I remember reading a book in my youth about a kid that lived in a shielded city with an AI controlling it with the assignment to keep everyone ‘happy’ (= docile). He/she breaks protocol and gets ejected through a trash chute. Meets an old man. Crossed a wasteland and finds old ruins, learns something and then blows up the shielding of the city to make it free again.
In the Dutch translation either the old man or the main character was called ‘gull’ or ‘sea gull’. I’ve posted on a few subreddits and forums with people pretty much ignoring, and I have scoured Google without much results neither.
[0] https://www.goodreads.com/group/show/185-what-s-the-name-of-...
Now r/WhatIsThisThing, that actually feels like crowdsourcing.
I wrote in a similair local forum about a movie I was not allowed to watch as a kid, where people at a plane disappeared and their fake teeth was still there (only thing I remember) and someone could immediately point me to the correct kinda crappy Stephen King movie ...
The closing of the IMDB message boards was a terrible loss IMO. You could visit an obscure actors message board, and you might run into someone who knew them. You could discuss a movie's intricacies with someone, and share theories, etc, on the specific board for that movie. It was a goldmine for movie fans, and I still miss it.