Web Browser Opera Has the Gig for You: Getting Paid to Surf the 'Wild Wild Web'

Hey, kids! If you like the internet and vaguely remember the Norwegian browser Opera, we may have the confinement job for you! Alongside TBWAHelsinki, it’s launched the “Personal Browser,” a job that revolves around finding weird stuff online that somehow constitutes a curated reflection of your uniqueness. Then you get money.

Isn’t that what we all want—to get paid for being inherently special?

Here’s the recruitment vid, shot vertically and barely long enough to convey information, for easy Stories, TikTok and Snapchat consumption. That aspect may well be the only not-dated thing about this effort:

“We indeed decided to look for a person to just surf the web for fun and actually get paid good money for it. We were looking for someone who has the guts to share their online experience with the world,” says Maciej Wojcik, director of Opera desktop browser marketing. 

OK. This is no “Best Job in the World” à la Queensland Tourism. But Opera still promises, gamely, that successful “Personal Browser” applicants score a sweet gig: Your only task? Surfing the web and sharing your “shenanigans” with the world over two weeks. I mean, what else are you doing these days besides baking cookies?

Just kidding, recruitment lasted a month and is already over. Opera received over 800 applications from around the world. Among them was American YouTuber Game Helmy, who’s now hosting an experimental web series for Opera called “Wild Wild Web,” which premiered Feb. 15. 

“We wanted to showcase what people around the world do on the web when no one’s watching, and highlight that, for all these things, there’s a personal browser. With this online series we are celebrating the internet, but more importantly the freedom to be yourself, both online and offline,” explains Otto Kilpiö, copywriter from TBWAHelsinki. 

The objective of “Wild Wild Web” is to “explore how diverse the internet can be.” This would have been really compelling in the early days of AOL, when we had yet to convince our parents it was worth installing a second landline just for the pleasure of an uninterrupted 56K connection. Helmy will explore stuff like “the wildest conspiracy theories” and making new friends in Omegle … yet another thing we weren’t sure people still needed to care about. 

But hey! It’s his personal browser. He can do whatever he wants, and so can you. Here’s the first ep: