Adapted by:
John Tones
WriterI've been writing about culture for twenty-something years and, at Xataka, I cover everything related to movies, video games, TV shows, comics, and pop culture.
Karen Alfaro
WriterCommunications professional with a decade of experience as a copywriter, proofreader, and editor. As a travel and science journalist, I've collaborated with several print and digital outlets around the world. I'm passionate about culture, music, food, history, and innovative technologies.
Each time you connect to Internet Roadtrip, you appear somewhere new in the U.S. At the time of writing, I’m in Topsham, Maine. Internet Roadtrip uses Google Street View’s vast map to organize a collaborative online journey—frame by frame.
Here’s how Internet Roadtrip works. It’s simple. Log on to the game’s website and access the vehicle’s controls. You and everyone else online—usually between 700 and 900 co-drivers—take turns steering. Every nine seconds, the site asks you to vote on which direction to go next. The most popular choice wins. And then it repeats. Right now, it’s not too exciting—the road in Maine seems endless, and the group can only go one direction. But the journey will get more interesting. Cities, crossroads, and open landscapes are the real highlights.
“Radio Ga Ga.” Even actions like honking the horn or changing the radio station require a vote. (Although, if you chat with other users, you’ll learn there’s an unspoken rule not to skip stations.) The car plays real local radio stations based on its virtual location. That kind of attention to detail—and the slow, democratic pace—has made the site the Internet’s most soothing shared experience right now.
The Internet belongs to everyone. The road trip began last Tuesday in Boston and hasn’t made it out of the neighboring state. Its creator, Neal Agarwal, told 404 Media he took inspiration from another collective experiment: “Twitch Plays Pokémon,” which has run for a decade. In that game, players vote on every move in a live Twitch stream of Pokémon, resulting in chaotic, unpredictable gameplay. Internet Roadtrip, by contrast, follows Google’s logic. No one’s ending up in a virtual ditch.
Some precedent. This is not the Internet’s first journey across the country. In 2018, writer and photographer Matthew Muspratt used only Street View to travel the U.S. from Rwanda. He crossed 16 states and both coasts. Before that, Wired reported on a couple who made the trip from San Francisco to New York in 90 hours, clicking as fast as possible while carefully planning their route. Muspratt took a more reflective approach, pausing to admire the scenery.
Getting more sophisticated. Virtual travel surged during the pandemic, but projects like Internet Roadtrip now exist purely for fun. And technology keeps expanding what’s possible. Google’s historical Street View lets users jump back up to 80 years in time. Its AI tools can generate personalized routes from photos. But Agarwal has a bigger vision: making collaborative trips possible in a real, remotely controlled self-driving car. That’s still in the future—but maybe not too far.
Image | Internet Roadtrip
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