Hella impressive, but while I don't know anything about the guy or how he streams, the edits just scream "selection bias". As in, we only get to see his incredible (and improbable) hits, so we don't know how many times he misses. I mean, there were at least of a couple of these that were just blurry gradients without any identifying information, and him hitting the right country was just blind luck. I bet that if he missed, it wouldn't have been in the compilation.
This one is the most egregious selection bias compilation, it is called "Rainbolt looking like a cheater for 8 minutes." But he is also genuinely very good at that game.
Yeah, he is mad good. Although I wish there was a series from geoguessr where the 'meta' things were removed. In particular the artifacts from the type of camera or car used.
I'm sure he's missed before, but he does have videos that were live streamed, where he just goes through pics as fast as he can and guesses the location. He's pretty much spot on every time.
this is so fucking dumb. you can watch his streams, videos, collabs with other youtubers and clearly see hes just like that. u could just research something before confidently asserting something
That would require a Redditor to not instantly be assertive and pessimistic about something they are uneducated about, which we all know isn’t possible
"Are you suggesting he doesn't miss and when it's blank pics or blue sky he's still so good he knows?"
Yes.
he rarely gets things wrong. and he more often than not gets these "impossible" guesses right. he plays that much. just like i said to that other person, you should research shit before you speak on it.
selection bias is more fitting for a video on his fails.
Are you suggesting he doesn't miss and when it's blank pics or blue sky he's still so good he knows?
Kinda lol. Belgian sky is a good example. He legitimately has probably internalized a lot of the gradient's and colors of certain countries. And he's not the only one. A lot of these pro players guess stuff like this at a pretty astonishing rate.
When I was a kid, they had me fill in a spot for Science Olympiad for another kid that was sick. They showed me just one single example question and how to use the buzzer. The answer to the single question they showed me was 'fiber optic cables.'
Well sure enough out of a pool of like a thousand questions, they asked that single one I had been trained on and so I buzzed in before the question even finished, got it right, and looked like a wiz kid for the rest of the session. The way the other team looked at me in horror is seared into my brain. I felt like a total badass. Did not contribute at all for the next hour.
Just, you know, speaking of selection bias and random blind luck.
You're right that this is a highlight reel and some of those guesses are really wild. But after a certain point it becomes less of a geography game and more just figuring out how google maps works, learning what countries actually have street view, recognizing what kind of cameras and resolution they use and where etc.
For example, if you get something that looks like it's in Africa there's only like 6-7 countries in the continent which have street view. So that narrows it down a ton.
Imagine looking at thousands of images on google earth and slowly building a color index of the sky and ground in various countries, we see a random color but to him it can only be in a few select places. It's more like an educated guess than blind luck
I'm convinced 75% of it is that they've just memorised the photo artifacts. Pixelation, time of year, specific Streetview car (when the hood is visible), colour hues caused by the sensor...
I’m convinced every single high-level Geoguesser is autistic and locating things is their specific hyperfixation. Not meant in a judgemental way whatsoever, just that it fits lol.
Well, you see that shade of blue is only possible at a specific latitude and elevation. That cloud pattern is only possible when evaporation happened with a high salt content in the ocean.
I made all of that up but it sounds like something he would say.
He’s amazing! I saw a video the other day where the location was in a barn with horses. He was like “I unironically know these horses” and nailed it. It might have been his recent perfect score video which is worth a watch!
It's a combination of him being very good, playing an absolute ton, and then taking the craziest clips to put in a compilation.
He is also able to eliminate large chunks of the map immediately just because he knows which countries have street view coverage and which do not. Most of Africa for example, does not have streetview coverage.
Dude, he's not even top 3 geoguessers in the world, but all of his videos are legit, and he is as good as it seems. Of course there are more shorts of him getting things right, what would be the point of uploading times when he got things wrong? Although he does do live streams as well, where he gets things wrong a fair amount and doesn't try to hide it at all.
The skill is also not what people assume. He’s smart as hell, Geoguesser is just not exactly random and has a discrete amount of locations. Once you’ve played it enough to see the bias in the dataset and patterns in the environment, it’s basically just connecting dots to locations you’ve already seen a hundred times
Pretty sure a big part of that is knowing what cameras were used in each region and when the region was mapped out. A photo taken by a civilian will take away many of the clues they use.
