According to my pathetic map, I should have been close to the royal palace. But nothing in Casablanca’s bustling Mers Sultan quarter, where trams rumble past shoe stores and cafes, looked remotely palatial. I tried one street, then the next. Finally, I approached some teenage girls in jeans and head scarves downing Diet Cokes outside a snack bar.

“I’m looking for the palace,” I said in rudimentary French, and pointed to my map. “It says it should be near here.”

One of the girls glanced at the creased sheet of paper, and in a voice laden with teenage contempt, asked, “Don’t you have a phone?”

No, I did not have a phone. Or rather, I did, but I wasn’t using it.

Except for buying my airplane ticket, my plan was to explore Casablanca — a Moroccan city I had never visited — without using the internet. That meant no online research, no GPS, no Ubers or Airbnbs, no virtual dictionary and no mindless scrolling to avoid social awkwardness.

At a time when more and more of us are feeling the need for a digital detox, I am keenly aware of how the internet, for all its benefits, has also changed travel for the worse. Not only does it play a key role in overtourism, but it has also flattened the sense of discovery. By allowing us to peruse restaurant menus, visualize sites and compile must-see lists, the internet tells us what we will experience before we arrive.

I could have used a guidebook, but that seemed contrary to the spirit of the endeavor. After all, my main goal was to see if I might restore the serendipity of exploring — and learn a few retro travel lessons along the way.

Lesson 1: Get a Good Map

After flying into Casablanca’s Mohammed V Airport, my first order of business was to locate a map. I approached a woman seated at what I took to be the information desk. “Of course I have a map,” she replied. “I have a phone.”

She did, however, direct me toward the train to the city center. When I arrived at the airy station, I understood how difficult traveling unplugged here might be. There were no “You are here” signposts, no place to stash my luggage while I got oriented and no clear indications — at least not to this non-Arabic reader — of which direction led to the city center.

Still mapless, I picked a direction and started walking. A palm-lined boulevard seemed like a good bet, and soon I was amid shops and restaurants. Beyond a gate into what I took to be the old medina, I saw a hand-painted sign: “Ryad 91.”

Lesson 2: Ask to See a Room

I knew from previous trips to other Moroccan cities that “ryad” or “riad” means “inn.” Soon Mohammed, a tall, bespectacled man, was welcoming me in the cushion-bedecked lobby, and didn’t seem offended when I asked to see the sole remaining room, a bargain at 360 dirhams, or about $37. It was simple and clean, but a little claustrophobic, with a window that opened onto an interior courtyard. I took the room, deciding I would look for something more spacious the next day.

In the meantime, I asked Mohammed for a map. “One minute,” he said, sitting down at his computer and printing one out from Google. About a dozen streets on it bore names; the rest was a tangle of lines.

Lesson 3: Embrace Your Ignorance

The good thing about ignorance is that it can turn everything into a discovery. And there was plenty that fascinated me along Casablanca’s winding alleyways: graceful minarets; bakers pulling hot, flat loaves from open-air ovens; the splash of street art, vivid against the whitewashed walls that gave Casablanca its name.

My wanderings began outside the inn’s door. Keeping the harbor to the right, I meandered westward, through the raucous food market, where vendors sold fat walnuts from carts, and leafy squares where men sat at low tables eating fried-fish sandwiches. Walking along bastions built when Portugal ruled the harbor, I saw a massive structure. I asked some boys who were diving into the ocean from a rocky beach what it was. “C’est la plus grande mosquée du monde” was the reply.

Had I really just stumbled across the largest mosque in the world? Alas, my informants were not entirely reliable. The Hassan II Mosque may have one of the world’s largest minarets, but is not itself the biggest. And as the tour buses around the corner proved, it is Casablanca’s chief attraction.

I could see why the boys exaggerated; with a capacity for 25,000 people, the mosque is designed to awe, and not only with its size. Every centimeter is covered in intricate craftsmanship, from plasterwork to mosaics to fretwork. At the accompanying museum, I learned it had taken 12,000 artisans to complete.

My strolls brought more discoveries: downtown streets lined with Art Deco buildings; contemporary Moroccan art at the elegant Villa des Arts; the Abderrahman Slaoui museum, with its Berber jewelry and colonial-era travel posters.

