Around the world with Geoguessr champion Trevor Rainbolt

Brut America

He can figure out exactly where in the world a picture was taken in just a few seconds. Now he's taking his expertise to help people locate lost memories …  Meet Trevor Rainbolt, one of the the best players of the online geography game Geoguessr.

Transcript

00:00Brazil.

00:01Taiwan.

00:02Finland.

00:03South Argentina.

00:04Colombia.

00:05Nice.

00:06Once you've seen like pretty much everywhere on Google Street View, a lot of it is just

00:17like, oh, I've seen this before.

00:18It's just a sixth sense you develop and the intuition of like your brain in that period

00:23where you get in like a flow state and you can guess very, very quickly.

00:37That basically takes Google Street View images and your goal of the game is to find where

00:43you are on Google Street View.

00:44I never cared for geography because I didn't know they care.

00:49But once I started playing and you start seeing this firsthand experience of the world,

00:54it's only natural to see the beauty around you that you never knew.

00:59I started initially playing very casually as like a back of a high school hobby.

01:04And that was horrible at the time.

01:05And then COVID happened and it became like a trend on YouTube.

01:08I would spend eight hours a day on the weekends at some points, you know, five.

01:12I was still working my full time job at that point.

01:14So as soon as I clocked out, I was playing the game five hours every night.

01:22The first thing I always look at is the road.

01:24The roads usually tells a lot from road line, road quality, road width, things like that.

01:28What's on the road, bollards, telephone poles, license plates.

01:31And then you probably go through like vegetation, landscape, language, things like that.

01:35France is the only country in the world that has blue stickers on their telephone poles.

01:43The beauty of the game is that you get things wrong and you continue to learn from that.

01:55Guessing where I am on Google Maps in 0.5 seconds, but blindfolded.

02:00Guessing where I am on Google Maps, but on Mars.

02:03My most impactful one, I think for myself was probably guessing only on dirt.

02:10Okay, round one here, we have light gray soil, very arid climate.

02:13I'm going to go North Botswana here, slightly more east, but it was North Bots.

02:19The ones like 0.1 second, black and white, scrambled upside down, inverted, blindfolded.

02:24Those are the ones that get like, obviously, those are harder.

02:35They might have, a lot of people have lost photos.

02:37And by lost, I mean, they have memories associated photos, but don't remember where the photo

02:42was taken.

02:43And they'll reach out to me and I'll help them locate it through geoguessr tactics or

02:47whatever it may be that I've picked up on over the years.

02:50I've done this probably 10, 20 times now.

02:53It was a father and a son on vacation in Cyprus, Greece, probably like 20 years ago.

02:59And his dad had passed away a couple of years ago.

03:03His mom couldn't remember where they vacationed or where the photo was taken at all.

03:07I was able to find the exact table that they were actually sitting in, which is like really

03:12crazy because the table is still there.

03:14Once you find the image, and once you find where it was taken, that's like the best feeling ever.

03:17I thought I was just playing a game for like over a year, right?

03:20I was like, oh, this is just a quirky game.

03:21But when it translates to like actual real life value, that's when you've got to take

03:25a step back and think, wait, this is actually like meaningful.

03:27Now I sold everything I own and now I'm living in Germany and I'll live in a different country

03:36next month.

03:37And it's very, very privileged to be able to do that.

03:41It's quite ironic.

03:42I had never left the States prior to this move.

03:46I had never traveled.

03:47It had never been something I had done.

03:49Never had been to Europe, never really left the States besides like a cruise like 10 years

03:53ago as an account.

03:54For someone that's seen so much of the world and knows so much and has dedicated so much

04:00of their life to learning about the world, it feels right to go see it.

04:08People ask me what my favorite country is.

04:09My answer is always Laos.

04:10I don't think I could have told you anything about it before GeoGuessr, but I just spent

04:13time on GeoGuessr just looking through roads and I was like, I love this country.

04:17I was bad.

04:18I was horrible at geography, really.

04:19I was like probably your average American.

04:23But I had always liked cultures and the world.

04:27I couldn't sit there and tell you the capitals or flags or anything like that, but I'd always

04:31been interested in people.

04:33And I think that was what drew me into GeoGuessr as well.

04:36If you can sit there and play a game of GeoGuessr and not be astounded by different people and

04:43how they live, different people and the cultures, the mountains, the greenery, the oceans, the

04:49water, everything.

04:51I challenge you to sit there and play for 30 minutes and not be astounded by the world.

Category

Transcript

Recommended