That’s the job for the What Is This Thing? subreddit. We’ve covered the community many, many times here on Bored Panda throughout the years. And now has come the time for the best of the best, the cream of the crop – the very top “What Is This Thing?” posts of all time. So, we present to you the ultimate compilation of people identifying strange, unknown objects! 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. “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?” “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. “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?” “By offering instant gratification, the Internet may inadvertently deter individuals from cultivating deeper, sustained interests and passions. The quick-fix nature of online information can, paradoxically, impede the very curiosity it seeks to satisfy.” “The digital age helps us because we can find that [simple] information, and that may drive us to look for something else about this. And that would drive perhaps epistemic curiosity, which is this love of knowledge and wanting to learn new things.” Follow Bored Panda on Google News! Follow us on Flipboard.com/@boredpanda! Please use high-res photos without watermarks Ooops! Your image is too large, maximum file size is 8 MB.
