Spinning Rat

What it is

Spinning Rat is a website with a rat on it. The rat is a low-poly 3D model, gray-brown with a long pink tail, and it turns slowly on a black background while a tune plays. A counter in the corner tracks how long you have been watching. That is the entire site, and the domain name says so.

How to play

Click where it says click to spin. The small print under it warns that music will start, and it does. The rat begins its rotation, the counter top left starts counting your rat time in seconds, and two lines at the bottom tell you how many other people are watching the rats right now and what the daily high score is. A toggle bottom right turns the tunes off and on. There are no other controls for the rat.

What makes it different

It keeps score of nothing. The rat time counter persists in your browser, so the number picks up where you left it, and the site's own line is that a higher score means more rats. More than one rat can turn up, overlapping the first. The watcher count moves while you look, which is more company than a rat usually gets.

Why it is on Bored

A rotating rat with a timer is pointlessness in its purest form, a page that does exactly one thing with a straight face. It asks nothing, rewards nothing and keeps a number anyway, and that number is the trap. Leave the tab open and the number grows, and now you have a rat time to protect.

Tips

• Turn the tunes off if you plan to leave it open at work
• Your rat time is stored in your browser, so use the same one to keep the number going
• Watch the people-watching counter, it changes while you look
• Leave the tab open in the background, the counter keeps going
• A link top right points at a separate site about a cat, which is a different page

FAQ