An app that was available before social media and its algorithms predicted what we were interested in, StumbleUpon was one of the best destinations for boredom. Through it, you could stop at completely random sites. At most, you could stop at a random site within a category that you chose.

Despite being quite famous and even worshipped, the site ended its service in 2018, becoming a Google Chrome extension called Mix, which already has a functioning more similar to the algorithms of social networks. Until a bot from Slack called Bored brought the totally random concept of the StumbleUpon app back.

How does Bored work?

First, it is necessary to understand that it works only within the Slack, a popular messaging app aimed at corporate users. Although it is aimed at work, it can be downloaded for free on Android ou iPhone.

After downloading Slack and signing up for it, you can install the bored inside messaging app. Once you’ve installed Bored in your workgroup’s Slack, simply send the command “/invite @bored” in the channel where you want to share it.

From there, you and your team members will have access to random browsing and some games that work directly from the StumbleUpon-mimicking app.

Bored has three games that you and your team can play simultaneously: a trivia game, a kind of “Among Us” by text and a game of “roast”, those comedy sketches where everyone gets together to make fun of someone in particular, but in the end the target can respond to everyone in kind.

The random browsing part, which is where it resembles StumbleUpon, means you don’t have to engage your team members in procrastination. When you click the “Get A Break” button, Bored sends you a private message with random activities, like a passive-aggressive password generator or a minigame where you have to slap a man with an eel.

Despite lacking category browsing and being truly random (as you've probably noticed from the activities above!), Bored is a worthy replacement for those who spent hours browsing completely random pages on StumbleUpon.

Through which channels you reach those people, classic and out of the box. The Next Web.

Image: Piotr Swat / Shutterstock