How I Learned to Follow the Ohio Desire Line

 

A few months ago, I started using Are.na and quickly fell for its stark layout and the way contributions flow so seamlessly. It feels like a quiet corner of the internet, where things exist without shouting for attention. That’s how I stumbled upon a channel called Images With Captions On Wikipedia, and instantly, I was hooked.
 

Wikipedia is perfect for this kind of deep dive. Every image has to be freely licensed or in the public domain, stripped of copyright restrictions. And that creates its own aesthetic: the Wikipedia look. There’s something beautiful about it—images that get straight to the point, often tinged with a late-2000s color grading or the rawness of early internet visuals. They’re never edited to be pleasing, never curated for engagement. Just an accidental, functional beauty.
And then there are the captions. Wikipedia contributors have a way with them—sharp, minimal, just enough. A photo of a pigeon in mid-flight with the caption A pigeon in mid-flight. A deserted mall described simply as An abandoned shopping center in Ohio. No embellishment, no unnecessary poetry. Just facts, distilled to their essence. It feels more honest than any overthought Instagram post, more poetic than it intends to be.
 

Sometimes, when I don’t know what to do with myself, I just keep clicking. One page leads to another, then another. A 1970s bus stop in Prague takes me to a close-up of a coffee shop in Helsinki, which leads me to an image of a man standing alone in an empty subway station. I start screen capturing them, saving them and sharing them to the Images With Captions On Wikipedia channel, contributing weekly now, as if posting them on Are.na gives me the quiet credibility of a lowkey image digger. 

I often learn a lot of stuff during the process, as wikipedia is about informations. As I I click through, I stumble upon random gems of knowledge. The other day, I discovered that paths worn into parks and fields by constant foot traffic are called Desire Paths or Desire Lines— or Lignes de désir in French. It’s a beautiful idea, really—trails created by people choosing the most direct route, regardless of design. I saw one caption that read, A desire path between concrete sidewalks at the Ohio State University, with a picture of a trail, green grass, grey sky, and an electric scooter.
 

 

 

 

 

 

For the past five days, I’ve been starting my mornings without coffee. I wouldn’t wish it on anyone—not even my worst enemies. But at this point, it’s not even because I’ve made some grand decision to quit—it’s because I keep forgetting to buy more. Guess the overall mood. 

xx 

Louis