Illustration by Sky Kim

Are you bored yet? We’re incredibly fortunate to be bored right now. With that said, I know how it feels when the mornings drag into afternoons and noons become nights, in a long endless cycle. Do you even know which day it is?

We’ve sort of taken our life online, from Facetiming friends and family to doing workouts from the internet. By now, most of us have become netizens of this magical land; in this handbook, we’re going to help you navigate the many amazing things you can do while quarantining within the enchanting internet realm. 

HOW TO STILL STAY ~SOCIAL~

Join Rachel Nguyen’s WARDE Slack community.

It’s kind of like a Reddit with different channels like #beauty, #bookclub, #creative, #filmtv, #creative, #mystics, and #over18. It’s one big virtual community with forums for people to share experiences and chat with each other.

Zoom social-distancing parties.

Make a playlist and play it while you and your friends make art or bake together using Zoom. 

Have a Netflix Party sleepover.

Maybe you can’t have a sleepover IRL, but you can still watch a movie with your friends using Netflix Party or Zoom (share screen function). Put on a fun movie—maybe one directed by a woman—and you’re good to go. 

HOW TO STAY SOMEWHAT ~CREATIVE~ 

Design your dream house. 

You don’t have to use a simulation game, but The Sims works perfectly. You might even be able to put the design to good use in the future. Watch how drag artist Juno Birch built hers. 

Follow @by.messy for daily prompts that you can answer and submit. 

The account offers questions and prompts that are kind of meditative like “send us a picture of something important in your room” or “send a picture from one year ago and tell us what you miss.”

Attempt a 30-day song challenge on Instagram. 

Tag your friends.

Make a YouTube video.

Whatever your specialty is, right now a lot of people are looking for content to watch. Make tutorials about anything—gaming, makeup, fashion, cooking, baking… Or just simply sit and talk about stuff. Here are 101 ideas. 

Create any visual and print it on mugs, phone cases, pillows, t-shirts and etc on Zazzle. Or put together your own photo book, poetry book, or novel on Blurb. You don’t need a publishing house to hold a physical copy of your own book. 

Check out the online exhibition “How can we think of art at a time like this?” co-curated by Barbara Pollack and Anne Verhallen. The exhibition features a new piece of art every day. 

HOW TO ~ENTERTAIN~ YOURSELF

Check out Jack Barret Gallery’s online exhibitions. (And this digital gallery guide we made.)

ESPECIALLY this one by digital artist Molly Soda (AKA @bloatedandalone4evr1993). Her second solo show “examines aspiration and authenticity as two major social and structural forces shaping our early Internet-era personas.”

Take an Adolescent quiz! 

Find out which badass female poet you should read through this one. 

Watch Dazed’s weekly Friday Night Live shows on Instagram.

They’ve done a live radio show with DJ Benji B (from BBC’s Radio 1), a get-Renaissance-ready with @pxssypalace, and a Q&A with Rebecca Black. 

Watch movies along with the director and other commentators on CineFix. 

Here’s one for the newly released The Invisible Man. And here’s one for Night of the Living Dead.

Watch VICE Video (documentaries and series).

One of the best places (in addition to our video content) for interesting topics you wouldn’t find anywhere else! Start with Slutever, Cannabis Self-Care, High Society, and Beyond Beauty.

Release your emotions by watching films that relate to the present moment.

If you’ve seen Pandemic on Netflix and are seeking films like it, try the teen dystopia series The Society, a modern-day example of young adults trying to create a socialist society after adults have disappeared. Or The Shining, a classic example of cabin fever gone wrong. Or Room, a heart-breaking movie about isolation.  

Watch Stephanie Soo’s mukbangs while eating. 

She’s chatty, eats a ton of Korean food, and discusses true crime in every episode. 

Play the Akinator. 

It’s like 21 questions but he gets it right every time so you get competitive and play until you think of a name he can’t get.

HOW TO FEEL ~GOOD~

Read the i-D good news bulletin series. 

Remember there’s always a light in the dark. 

Get moving in your bedroom. 

