Bored Panda got in touch with the team behind the “Weird Side Of The Internet” and they were kind enough to answer some of our questions. We wanted to know what event prompted them to make the page in the first place. “The birth of our page carries a fascinating story. We launched the initiative on Facebook in September 2015 with the idea of gathering the most curious and eccentric content from the web, often devoid of additional information beyond the material itself.”

“The inspiration for the Italian name "La Parte Strana dell'Internet" (The Weird Side of the Internet) came from "The Weird Side Of Youtube". This was a sort of virtual journey that led users to explore a series of suggested videos, ultimately discovering unexpected content often relegated to the darkest corners of Youtube.”

“This unusual journey offered a vision of videos far from the mainstream, and you would often stumble upon quite unusual experiments. From this philosophy, "La Parte Strana dell'Internet" was born. Our goal was to collect and disseminate content that, although it appeared strange and out of the ordinary, possessed an undeniable charm. The idea was to share this peculiar aspect of the internet with a community, giving life to an entirely new experience, and it is still our mission today.”

As explorers of the weirder part of the net, we do have to salute the group behind the page, as most of these posts might simply disappear without proper documentation. But we also were curious to hear how they actually approach the question of what constitutes a “weird” image. After all, things are almost never as subjective as on the internet. 

“For us, a "weird" image is something that challenges normal logic or arouses a strong sense of surprise or disbelief, all within the standards of various platforms. It doesn't necessarily have to be something scary or disturbing. It can be something comical, surreal, or even absurd. The main rule we follow is that the image must be able to provoke a strong reaction.”

Naturally, this leads to the question of what attracts viewers to these sorts of posts. “We believe that the popularity of this type of content stems from its ability to offer a break from daily routine. Our world can often be very predictable and ordinary, so it's refreshing to encounter something completely out of the ordinary. These contents also offer a kind of intellectual challenge, as they often push people to reflect and try to understand what they are looking at.”

The admins left us with a few closing thoughts. “We would like to add that we are very pleased to see how the community appreciates the "weird side". On both our Instagram pages "La Parte Strana dell'Internet" and "The Weird Side of the Internet", a pleasant and collaborative atmosphere has been established. It's often the community itself that researches and finds the authors of viral content, too often shared quickly without citing the source. 

“The latter is a very delicate issue that we sometimes struggle to communicate to those who accuse us of freebooting, a practice far from our way of operating, which consists of applying our own logo or signature to others' content, passing it off as our own. Thankfully, most of our fans understand our intent and help us recover information and credits in record time. Thank you all for the support!”

So if this sort of content tickles your fancy, be sure to go and follow them either on Facebook or Instagram. Remember, the internet is huge, with more content being made each day than most of us could consume in a year. Finding the bits of gold in an ocean of data is tiring and often thankless work, so we should all try to appreciate the curators out there who gather these things for us.