Man who can pinpoint exact locations from tiny details in photos explains how he does it
Ali Condon
Featured Image Credit: Instagram/@georainbolt
If you've ever heard of the online game GeoGuessr, there's a chance you might have come across player Trevor Rainbolt.
Trevor has earned millions of followers by being able to pinpoint an exact location anywhere in the world, just be looking at a short video or screenshot, and now he's showing people how he does it.
A game like GeoGuessr challenges players to identify a location based on a scene from Google Street View, and Trevor can usually get it spot on in a matter of seconds.
But, if you give him a little more time, he can take almost any video or photo and pinpoint to the exact location it was taken - whether it's where Lizzo shot the music video for her song '2 Be Loved', or the exact location of *that* scary car commercial.
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Understandably, people are pretty blown away by Trevor's unusual, and slightly terrifying, skill.
So he decided to sit down and show his fans exactly how he does it.
In one clip, he shows how he's able to narrow down the exact location of a random video of a capybara riding passenger-side.
By the architecture of houses and street signs in the background, the driver sitting on the right-hand side of the car, he's able to narrow the video down to the US.
As if that wasn't already impressive, he can then narrow down the state based on the licence plate of a car in one frame of the video, and the route the driver is taking based on the direction of a shadow. A shadow!
In another clip, he's able to narrow down the exact location of a Captcha photo - you know, they kind you have to investigate to prove you're not a robot.
The Captcha task asks a user to click on all the frames that have bicycles in them. But by zooming in on those same bikes, Trevor is able to determine in a matter of seconds that they come from Lille, France.
By looking up hundreds of public records and filtering through co-ordinates, he's eventually able to find the exact bike-stop in Lille where that Captcha was taken.
It's pretty methodical, painstaking work that Trevor is doing, but with millions of followers tuning in to watch him investigate, he has been able to make a living out of it.
After watching the YouTuber unpack his bizarre skill, Redditors were blown away - if not a little creeped out.
"Damn. That is both fascinating and frightening at the same time," commented one viewer.
"You can watch him do it in real time. It’s muuuuuch more creepy," noted a second.
"Bro is some kind of machine," raved a third.
Some pointed out that Trevor could probably use his skills to solve missing persons cases or assist the FBI.
But for others, it was an absolutely chilling reminder that anything you post online can give away more information about you than you probably think.
"Cool cool cool. Just a casual reminder that any pictures you post online can give someone you don’t know your exact location," commented one concerned Redditor. "All it takes is someone determined enough. But don't worry, keep uploading those pics to the internet."
Well... time to delete Instagram.