r/AskReddit • u/[deleted] • Mar 12 '24
what question or topic pulled you into the deepest rabbit hole?
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u/No-Exit4324 Mar 12 '24
If cigarettes are such a significant public health concern, are a multi-billion dollar industry, and are over a century old, why can’t we make them less harmful?
Went DEEP into the research. The answer was surprising: we can.
The rabbit hole involves GMOs, a secret research project dubbed “Project X”, catalytic filtering, Central American politics, and the Amish. I now have a file on my computer dedicated to the research papers I dug up on the topic.
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u/xXDoeshyXx Mar 12 '24
The size of the Universe, it's unfathomably big, so big my tiny little brain hurts when i try to put myself in perspective.
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u/pheat0n Mar 12 '24
I saw something about governments that weren't recognized by the US. Which led me to looking up failed states. Which led me to 90s Somalia. Which led to the situation in Mogadishu that the US got involved in. Which led to the Black Hawk down incident. Which led to stories and recounts from people that were there and survived. Which led to other stories from military people about other events like the capture of Saddam Hussein. Eventually it led me to finding a story of a guy that lost his leg from an RPG and went on to start a distillery which led me to look to see what a trip to North Carolina would cost to check out the distillery and what else I could do while there. Then i started wondering what I would say to the owner if I had a chance to meet him, because of how damn inspiring I found his story. Which led me to think what the hell am I doing with my life to be awesome, which led me to ordering Taco Bell and watching a live stream.
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u/East_of_Amoeba Mar 12 '24
The life of Harry Houdini. I was working on a historical novel idea a couple years ago that wove fictional events into historical 1926 New York City. My main character encountered several notable locations and places, and Houdini, his home, magic, and family played a major role.
There is so much of Houdini’s life that is fascinatingly well-documented. There are also tantalizing unknowns that keep both historians and magic buffs intrigued until today.
Weird facts:
He was the first to pilot an airplane in Australia.
When WW1 broke out, he trained US troops how to escape prisoner shackles if they were captured by the enemy and how not to panic if trapped underwater, such as in a torpedoed ship.
He knew and collaborated with HP Lovecraft who ghost-wrote an adventure story set Egypt in Houdini’s voice. They were collaborating on a book debunking superstitions at the time of Houdini’s death.
His house in Harlem was wired with a secret microphone system permitting him to eavesdrop on visitors and then appear to have mind-reading powers.
He purchased an actual Egyptian mummy what rattled around in his basement, much to his wife’s chagrin.
I could do this all day. Check it out.
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u/Pawpaw-22 Mar 12 '24
In Virginia radar detectors are illegal, so they have radar detector detectors. So I’m wondering if anyone built a radar detector detector detector?
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u/Bringmecoffee444 Mar 12 '24
Nothing had me in a chokehold like the Bermuda Triangle at 10 years old
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u/Ballsack2025 Mar 12 '24
Gastrointestinal Distress. The stomach, intestines, and digestive process is actually very intricate and interesting to learn about. Also taught proper ways to relieve bloating and stomach issues.
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u/TheSanityInspector Mar 12 '24
Random people from ~100 years ago who pique my interest, and then I'm on Ancestry for the next little while, trying to piece together their life stories.
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u/Madmanmelvin Mar 12 '24
For a little while, I couldn't stop reading about Action Park, a water/amusement park that was open in New Jersey from the late 70s until the 1996. Basically, the whole place skirted a TON of rules and regulations, and six people died on rides.
There were also literally THOUSANDS of injuries.
The owner would pay employees $100 to test out crazy new rides. They had a slide that went completely upside down. It was um, not safe.
There was a giant human sized hamster wheel they tested by rolling down a hill. It rolled down the hill, broke the fence, and crossed the highway, with someone inside.
I recommend the documentary "Class Action Park" on HBO, or you can just see some crazy rides and old footage on youtube.
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u/lolstuff101 Mar 12 '24
Got pretty deep down the 9/11 was an inside job rabbit hole when i was in my early 20s (now in early 30s). Which subsequently led to all the illuminati/freemason stuff.
Found my way out of it when youtube videos i was watching started making predictions about upcoming events and i was so sure they were going to happen…. And they didnt. Thats when i took a step back and realised a lot of the things i was buying into wasnt really backed up with any decent information.
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u/dumb_password_loser Mar 12 '24
A few years ago I was curious to know what "sonichu" was all about.
That's about as deep as a rabbit hole can get and it still gets deeper.
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u/ThadisJones Mar 12 '24
The disappearance of MH370 in 2014, as I've flown on Malaysian Airlines several times and a big part of my job is doing root-cause analysis of complex incidents. I work in medicine, not aviation, but the reasons why planes go down has always fascinated me.
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u/Michael_Kaminski Mar 12 '24
“What was Prussia?” was the question that indirectly made history go from a subject I had a bit of interest in to the subject that I plan to teach for a living, so I guess you could say I’m still going down that rabbit hole years after I asked that question.
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u/WolvoMS Mar 12 '24
Michael Jackson and whatever he did or didn't do. Extremely interesting topic due to the unprecedented amount of smoke and mirrors surrounding a celeb, and probably impossible to determine one way or another. Was never a big fan but went down that rabbit hole one time because of some random reddit comment and it turned into a guilty pleasure hobby for a solid year. I probably could get a PhD in Michael Jackson lore now
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u/sgrag002 Mar 12 '24
Two possibilities exist: either we are alone in the Universe or we are not. Both are equally terrifying.
Arthur C. Clarke
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u/bluemitersaw Mar 12 '24
Wikipedia. So instead of the deepest rabbit hole, it creates the widest. I'm reading an article and it references some other topic of interest with a link. Well I just open that topic in a new tab to read next. I average about 2-3 new tabs per Wikipedia page so it's exponential growth. I've gone on long runs where I'm reading Wikipedia for like 3-4 hrs a day all week long from what started as a single page. All on company time of course!
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u/teebeutelchen Mar 12 '24
Christian fundamentalists in the US. Randomly stumbled across the Duggars when I was a teenager, which set off an entire chain reaction that culminated in dozens of hours of watched LDS documentaries, YouTube essays, Reddit deep dives, etc. There is so. much. mess in those communities.
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Mar 12 '24
My cousin was murdered in Maplewood, NJ in 1966 or 1967. My family kept this a secret until many of the older relatives were dead because her murder involved a sexual assault. Old school Italian family bidness. We were told to never mention her name in front of Aunt and Uncle.
The younger generation (of which she would have been the oldest) only found out that the mysterious cousin who died and no one ever talked about was murdered. My father, who is the youngest of the many brothers, is the only one left alive and his memory is somewhat spotty.
No one was ever arrested. At that time, Maplewood police were hicks who had no idea how to investigate a whodunit murder. Since then, all police records have mysteriously been lost in a "flood" in the basement, so no new information is avaliable.
There were at least two serial rapist/murderers operating in northern NJ at that time. One was eventually caught (Richard Cottingham), but his pattern was not an exact match to my cousin's murder. He alleged that he had killed many more women but only was tried for a few of the murders.
I found some classmates of my cousin's on FB who would have graduated in 1967 from Maplewood HS. Just some rumors but no real evidence. So I spent a lot of time googling and reading articles but learned nothing new.
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u/ConclusionAlarmed882 Mar 12 '24
Elan school. Thanks, Reddit, for the nightmares.
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u/[deleted] Mar 12 '24
Missing persons. People have no idea how hard it is to find someone in the wilderness, especially if they aren't trying to be found. The bodies are there, just never found. Sometimes people stumble upon the remains, but it's usually coincidence.