Traveling without expectations also makes you more observant of ordinary life. I loved coming across a man in a square selling coffee from a small pot, and the housewares store where frantic women in djellabas scrambled to get their hands on air fryers that had just gone on sale, some carting off three or four.

Casablanca wasn’t preening for tourists; it was too busy living its own life.

Lesson 4: Let Go of FOMO

I found my second hotel on a street of bougainvillea-draped villas. The rooms at the Doge (about 2,200 dirham), once a private home, leaned hard into their Jazz Age origins, with velvet-lined walls and at least one Josephine Baker photo. Staying there, amid the inlaid furniture and orange-blossom-scented soaps, I tried not to wonder whether there was even a more exquisite Casablanca hotel I hadn’t found.

Traveling unplugged means letting go of the fear of missing out. The internet can convince us that its best-of lists are objective truths and that any traveler who does not work her way through them has settled for less.

I had to fight a twinge at the Central Market, where dozens of seafood stalls served fresh oysters and fish tagines. How to choose? I settled on Nadia’s because of the local businessmen there. Were the juicy grilled sardines drizzled with pungent chermoula sauce there the best in the market? They were the best I ate.

The same held true for the perfectly spiced chicken shawarma I sampled in the upscale Racine neighborhood, and the delicate gazelle horn pastries at a bakery in the Gauthier quarter — places I had chosen because they were busy with local customers.

But that strategy didn’t work in my quest for a sit-down restaurant serving traditional Moroccan food, since local diners often choose a cuisine different from the one they get at home. So when I walked into Le Cuistot’s tiled dining room, and heard Castilian Spanish, British English and New Jersey accents, I didn’t have high hopes.

But my couscous tfaya was fluffy, the vegetables flavorful, and the caramelized onions and almonds added just the right sweetness and crunch. When Aziz Berrada, the chef and owner, told me his couscous was the best in Casablanca, I believed him.

If so, it was just one of his talents. Before Aziz became a chef, he told me, he had been a photographer for Hassan II, the same monarch who had ordered the construction of the imposing mosque. When that monarch died, Aziz decided it was time for a career change.

Lesson 5: Talk to People

My conversation with Aziz — which wouldn’t have happened if I had been buried in my phone while dining — made me eager to see the palace where he had worked. So on my last day, the receptionist at the Doge printed out yet another Google map.

That’s when I got lost. After getting no help from the soda-drinking teenagers, I wandered for blocks, eventually asking directions from an older man who pointed to red flags in the distance: the palace.

Only it wasn’t open to the public. Ever, apparently.

The internet would have revealed this. Yet as I grappled with the realization that I had spent hours to reach those impenetrable walls, I spied a street lined with bookshops. At the very least, I thought, I might find a decent map.

And I did. But the street also led to shops selling handwoven rugs and copper tea sets, a courtyard filled with barrels of olives and a warren of whitewashed alleys that reminded me of Andalusia even before I came across a tiny museum of Andalusian instruments.

The Habous neighborhood almost looked like a stage set of Morocco, which is fitting, since it was designed by the French in the 1920s and ’30s.

I learned this from a woman who introduced herself as Imane, when I stopped for mint tea at the Imperial Café. She was seated near me, and appeared to be either a celebrity or the mayor, so frequent were the salutations from passers-by. I asked if I could talk with her about the neighborhood.

“Of course, sweetheart,” she said in perfect English. “I love Americans. You’re so spontaneous.”

Lesson 6: Stay Open

Imane suggested we move our conversation to a nearby location that she promised I would adore. I overcame my skepticism, figuring I might get some local recommendations.

As we walked, Imane’s rapid-fire monologue left little room to ask about her favorite restaurants. But I learned that she had once lived in the United States, selling real estate, working for a jewelry company and driving an Uber.

Finally we arrived at a set of walls only marginally less imposing than the palace’s. The guard ushered us through a carved door into a gorgeous building, with walls of green and blue geometric tiles and intricate plasterwork, and courtyards dotted with orange trees. I still had no idea where I was (later I learned it was a former courthouse and residence for the pasha, and is now used for cultural events). And I was mystified by the staff, including a stern-faced bureaucrat and a cleaning woman who greeted Imane effusively.

