147,238 moments resolved · est. 2013
curated by hand · added often
/

17 Category · Time Wasters

Time Wasters

Sites that exist purely to consume the next hour of your life. Curated since 2013.

What this is

The Time Wasters category at BoredomBash collects content sites and infinite-scroll feeds — destinations that don't ask for your time but reliably take it. Wikipedia Random gives you an entirely random encyclopedia article every click. Atlas Obscura catalogs the world's strangest places. Pudding Cool publishes data-driven visual essays. Reddit r/all is the worst version of the internet but the most addictive. The boundary between "useful site that wastes your time" and "useless site that wastes your time" is thinner than it looks; this category sits on the useful side. Sixteen sites featured below. For the broader "things to do when bored" overview that crosses categories, see our things-to-do guide.

The directory · 16 entries

Hand-picked time wasters

Filter
Nothing here under that filter. Press Surprise Me or pick a different one.

Live · 7-day window

Hot this week

    Curator's pick

    Wikipedia Random

    Wikipedia Random has been our category pick since the directory launched. Press the link, get an entirely random Wikipedia article. It's not built as a time-waster — Wikipedia would prefer you arrive via search or interlinking — but the Random Article feature is the cleanest infinite content engine on the internet. Free since 2001. No advertising. No algorithm. No tracking beyond standard server logs. The articles range from notable people you've never heard of to obscure bridges in countries you didn't know existed to taxonomic categories of beetles. Two hours can disappear in a way that occasionally also teaches you something. It is, in our editorial opinion, the single best time-waster ever built.

    For four-minute breaks

    Best for the four-minute break.

    For the meeting gap, the destinations in this category that earn their tab fastest are:

    Wikipedia Random — one click, one new article. Surprisingly often genuinely interesting.

    TIL on Reddit — top posts of the day, usually one new fact each.

    Mental Floss daily fact — one fact a day, on the homepage. The whole pitch.

    These three deliver something genuinely worth the tab in under two minutes.

      For long evenings

      Best for the long evening.

      For the Sunday afternoon or the no-sleep nights:

      Atlas Obscura — strange places, weird histories, properly written long-form.

      Pudding Cool — interactive visual essays. Each one is a proper sit-down read.

      Reddit r/all — risky territory. Genuinely addictive, occasionally harmful, comes with the standard warning.

      Wikipedia rabbit hole — start anywhere; follow the links; emerge three hours later having read about Byzantine succession crises.

      These reward the time. Reddit is the asterisk; the rest are unambiguously good.

        Related categories

        Other rooms of pointless internet

        Useless Websites Internet Classics Funny Websites Hidden Gems Feel-Good Loops Fact Engines

        More about this · tap to expand

        Editorial What makes a good time waster? Read more

        Not every aimless website earns a spot in this category. We applied a small set of criteria.

        It has a lot of content. Time wasters live or die by depth. A single-purpose site (a fidget spinner, a sound loop) belongs in Useless Websites. Time wasters reward repeat visits because there's always more to find.

        The content is at least vaguely worthwhile. Wikipedia, Atlas Obscura, Mental Floss, Pudding Cool — these all teach you something incidentally while wasting your time. We avoid the pure dopamine farms; the line is fuzzy but real.

        Browsing is rewarded over searching. A time waster works without a specific destination in mind. You go to wander, not to find. Sites built for goal-directed search (most retail, most news) don't qualify.

        It's free and signup-optional. Free entry, no email required to start browsing. Most have premium tiers or subscriptions; none of them gate the basic experience.

        It scales. Works equally well for five minutes or five hours. Most of the sites here have a mode for both — Wikipedia for the quick fact-check or the all-evening rabbit hole; Reddit for the bored scroll or the deep r/AskHistorians session.

        The directory grows when something new shows up that meets all five. It shrinks when something crosses into ad-farm territory or paywalls its core experience.

        Context A short history of time wasters. Read more

        Time wasters predate the internet by decades — newspaper Sunday supplements, magazines you'd flick through at the dentist, late-night TV channels, even radio shows. The internet version arguably starts with Stumble Upon (2001), which gave users a button that randomly opened a curated webpage and which arguably invented the modern time-waster mechanic. The 2007–2012 era brought viral aggregators: LolCats, Cracked, BuzzFeed, all designed for the casual scroll-and-share. Reddit and Imgur scaled the model to user-generated content.

        The 2013–2018 era was peak listicle. Every aggregator on the internet was racing to publish "30 cats who look like men in suits"-type content. Some aged terribly (most of BuzzFeed's listicles are now broken or paywalled); others matured into proper publications. Atlas Obscura (2009) graduated from a niche curio site into a serious travel-and-curiosity publication. Pudding Cool (2018) pioneered the data-driven visual essay format. Mental Floss (2001) outlasted three ownership changes and still publishes daily.

