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02 Category · Useless Websites

Useless Websites

Hand-picked sites that do absolutely nothing useful — and that's the entire point.

What this is

The Useless Websites category is BoredomBash's home for sites that exist purely to entertain. Pointer Pointer photographs people pointing at your mouse. Falling Falling drops endless color bands down your screen. Patience Is A Virtue tells you, factually, that patience is a virtue, and then does nothing else for as long as you are willing to wait. Sixteen sites are featured below; the full category contains over thirty. We've been curating them since 2013. For the broader explainer on what useless websites are and where they came from, see our useless websites guide.

The directory · 17 entries

Hand-picked useless websites

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    Curator's pick

    Pointer Pointer

    Pointer Pointer has been our category pick since the directory launched. Move your mouse anywhere on the screen, wait two seconds, and a photo of a person pointing at exactly that spot of the screen materialises. The database is enormous; we've never managed to find a screen position that doesn't return an image. The site has been online since 2012, runs on a single PHP file, has never accepted advertising, and was built by an agency creative who has otherwise done nothing else of note. It is, in our editorial opinion, the single best example of what this category is for.

    For four-minute breaks

    Best for the four-minute break.

    For the gap between meetings, the destinations in this category that earn their tab fastest are Pointer Pointer, Cat Bounce, and Eelslap — each delivers its joke within ten seconds and asks for nothing more than a few clicks. Falling Falling is the meditative version: open the tab, let it run as a second-monitor distraction while you write an email, close it. None of these will overstay their welcome.

      For long evenings

      Best for the long evening.

      Some entries reward more time. Cookie Clicker is the canonical sit-down piece — start with one cookie, finish hours later trying to optimise temple production. Universal Paperclips is the prestige option: a four-to-six hour idle game that becomes an essay on AI alignment. Drawing Garden rewards repeat visits, since the page is shared with everyone else online at the same time. These are the entries to pick when you have an hour you don't intend to recover.

        Related categories

        Other rooms of pointless internet

        Weird Websites Pointless Games Funny Websites Internet Classics Time Wasters Feel-Good Loops Hidden Gems

        More about this · tap to expand

        Editorial What makes a good useless website? Read more

        Not every aimless page on the internet earns a spot here. We applied a small set of criteria when building this category — and the same criteria when adding new entries.

        It does one thing well. A good useless website has a single concept and executes it cleanly. Falling Falling is color bands and a tone, executed forever. Pointer Pointer is a database of pointing photos and a cursor-tracker, well-stocked and well-tuned. The single-purpose design is the point — not a limitation.

        It loads instantly. No signup, no popup, no email collection, no cookie banner before you can see the joke. Useless websites are made for one-tap visits; anything that gets in the way of that loses immediately.

        It's safe. No malware, no obvious tracking, no NSFW content unless it's labeled. We re-check links monthly. Sites that go bad get removed.

        It has personality. A truly useless website is also a small, identifiable creative act. The creator made a choice; you can tell. Sites that feel auto-generated, content-farmed, or AI-slopped don't make the cut even when they technically meet the other criteria.

        The directory grows when something new shows up that meets all four. It shrinks when something stops working. The list at the top of the page is what's currently live.

        Context A short history of this category. Read more

        BoredomBash launched in 2013 as a directory of weird internet, and useless websites was one of the founding categories. The earliest entries were the canon: The Hampster Dance, Zombo.com, Pointer Pointer (which had launched the year before), Don't Even Reply, Eelslap. Most of those are still here.

        The 2017 announcement that Adobe would discontinue Flash by end of 2020 forced a reckoning. About 40% of the directory ran on Flash; we kept the entries live with Wayback Machine archives, retired the playable ones, and ran a year-long replacement project to find HTML5-native equivalents. The category that emerged was smaller but longer-lived.

        The 2020–2022 pandemic period brought an unexpected wave of new useless websites — Window Swap (look out of strangers' windows), Drawing Garden (collaborative public canvas), Procatinator (cat GIFs synced to music). Several made it into the category. We also pruned aggressively: any site that had become broken, sold to spammers, or migrated to a paywall got removed.