Who was Imane? A politician? A movie star?

Finally, it dawned on me. “Are you an influencer?” I asked.

“I don’t like labels,” she replied.

I never did learn Imane’s favorite restaurants. But she told me of her mission to spread the message that we are all connected. Eventually, she pulled out her phone to broadcast us, live, as we chatted.

I had come all this way without my phone. I had gotten lost and found my way, discovered monuments and tiny jewels. I had developed a sense of the city as a place that still existed primarily for its residents, not its visitors.

And there I was on someone else’s live social media feed.

Follow New York Times Travel on Instagram and sign up for our Travel Dispatch newsletter to get expert tips on traveling smarter and inspiration for your next vacation. Dreaming up a future getaway or just armchair traveling? Check out our 52 Places to Go in 2025.

The post No Phone, No Internet: A First-Time Visit to Casablanca appeared first on Our Story Insight.

In 2010, a woman in Sakura, Japan, posted photos of her well-manicured Shiba Inu to her digital journal. The dog, Kabosu, shot her owner a wide-eyed glance, a comic image that quickly jumped from Tumblr to Twitter to Facebook and to the rest of the internet.

A meme legend was born. Someone on Reddit called the dog “DOGE,” a nonsensical nickname that stuck. Another minted a cryptocurrency in DOGE’s name.

Now, 15 years later, in the fast churn of internet culture, DOGE is considered very old. But try telling that to Elon Musk, who has co-opted “DOGE” for the name of his effort to gut the machinery of the federal government — more formally, the Department of Government Efficiency.

It is one of dozens of old-internet ephemera that are baked into his everyday vocabulary. A brief scroll through Mr. Musk’s X feed reveals a menagerie of aging memes and lingo — dad jokes for the very online. They include:

• Frequent references to “420,” a half-century-old slang term for smoking marijuana said to have started in a high school in Northern California. (After smoking what looked like a blunt live on the Joe Rogan podcast, Mr. Musk briefly changed his Twitter bio to “420.”)

• Regularly including the number “69,” a slang term for a sex act that has been around since at least the Kama Sutra. (Mr. Musk, who is 53 years old, is quick to point out that his birthday falls 69 days after 4/20.)

• Calling things that he supports “epic” or “based.” These are adjectives favored by frequent users of Reddit and popularized by fans of Joss Whedon, a director who created the “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” television series in the late 1990s and went on to direct two of the Avengers movies. (Mr. Musk has said he wants to create “based” artificial intelligence with his chatbot, Grok, and recently told Tesla investors he expected an “epic” 2026 ahead for the company.)

Mr. Musk’s slang may seem inscrutable to people who aren’t steeped in online culture. But to his fans, Mr. Musk’s dated sensibilities are a kind of internet comfort food — and a nod to a shared, aggrieved worldview.

Mr. Musk’s posts are full of the language of warfare and conquest portrayed in video games. That loaded language is a rallying cry for gamers and others from Mr. Musk’s very online world who — if they have a common political ideology — see in him someone who shares their skepticism of authority and their belief that America has gone too “woke.” To them, Mr. Musk’s online updates about what DOGE is up to come across as far more honest than a press release or news conference or — worst of all — something they read in the mainstream media. (It’s a strategy that recalls Donald Trump’s use of Twitter to signal authenticity during his first administration.)

“We’re living in the revenge of the nerds era,” Hasan Piker, a popular, politically progressive online personality who is not a fan of Mr. Musk, said in an interview. “This is the real, actual revenge of the nerds.”

Mr. Musk did not respond to a request for comment.

Every photo of Mr. Musk wielding a chain saw while wearing “deal with it” sunglasses indoors (another meme) represents a triumph of the nerd culture he has long identified with. On Wednesday, he attended the first meeting of President Trump’s new cabinet wearing a T-shirt that said “Tech Support.”

His fans speak back to him in his language. They send suggestions on how DOGE can fix the government by dismantling entire sections of it, often coded in the language of images typically found on Reddit. (Wojak, a crudely drawn character popularized on the message board 4chan, is a perennial favorite.)