        The post-2020 wave is the AI-summary era — sites that scrape original sources and republish them with thin commentary. We exclude these. Time wasters need to feel like someone made them on purpose, not like a content farm with a feed reader. The directory at the top of this page has been pruned hard against this trend; what remains is sites with editorial standards.

        Editorial standards How we curate. Read more

        This category gets reviewed once a month. Bot-tracked link checks run nightly to catch broken sites or paywalled redirects. Reader submissions arrive through /submit/; we accept around two per month. We don't take paid placements — paid time-wasting is a contradiction in terms. The editorial bar is low for variety and high for quality: we'd rather have one excellent encyclopedia than three identical aggregators. Old entries get retired when the site sells out, paywalls its core, or floods with ads. The category caps at around 25 destinations because beyond that the list stops being useful.

        If you liked this If you liked this, try… Read more

        If this category lands for you, the closest sister categories on BoredomBash are Useless Websites (single-purpose toys rather than content fountains), Hidden Gems (the lower-traffic but higher-quality options that don't get listicled), and Fact Engines (factual content sites: Atlas Obscura, Mental Floss, Today I Found Out — overlapping with this category by design). For the broader cross-category "what should I do when I'm bored" question, see Things To Do When Bored.

        From the wider Degen Network portfolio

        Sister site

        Frustrated.io

        Brutalist mini-games, daily PIN puzzles, the kind of pointless ones-and-zeros that pair well with this category.

         Sister site

        Untreatable.com

        Fake medical diagnoses for problems you definitely don't have. Useless in a more diagnostic register.

         Sister site

        Mock.cc

        Generators for fake mugshots, fake credentials, fake everything. The parody end of pointless.

        FAQ · People also ask

        Questions about this category.

        What is the best time waster website?

        The most-clicked time waster on BoredomBash is Wikipedia Random — one click, one entirely random article. Free since 2001, no advertising, no algorithm. Atlas Obscura and Pudding Cool are close seconds for visitors who want longer-form reading. The current top five live at the top of this page in the Trending block.

        Why do I waste so much time online?

        The honest answer is that most of the internet is engineered to be wasted on. Algorithmic feeds, infinite scroll, autoplay video, and notification systems are all designed by teams of people whose job is to keep you on-platform. If you're losing more time online than you'd like, the fix isn't willpower — it's switching to sites that aren't trying to maximize your time. The destinations in this category will reliably waste an hour but won't keep you for four.

        Are time wasters bad for you?

        Occasional time-wasting is fine and probably healthy — psychologists since the 1990s have linked moderate boredom-and-distraction cycles to creative thinking and mental rest. The sites in this category are at the wholesome end of the genre. Where it goes wrong is the algorithmic-feed end (TikTok, Instagram, Reddit on the wrong day) where the platform is optimising for hours, not minutes.

        What's the difference between a time waster and a useless website?

        Time wasters have a lot of content and reward repeat visits. Useless websites do one thing and close out the joke quickly. Wikipedia Random is a time waster (infinite articles); Pointer Pointer is a useless website (one trick). Both belong on BoredomBash but in different categories. There's overlap — sites like Neal.fun span both.

        How do you choose websites for the time wasters category?

        We test each candidate against five criteria: it has a lot of content, the content is vaguely worthwhile (not pure dopamine farming), browsing is rewarded over searching, it's free and signup-optional, and it scales from a five-minute to a five-hour session. Roughly one in seven candidates makes it in. Reader submissions go through /submit/ and get reviewed manually.

        Are these sites safe to browse at work?

        Most are, but with the standard caveats: Reddit r/all surfaces NSFW content occasionally; 9GAG is unpredictable; Imgur sometimes loads adult-tagged posts on the front page. The "safer at work" picks in this category are Wikipedia Random, Atlas Obscura, Mental Floss, and Pudding Cool — all genuinely safe-for-work editorial publications. Where a destination has more risk, we mark it in the entry tagline.

        How often is the time wasters category updated?

        Link checks run nightly. Editorial review happens monthly. Around two new destinations get added per month on average; one or two old ones get retired or replaced (most often when a site paywalls its core experience or sells out to a content farm). The list at the top of the page is always current.

        Can I submit a time-waster website?

        Yes — submissions go through /submit/. Every one is reviewed manually against the five criteria above. We accept around two per month. We don't take paid submissions, and we're cautious about anything that looks like a content farm or AI-summary site.

        What's the most addictive time-waster?

        Reddit r/all is the empirically most addictive — its algorithmic feed is engineered for retention. Wikipedia is the most beneficially addictive (you waste time but learn things). Cookie Clicker, despite living in our games category, is the most pure time-vampire we've encountered. The "most addictive" question doesn't have a good answer; the better question is "which of these will I be glad I spent time on?" — for which Wikipedia and Atlas Obscura win consistently.

        ← Back to directory