The Internet was Meant for Fun
Before the Internet was full of trolls and bullying, it was full of amazing fun and harmless things that made you look forward to spending quality time just surfing. When was the last time you just surfed the net? Younger folks, especially Millennials and Generation Z most likely never had this joy, so it’s time to bring it back with these great websites to waste time on. We’d like to think you come to our own site for lots of your time-wasting needs, but we know there are others 😉
1. The Oatmeal
If you’ve never looked at this great site, it’s time you did. There’s tons of great content, much of which is in quick-read style comics. It’s one of our favorite places to waste a few minutes here and there. In fact, of all the websites to waste time on in this list, this one is probably our favorite.
2. Gravity Points
If you like science, or even if you don’t, Gravity Points is super fun for at least a few minutes. Screen opens with a bunch of very small white particles moving along the screen. You drop little gravity points where ever you want that cause the particles to move towards and orbit them.
What’s really fun with Gravity Points is that you can create multiple gravity points and watch how they fight for control over the particles. The little gravity points themselves will slowly move towards each other and grow when they combine, increasing their power. If one gets too big, it pops and shoots everything that was orbiting out in all directions ready to be captured again by new gravity points. Very fun!
3. Oregon Trail
Remember that game from middle school? Well, if not it’s probably because you’re too young to have played it. But lots of Gen X folks wasted a ton of time on the computers in the school computer lab playing Oregon Trail. Boy do these graphics take me back…
You can play a fully functioning version of the original game including those fun hunting scenes where killing one animal netted you 900 lbs. of food, but you were only able to carry 100 lbs. back to the wagon.
And yes, I got sidetracked playing this for over an hour while writing this article proving it is one of the best websites to waste time on.
4. Giphy
If you haven’t discovered Giphy yet, it’s time. Filled with lots of those animated .gifs we love, Giphy is one of the largest collections and most user-friendly search engines for finding the perfect .gif.
And you can even embed them into your own posts, like we did with the image above.
5. Factoclock
Factoclock (no longer active) is a great website that throws up a random fact every minute. If you’re ever looking for a quick way to list out some easy conversation starters at that next awkward party you didn’t want to be at, this is the place.
6. Random Facts
Along the same idea of Factoclock, this website is a slideshow of over 9900 interesting facts. You can scroll through these for a very long time before reaching the end.
7. Silk
If you like really awesome drawing boards, head on over to Silk’s Interactive Generative Art page. The site lets you draw using your mouse creating some beautiful effects.
You can change the colors and symmetry using their settings and you can save the image right from the window (we just used a screenshot for the one above). Silk is another one of those websites to waste time on that really gives you a few minutes of peace from the hectic-ness of the day.
8. Did You Know?
Another factoid site that you can waste a bunch of time on. You can find cool factoids in text and meme format all categorized so you can dig into what you like.
Did you know also has a ton of full length articles on interesting topics such as, “Here’s Why it’s Absolutely Impossible for Someone to Open a Plane Door Mid-Flight“.
There are a bunch of good reads there and you can find yourself wasting time on it much longer than you’d originally intended.
9. Bored Panda
We couldn’t go this entire list without one really big popular site – Bored Panda has been around quite and while and has a ton of great content. The only reason we didn’t score it higher on the list is because it has tons of ads on the site that detract from the experience.
10. SuperCook
SuperCook is a highly useful site, and we often find ourselves wasting time on it just throwing stuff into it to see what it spits out. Basically it’s a recipe-generator where you tell it what ingredients you have and it turns out all the things you can make with those items.
While typically meant for the kitchen, SuperCook is also fun just to play around with or to get ideas for what to cook for dinner.
More Websites to Waste Time On
If you still haven’t gotten enough, we have a quick and dirty post with 50 more websites to waste time on from a couple years ago. Head over there now and get clicking!