Mr. Musk prods his more than 200 million X followers for help with decisions in online polls. And he listens. The conversation becomes a feedback loop of insider jokes for the billionaire, who once hosted “Saturday Night Live” and prides himself on his sense of humor. (Mr. Musk sometimes overestimates his popularity in the comedy world. Once he joined the comedian Dave Chappelle on a stage in San Francisco. He was booed.)

“Anyone can find their own community, even if it’s a community frozen in 2010,” Brian Feldman, an internet culture writer who has long followed Mr. Musk’s exploits, said in an interview.

But to those steeped in modern internet culture, Mr. Musk’s communication style is far from on trend. That is especially so when even current terms like “no cap” (translation: no lie) or “lowkey fell off” (waned in popularity or relevance) are already showing their age. As with recent questions about Mr. Musk’s claims of superior video game skills, they see cracks in his supernerd facade.

“More than people would like to admit, they often become trapped in the internet they first encounter,” Mr. Feldman said.

Last week, Mr. Musk appeared at a conservative political conference wearing dark sunglasses, a big gold chain and a T-shirt that said he was “not procrastinating” but instead working on “side quests” (a common practice in sprawling role-playing games). He played off the quote from the Hindu scripture Bhagavad Gita that Robert Oppenheimer said was going through his mind as he tested the first atomic bomb: Now, I am become Death. The destroyer of worlds.

“I am become meme,” Mr. Musk said to a mostly mute crowd. “There’s living the dream and there’s living the meme, and that’s pretty much what’s happening.”

Even some of his most fervent followers on X recoiled. “Elon Musk fell off lowkey,” one user wrote.

Mr. Musk’s online vocabulary is a reminder of 2010, when nerd culture was ascendant. Reddit was a meme factory for favorites like Lolcats and icanhazcheeseburger. Gamers gathered in web forums or on online role playing games to hang out and fight through digital dungeons.

This was also the beginning of Mr. Musk’s metamorphosis from mere billionaire to internet celebrity. That year, he appeared as himself in the second “Iron Man” film. His online fans ate it up.

All of this also coincided with the rise of Web 2.0, a more social version of the internet. Twitter — long before Mr. Musk bought it and renamed it — was a town square. Facebook moved beyond likes and status updates with “Groups,” a feature that allowed people to form their own smaller communities. The chat forum 4chan was full of anonymous, often angry online trolls who bonded over vulgar behavior.

While online groups had existed for years, the newer social networks were more tightly knit and rewarded the behavior that Mr. Musk often displays today. The right kind of posts could pick up steam and shoot across the internet.

Provocateurs moved beyond small-scale trolling to aggressive mass movements, such as Gamergate, a targeted harassment campaign against a female game designer by video game players who claimed she represented a lack of ethics in games journalism. It morphed into a social movement that fought diversity, feminism and what gamers saw as overly progressive values in film, television, literature and the video game industry — a viewpoint that Mr. Musk shares.

Gamergate also signaled that digital demonstrations could, for better or worse, lead to real-world change.

Mr. Musk’s tweeting style changed from anodyne company updates to more overt trolling. In 2018, he tweeted that he had secured a buyout offer for Tesla for a stock price of $420. Once, when a competing car company tried undercutting him on price, Mr. Musk said that he would drop the cost of his Tesla Model X to $69,420.

“The gauntlet has been thrown down!” he proclaimed on Twitter. “The prophecy has been fulfilled.”

Unlike other tech billionaires, who seemed to live lives far removed from regular internet folk and became less online the richer they got, Mr. Musk was making himself relatable with memes, absurdity and relentless posting. And parts of the online world embraced him.

“Many people find him off-putting, I think,” said coldhealing, a pseudonymous cultural commentator who regularly follows Mr. Musk and other social movements online, in an interview. “But there are many people who he resonates with, and even though I think it’s 10 percent of the population max, it’s an influential 10 percent.”

