Down the Rabbit Hole, origins and meanings
“Down the Rabbit hole” is an English language expression which refers to getting deep into something or ending up somewhere strange. Lewis Carroll introduced the phrase in his 1865 novel Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. The phrase was the title of chapter one of the book. Alice follows a white rabbit and falls down a rabbit hole. She ends up in a strange world, “Wonderland.”
Modern Usage
The phrase is often used as a metaphor for distraction. More recently, the term has been used to describe a person who gets lost in research or loses track of time on the internet. Frequently, it means that a person has become interested in something, usually by accident, and that the subject matter does not deserve the amount of attention or time that the person has given it. Social media and many websites want to keep people on their platforms so that they spend more time and see more ads. The term can have a positive meaning, suggesting that the person engaged in a guilty pleasure.