Work out with XHIT videos—they’re workout videos that you can follow as if the trainer is right there with you, and they require no equipment. Each video is under 15 minutes.

Try thequietplaceproject.xyz. 

An interesting project to help you pause and calm down for a second. 

Download Share the Meal.

It’s a crowdfunding smartphone application to fight global hunger through the United Nations World Food Program. Share a meal when you have a meal. Each one costs less than $1 and feeds a child. 

Transcribe and catalog The Library of Congress’s digitized materials. 

The By the People campaign allows everyone to do it. There are very interesting collections such as: Suffrage, Letters to Lincoln, and the Civil War. 

Shop small on Depop and Etsy.

It’s the best time to support small brands right now. By small, I mean extremely small; the money you pay is going directly to the person who made it. Not Depop sellers who thrift clothes for $5 and mark it up for $40, but people who are literally making art out of clothes. Check out this seller for cute, comfy tie-dye sets, this seller for clothes with crazy prints, or this seller for bedazzled tanks and comfy dresses made from vintage fabrics. 

HOW TO STILL HAVE A ~LIFE~

Play The Sims. It’s on sale right now for $5!

You can recreate life as a simulation. One of which you have complete control, aside from when your kitchen is on fire. Try to recreate your group of friends, partner, dream family, and maybe even your celebrity crush, and live that carefree virtual life. Oh, and here’s a tip: look up Sims cheats. They’re legal and will help you!

Play The Sims with a prompt.

If you look on YouTube, there are a ton of people who do crazy things on Sims. There are scenarios where Sims are in an asylum, 100 sims locked up in isolation, or even the 100-baby challenge. Make up your own, or check out this list of different prompts.

Play Animal Crossings. Duh. You’ve heard enough about it. 

Just like Sims, it’s another carefree virtual world you can step in when your own world is a mess. And there are players recreating designer clothes and uploading them onto the game’s virtual store. Your character can now wear a $10,000 Gucci dress for free. If you don’t have a Nintendo Switch, download Pocket Camp from the App Store (but it won’t have as many functions).

Enjoy the annual poppies bloom at the Antelope Valley California Poppy Reserve online via Live Stream. 

HOW YOU CAN STILL ~LEARN~ STUFF

Watch conversations with artists.

If you’re interested in art and fashion, Alexander McQueen’s foundation SARABANDE is having scheduled artist chats, in which well-known faces in the arts discuss different topics from identity to building your digital strategy.

Stay informed without losing your mind.

Sign up for The New York Times’ free newsletters, especially Morning Briefing. It curates the daily essentials and filters out the stressful noise.

Listen to podcasts while cleaning your room or doing the dishes. 

Here’s our guide to podcasts. 

Become a genius. 

Watch the 25 most popular TED Talks of all time. Or the most jaw-dropping ones. 

Learn an instrument on ClassPass. 

Or learn a new skill like film directing, event planning, or writing. It has classes for everything.

Read everything you can know about the World Wide Web and how it works. 

Register for MoMa free online courses. 

Yes, you heard it right. Sometimes art and education can be free. In this case, it’s offered by one of the best modern art museums. They’re offering courses in contemporary art, modern art, photography, and fashion design. 

THE ~INTERNET RABBIT HOLE~

Check out this hamster TikTok star. Or this pottery artist who’s posting TikToks of him making artsy ceramics.

Listen to philosophical books on Audible. 

My suggestions are Erich Fromm’s The Sane Society and Simone de Beauvoir’s The Second Sex. Try with a 30-day free trial. 

Read what everyone else is doing. 

i-D editors around the world. Adolescent creatives. Chinese creatives under quarantine since January.

Watch every show and documentary labeled “Provocative” on Netflix.

Which includes: Paris is Burning, Tiger King, Knock Down The House, and many more. 

Check out the weird side of the internet.Go down the Wiki rabbit hole.

Look into unsolved mysteries, myths, and stories. 

Maybe start off with the lost colony of Roanoke, the popularity of freak shows in the 20th century, and the Salem witchcraft trials. History is pretty cool. 

Based on this piece from The L.A. Times.