Do you ever research all about a random region or city as if you were going to live there?

I used to like to go on Google Earth street view and explore random places all across the world.

There are some very poor places.

Nothing wrong with that. Nice, cheap hobby.

I look at google maps all the time. I like to get really high and find tiny islands out in the middle of the ocean with a little village on them.

Crazy where some people on Earth live. I've seen island hundreds of miles away from anything that are like 3 acres big with 12 homes on it. Completely segregated from the rest of the world. That would be a crazy life.

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I seemingly do this all the time. I just research a place like crazy and determine in my mind if I could/would live there. I’ve done some totally random places like the latest is Nebraska.

Technically you could live anywhere but would you like living there is the question.

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Yes, actually. Like before going to sleep and just looking at houses on Zillow in a totally random place I'm likely never going to even pass through. Then google maps and looking at shops, restaurants and things to do around it.

Yes all the time. I’ve always thought I was weird for doing it (and others have thought I was weird) so it’s funny to hear others do the same thing.

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It makes it really easy to make friends from anywhere - I usually know at least a good few things about their region.

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It’s a good conversation starter or a way to make small talk when you meet someone from a place you’ve dug into on google earth & wiki

I do it on vacations all the time.

Yes, I do this often. I look up jobs, schools, houses for sale. What the churches do, where they are in relation to the houses/jobs I look up.

But before internet, when we’d go to the library on the weekend, I used to read atlases and encyclopedias, and my parents would read newspapers from all over the country and the world - so same thing but it’s easier on a computer

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I’ve done some totally random places like the latest is Nebraska.

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I wonder how easy it is to pick up on how good Nebraska and Iowa are vs. how utterly shitty Missouri and Indiana are just doing online research.

Last one I did was Boston. I looked at the violent crime incidents map. Then I looked at another map of demographics and it matched up perfectly. That’s how you figure out where to move and where not to move in a city. (Shrugs )

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I'm glad to know I'm not the only one that does this. Any downtime I have at work I just randomly navigate Google maps

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Apparently it’s pretty common by the responses here.

I mainly do US cities but have definitely dabbled into Canada some as well. I look at restaurants grocery stores and other things I’d use if I lived there.