Mr. Musk’s online life became even more bombastic after the Covid pandemic began in 2020. He attacked Tesla short-sellers and California state officials who wouldn’t let him reopen a Tesla factory. In 2023, he even live-tweeted photos of himself driving to Mark Zuckerberg’s house, threatening to wrestle the chief executive of Facebook. (They were, at the time, in the throes of organizing a real fighting match between them. It never happened.)

He posted himself playing Elden Ring, Path of Exile and other video games like Diablo IV. One of the world’s wealthiest men was telling gamers that he was one of them.

Mark Kern, a former video game executive at Blizzard, wrote in a post to X last week that people should not mess with gamers. “We’re forged by endless boss battles against impossible odds. We do not give up. We do not stop. We are the terminators of the culture war.”

“Yes,” Mr. Musk wrote, quoting the post.

Conservatives who don’t spend a lot of time online have also embraced the image of Mr. Musk taking a chain saw to what they see as a bloated federal government, even if many of them aren’t exactly sure what he’s trying to say or when they’re supposed to laugh.

“It’s validation from people who have no idea what he’s saying, but still think he’s speaking this expert language,” said Mr. Feldman, the internet culture writer.

But Mr. Musk may be finding his online limits. It was difficult for some of his followers to shake off last week’s stage appearance at the Conservative Political Action Conference, which reminded them that it is hard to stay cool when you are, in fact, not very young. (Kabosu did not live to see the meme she inspired enter American political life. The 18-year-old Shiba Inu died last year.)

“Anyone else feel the vibe-shift in tpot/tech?” one X user wrote, referring to an online community called “This Part of Twitter,” which is largely composed of tech workers who have historically warmed to Mr. Musk. In other words, Mr. Musk was starting to look a little out of touch and increasingly unpopular.

Nonetheless, Mr. Musk seems to be doubling down. His posting to X has increased in recent weeks, some days numbering in the hundreds. And he is still being validated by his fans.

On Thursday, Mr. Musk posted another meme to his X account — one of dozens of posts he had made that morning. In it was a photo of Mel Gibson as Mad Max in “The Road Warrior,” the early-1980s action thriller about a shotgun-toting nomad navigating a postapocalyptic world. In bold lettering, the meme said: “Ladies, it’s time to start thinking whether the guy you’re dating has postapocalyptic warlord potential.” (Film buffs may note that Max’s wife and son were killed by a biker gang in the first “Mad Max” film.)

One follower replied with a photo of a man wearing a Trojan helmet and body armor with an assault rifle in one hand and a spear in the other. It was one of more than 7,000 replies.

“Yup,” the follower said, adding a fire emoji.

The post How Elon Musk Uses Internet Slang to Marshal His Army of Online Fans appeared first on Our Story Insight.

Taiwan is investigating whether a ship linked to China is responsible for damaging one of the undersea cables that connects Taiwan to the internet, the latest reminder of how vulnerable Taiwan’s critical infrastructure is to damage from China.

The incident comes as anxiety in Europe has risen over apparent acts of sabotage, including ones aimed at such undersea communication cables. Two fiber-optic cables under the Baltic Sea were severed in November, prompting officials from Sweden, Finland and Lithuania to halt a Chinese-flagged commercial ship in the area for weeks over its possible involvement.

In Taiwan, communications were quickly rerouted after the damage was detected, and there was no major outage. The island’s main telecommunications provider, Chunghwa Telecom, received a notification on Friday morning that the cable, known as the Trans-Pacific Express Cable, had been damaged. That cable also connects to South Korea, Japan, China and the United States.

That afternoon, Taiwan’s Coast Guard intercepted a cargo vessel off the northern city of Keelung, in an area near where half a dozen cables make landfall. The vessel was owned by a Hong Kong company and crewed by seven Chinese nationals, the Taiwan Coast Guard Administration said.

The damaged cable is one of more than a dozen that help keep Taiwan online. These fragile cables are susceptible to breakage by anchors dragged along the sea floor by the many ships in the busy waters around Taiwan.

Analysts and officials say that while it is difficult to prove whether damage to these cables is intentional, such an act would fit a pattern of intimidation and psychological warfare by China directed at weakening Taiwan’s defenses.