        The modern category, as you see it, is the result of about thirteen years of small editorial decisions. Sites come in. Sites go out. The list at the top is always the current state.

        Editorial standards How we curate. Read more

        This category gets reviewed once a month. Bot-tracked link checks (broken-link sweep, response-code monitoring) run nightly. Reader submissions come through /submit/ — every one is reviewed manually, around two get accepted per month. We don't take paid placements in this category; useless websites and sponsored content don't mix and the reader can tell. Inclusion criteria are set out above; the editorial bar is intentionally low for variety and high for quality. Old entries get retired when they break or when a clearer example of the same idea appears. The category will never grow above roughly fifty destinations because beyond that it stops being a curated list.

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

        If this category lands for you, the closest sister categories on BoredomBash are Internet Classics (the longer-running historical entries, including Homestar Runner and Newgrounds), Time Wasters (broader procrastination tools, less curated for the joke and more for raw escape), and Feel-Good Loops (the calmer, atmospheric end of useless — Window Swap, Procatinator, Lofi Girl). Outside our directory, The Useless Web and Neal.fun are the two reference hubs.

        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

        Tabloid news generator. Real celebs, dramatic headlines, full fictional articles. Sun-style tabloid energy on demand.

        FAQ · People also ask

        Questions about this category.

        How do you choose websites for the useless category?

        We test each candidate against four criteria: it does one thing well, it loads instantly with no signup or popup, it's safe (no malware, no aggressive tracking), and it has personality — a recognisable creative act. Roughly one in five candidates makes it in. Reader submissions arrive through /submit/ and get reviewed manually.

        How often is the useless websites category updated?

        The link-check runs nightly to flag broken sites. Editorial review happens monthly. Around two new destinations get added per month on average; one or two old ones get retired or replaced. The list you see at the top of the page is always the current state of the category.

        Can I submit a useless website to be added?

        Yes — we take submissions through /submit/. Every one is reviewed manually, against the four criteria above. We accept around two per month. If your submission is accepted, it gets credited to you on the destination's entry. We don't take paid submissions or affiliate-driven placements.

        What's the most popular useless website on BoredomBash?

        Pointer Pointer has been our top-clicked useless website for most of the directory's existence, followed by Cookie Clicker and The Useless Web itself. The trending block at the top of this page shows the current week's top five — these change a little from week to week.

        Are useless websites safe to visit?

        The well-known ones in this directory are safe — they don't carry malware, don't ask for credentials, and have been around for years. Use the usual caution with any unfamiliar site: don't enter passwords, don't download files, don't click ad-styled overlays. Every entry in this category is checked manually before inclusion and rechecked monthly.

        Why are useless websites so addictive?

        The successful ones combine a satisfying micro-interaction (click, drag, hover) with a low-stakes uncertainty about what happens next. Tim Holman's analysis of The Useless Web found that users averaged 11 button presses per session in the site's launch period. The mechanic is similar to a slot machine, with the crucial difference that nothing is at stake. They're addictive in the way a fidget toy is addictive.

        What if a useless website breaks or disappears?

        We monitor link health nightly. When a site goes down for more than 72 hours we mark it broken; if it doesn't return within 30 days, we replace it with a working alternative or remove it. Sites that disappear into spam (sold to a new owner who turns it into a Viagra page) get removed immediately.

        Are these useless websites safe to share at work?

        Most are, including all of our top-clicked entries. A few — Hacker Typer, Eelslap, Long Doge Challenge — are loud (they auto-play sound or take over your screen) and probably best opened with headphones, or not at the office. Where a destination has that risk, we mark it in the entry tagline.

        How long should I spend on a useless website?

        Statistically, most visitors spend about four-and-a-half minutes per session before moving on. We don't know why; we just know it's true. Some sites hold attention longer — Cookie Clicker, Universal Paperclips, Drawing Garden are all designed to. The point of this category is that nothing here demands more time than you want to give it.

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