- I love the irony behind making Google Maps intense.
Guessing where I am on Google Maps but in 0.
1 seconds.
Portugal.
Alright.
I have to play into the irony.
I feel like, because it's like, "Oh, this guy's a professional
Google Maps player," I have to own that, right?
It's, like, the most nerdy thing ever.
I have to accept that this is not
the most usual thing that you've ever seen.
- For a little more than a year, Trevor Rainbolt has been playing
GeoGuessr, a trivia game powered by Google Maps.
In it, you have to guess a location on the world,
using only a Google Street View image.
- Surfing. Nice.
- He's quickly gained a massive
following on TikTok and Instagram
because he's just so good at the game and so fast.
- Malaysia. Kyrgyzstan.
- Our reporter Teddy Amenabar interviewed Trevor Rainbolt
to figure out how he's able to do what he does.
- I started casually playing in high school,
probably in 2016.
It was, like, one of those games where it's just, like,
back-of-the-class activities, and I was horrible.
Like, I didn't know anything about the world at all.
I believe that I'm, like, this type of person
that once I start really doing anything,
I have to, like, kind of get really good at it.
And so I kind of just got addicted to it.
And, like, I was spending every night studying
or playing or everything.
- I mean, I don't even know if you'd consider GeoGuessr
a video game. That's what I'm struggling with.
Like, are you someone who'd consider yourself --
who plays video games?
- I wouldn't really consider myself a gamer.
Like, I'll play, like, party games here
and there with friends, like "Fall Guys"
or "Fortnite No-Build."
But very much not like -- I'm not grinding "Overwatch,"
can't wait for, like, a new, like,
games or anything like that.
Initially, when I first started, it was, like --
I mean, the weekends, I'm talking 8 to 10 hours a day.
I probably play 3 or 4 hours a day now,
just to stay consistent.
And then I was like, "Okay, I'm gonna make tips Villa."
Like, "How do I do this?
Let's make a top 5 ways to tell where you are on Google Maps."
Number 5 is Colombia.
If you see this cross,
which is actually called the Colombian cross,
on the back of a sign,
that means you have to be in Colombia.
That was January 1st.
And I woke up the next morning --
I posted it at 1:00 AM.
I woke up the next morning, had like 400,000 views.
I'm like, "Oh, my God."
And then it just kind of snowballed from there.
Dirt and soils are one of the first things
you learn in the game,
so it's, like, something that I have al--
every single beat I've posted, I'm using the soil, regardless.
What you see is the countries and their soil color
and overall surrounding areas,
what the general field looks like.
It's a trained-eye type of thing.
Can I describe to you why I think that looked like
it was Nigerian soil?
Probably not, but it just does.
And it's just, like, that part of that, like, sixth sense
that you pick up on when you play the game so much.
- Take the Northeast Brazil example.
Like, that's a reddish-brown soil.
- This is very much Brazilian dirt.
Um, Northeast Brazil, probably.
Yep.
- There are other parts of the world that reddish-brown,
oxidized soil. - Mm-hmm.
- I don't understand how you then get there
instead of another part of the world.
It's using the surrounding, as well.
Road lines, road conditions,
what side of the road you drive on, is real important.
And learning your bollards, learning telephone poles,
learning languages, learning architecture, and learning cars.
License plates are massive.
For the Northeast Brazil example, for example,
I could see fences in the background.
Those fences, I know, are common in Northeast Brazil.
I know the soil is in Brazil.
I confirm it that this is Northeast Brazil,
and not Cambodia,
because you don't get these fences in the back on Cambodia.
- Do photos ever repeat through the game,
or, I mean, if it does, is it really rare?
- So, there's two maps I play on.
There's one called A Community World,
and there's one called A Diverse World.
Memorizing 170,000 photos would be a lot more impressive
than memorizing ways
to tell what region you are in the world.
- There are, obviously, always going to be people
who see viral videos like this,
saying, "This is fake," or, "This is all an act."
What do you say to people who are like,
"I don't trust that this is happening"?
Like, what would you say to them?
- I like using the analogy, it's like a magician.
To a magician, it's easy to see
how it's done, how it's possible.
But to the new player,
where they don't have any context or anything,
any learnings on what's happening behind the scenes,
or how I'm making these educated guesses,
I understand the skepticism.
'Cause as a new player, I used to watch videos
that were much lower-level than what I'm playing here,
and I'm like, "There's no way."
But understanding that there's magic,
which is basically all the different ways
that we study the game.
- Is this part of the reason you're speed-running,
because by speed-running, you're kind of eliminating
the concern that you're hitting up
Google or a Chrome extension to get the answer?
- Yeah, I think, one, if I have to start
making cuts in my videos, that adds to the sketchiness.
Like, I don't cut my videos, for the most part.
Like, it's literally just record and upload.
Do I play like that in my free time?
100%.
Do I lean into it more when I'm creating content?
100%.
But it's also just my play style.
- You could use this skill in other industries.
National security.
I mean, there's, like, legitimate industries
where people want to see where a video came from
and what the location was.
Has that been a thought that goes through your head?
- It's one of the most common questions.
Like, work at the CIA.
I think it's two completely different things.
I do think some of my skill translates over into that.
But if you show me, like, a random field in Russia,
it would be hard for me to distinguish it between maybe --
I would probably unders-- I would probably get it,
but it's a lot different than learning Street View.
- Do you imagine you'll keep playing GeoGuessr
for the foreseeable future?
- I don't know, I feel like it's such a privilege
to have GeoGuessr, the game itself.
You find such an appreciation
for these different cultures and countries
that you wouldn't really have had prior.
The amount of people that probably got into geography off
this, it, like, makes me so happy.
I think someone said once, like, I'm making geography cool.
I'm like, "Wow, that's, like, the highest-tier compliment,
like, I could have ever gotten."
Is my brain gonna work the same, you know, in 10 years?
I hope. Will I be as good in 10 years?
I hope. But who knows?
Going around.
Norway.
Nice.
21K, not bad.