Taiwan said the cargo vessel it intercepted had registered under the flags of both Cameroon and Tanzania. “The possibility of a Chinese flag-of-convenience ship engaging in gray zone harassment cannot be ruled out,” the Coast Guard Administration said on Monday in a statement.

Such harassment, which inconveniences Taiwanese forces but stops short of overt confrontation, has a desensitizing effect over time, according to Yisuo Tzeng, a researcher at the Institute for National Defense and Security Research, a think tank funded by Taiwan’s defense ministry. That puts Taiwan at risk of being caught off guard in the event of a real conflict, Mr. Tzeng said.

Taiwan experiences near-daily incursions into its waters and airspace by the People’s Liberation Army. Last month, China sent nearly 90 naval and coast guard vessels into waters in the area, its largest such operation in almost three decades.

China has also deployed militarized fishing boats and its coast guard fleet in disputes around the South China Sea region, and stepped up patrols just a few miles off the shore of Taiwan’s outer islands, increasing the risk of dangerous confrontations.

Such harassment has been a “defining marker of Chinese coercion against Taiwan for decades, but over the last couple years has really stepped up,” said Gregory Poling, the director of the Asia Maritime Transparency Initiative at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

And in situations like this one and the recent damage to the cables under the Baltic Sea, it is difficult for the authorities to calibrate their response when a ship’s true identity is uncertain.

“Do you deploy a Coast Guard vessel every time there is an illegal sand dredger or, in this case, a ship that is registered to a flag of convenience and has Chinese ties damages a submarine cable?” Mr. Poling asked.

Ship tracking data and vessel records analyzed by The Times show that the ship may have been broadcasting its positions under a fake name.

Taiwan said the ship appeared to use two sets of Automatic Identification System equipment, which is used to broadcast a ship’s position. On Jan. 3, at the moment that Taiwan said the cable was damaged, a ship named Shun Xing 39 was reporting its AIS positions in the waters off Taiwan’s northeastern coast.

About nine hours later, at around 4:51 p.m. local time, Shun Xing 39 stopped transmitting location data. That was shortly after the time that the Taiwan Coast Guard said it had located the ship and requested that it return to waters outside of Keelung port for an investigation.

One minute later, and 50 feet away, a ship called Xing Shun 39, which had not reported a position since late December, began broadcasting a signal, according to William Conroy, a maritime analyst with Semaphore Maritime Solutions, who analyzed AIS data on the ship-tracking platform Starboard.

In the ship-tracking database, both Xing Shun 39 and Shun Xing 39 identify themselves as cargo ships with a class A AIS transponder. Typically, a cargo ship equipped with this class of transponder would be large enough to require registration with the International Maritime Organization and obtain a unique identification number known as an IMO number. Xing Shun 39 has an IMO number, but Shun Xing 39 does not appear in the IMO database. This suggests “Xing Shun 39” is the ship’s real identity and “Shun Xing 39” is fake, according to Mr. Conroy.

The Taiwan Coast Guard has publicly identified the vessel as Shun Xing 39.

Vessel and corporate records show that Jie Yang Trading Ltd, a Hong Kong-based company, took over as the owner of Xing Shun 39 in April 2024.

The waves were too large to board the cargo vessel to investigate further, the Taiwan Coast Guard Administration said. Taiwan is seeking help from South Korea because the crew of the cargo vessel said it was headed to that country, the administration said.

In 2023, the outlying Matsu Islands, within view of the Chinese coast, endured patchy internet for months after two undersea internet cables broke. These fiber optic cables that connect Taiwan to the internet suffered about 30 such breaks between 2017 and 2023.

The frequent breakages are a reminder that Taiwan’s communication infrastructure must be able to withstand a crisis.

To help ensure that Taiwan can stay online if cables fail, the government has been pursuing a backup, including building a network of low-Earth orbit satellites capable of beaming the internet to Earth from space. Crucially, officials in Taiwan are racing to build their system without the involvement of Elon Musk, whose rocket company, SpaceX, dominates the satellite internet industry, but whose deep business links in China have left them wary.

The post Taiwan Suspects a Chinese-Linked Ship of Damaging an Internet Cable appeared first on Our Story Insight.