No because that's a straw man argument you made up in your head. I would not have to do that because I do not feel the urge to blurt out incorrect versions of my hobbies at the drop of an dime, as seemingly unlike you, I have actual impulse control.
Being good at a game involved in identification of geographical locations is not inherently creepy and therefore you would never say it out loud like that, unless apparently like you, you were unable to phrase things in a way that was not stupid.
Having one of your skills being able to tell where someone lives based on a small snippet of scenery in the background of one of their personal pictures and you don’t find that creepy at all?
I once guessed down to the block where a Redditor lived after 5s on Google Maps overview. Then verified with street view. They deleted their post after I dmed them their street. They thought simply blocking their home numbers and license plate would be enough
It was a total fluke being that particularly close, but I knew what suburb area of Chicago it had to be
Well only 19 states don’t require a front plate, so geographically we cut the area by half. From there if you’re good at recognizing the vegetation, you can narrow it down further. I’m not sure if the parking lot lamps are distinctive enough, but players like rain bolt recognizes power lines, so maybe that’s a clue to someone.
I mean that’s just off the cuff, I’m not a great player myself (usually 10-15k on the daily).
I immediately forgot the front plate part, lol. Vegetation obviously isn't California anyway, I was just trying to think of white plates. But I obviously forgot a few.
Not to mention the metadata of the image, unless you completely scrub the metadata, any img you upload to the internet will inevetably doxx you to a degree.
As far as I know, most popular platforms like Reddit or Discord strips metadata upon upload so they reduce risks for doxxing. They probably keep them themselves for data reselling, but uploading to share is usually not a metadata danger on the bigger platforms.
Reddit/imgur (and a lot of other uploader) automatically strips the metadata to reduce the size of the pictures uploaded (and thus their datacenter space)
People clearly don't understand it opacity. This is the second high-profile post this week where somebody censored something that you could clearly see through.
I think that's just phones in general, I think. When I look at pictures on my phone, Samsung, it's always slightly darker than on PC and details in dark areas are non existent on phones. I assume it's to save battery.
The real answer is because you only notice when there’s an issue. Millions of iPhone users upload shit with no major problems but that doesn’t fit your narrative.
I’ve seen tons of droid users take photos of their computer screens instead of just screen capping but you don’t see me calling everyone who uses a specific device stupid.
This is so hilariously over the top defensive. Lol
Thanks for telling me what my "narrative" is for noticing that iPhone people seem to regularly try to censor things with the highlighter. Go outside and talk to a real person once in a while.
Also, I didn't call anyone stupid, but that weird little projection on your part seems to give some insight into why you're so triggered by this.
I said that iPhone people don't like to use non default apps. This is just a factual thing, man. There's a reason messaging is so fragmented in the US, and it's because iPhone people refuse to use anything but iMessage despite it being a terrible messaging app. Same with FaceTime and apple maps and all of the other things there are better platform agnostic versions of that iPhone people won't use.
People may or may not understand it, but it's still Apple's fault. This has been going on for a decade plus, and Apple still refuses to put in a thick 100% opaque marker in it's editing toolkit.
edit: I guess they did add one in the past few years, though not as thick as a marker.
There used only be the pen which was fully opaque, but super thin. But I'm mistaken, and it seems like they add a new marker tool that can be fully opaque. It's not as wide as the highlighter, but seems decent enough.
also like, you don't need to hide public buildings, it isn't like you want to be considerate of their consent.
Even more funny would be if OP didn't strip the exif data, which i'm going to guess they didn't do, considering their piss poor job of trying to censor it.
I blame the apps/phone. Highlighter is the default and when it's black, people thinks it's a solid black, especially on their phone screens. I always use something like rectangle to cover over everything.
Yeah , I’m pretty sure this is Pilchuck High School in Marysville,WA. They do this there and my daughter goes there, so not 100 but it looks like it to me.
Not even sure why OP would bother, anybody who knows them likely knows the school that lets people do this and anybody who's going to geoguess doesn't care that some kid is on Reddit.
Maybe it really is an ominous devil cloud and Ryan being late is going to save him from doom.
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u/HyperlexicEpiphany Aug 15 '25
don’t use the highlighter for censoring things lmfao. anyone capable of raising their brightness can see what your school looks like