?" Hanselman asks.

Hanselman divides people into two clear binaries: the curious and the not-curious. He claims that people might start viewing new technological advancements as magic. And as that magic becomes harder and harder to understand, curiosity might disappear from the picture.

"As each new layer of abstraction becomes indistinguishable from magic we may be quietly killing curiosity," he writes. "Or shifting its focus. Is the stack so deep now that we can't know everything?"

Dr. Travers also touches upon this in her essay. She worries that we might not want to reflect, be in deep thought, or engage in an organic evolution of ideas anymore. The never-before-been-easier process of getting answers to almost any question we can find kind of makes our brain lazy, doesn't it?