Shock sites on:
[Wikipedia]
[Google]
[Amazon]
A shock site is a
website
A website (also written as a web site) is a collection of web pages and related content that is identified by a common domain name and published on at least one web server. Examples of notable websites are Google, Facebook, Amazon, and Wi ...
that is intended to be offensive or disturbing to its viewers, though it can also contain elements of
humor or evoke (in some viewers)
sexual arousal.
Shock-oriented websites generally contain material such as
pornographic
Pornography (often shortened to porn or porno) is the portrayal of sexual subject matter for the exclusive purpose of sexual arousal. Primarily intended for adults, ,
scatological
In medicine and biology, scatology or coprology is the study of feces.
Scatological studies allow one to determine a wide range of biological information about a creature, including its diet (and thus where it has been), health and diseases s ...
,
racist,
sexist,
graphically violent,
insulting,
vulgar,
profane, or otherwise some other provocative nature. Websites that are primarily fixated on real death and graphic violence are particularly referred to as a gore site. Some shock sites display a single picture,
animation, video clip or small gallery, and are circulated via
email
Electronic mail (email or e-mail) is a method of exchanging messages ("mail") between people using electronic devices. Email was thus conceived as the electronic ( digital) version of, or counterpart to, mail, at a time when "mail" mean ...
or disguised in posts to
discussion site
An Internet forum, or message board, is an online discussion site where people can hold conversations in the form of posted messages. They differ from chat rooms in that messages are often longer than one line of text, and are at least temporar ...
s as a
prank
A practical joke, or prank, is a mischievous trick played on someone, generally causing the victim to experience embarrassment, perplexity, confusion, or discomfort.Marsh, Moira. 2015. ''Practically Joking''. Logan: Utah State University Press. ...
. Steven Jones distinguishes these sites from those that collect galleries where users search for shocking content, such as
Rotten.com
Rotten.com was a shock site active from 1996 to 2012. The website, which had the tagline "An archive of disturbing illustration", was devoted to morbid
A disease is a particular abnormal condition that negatively affects the structure ...
. Gallery sites can contain
beheadings
Decapitation or beheading is the total separation of the head from the body. Such an injury is invariably fatal to humans and most other animals, since it deprives the brain of oxygenated blood, while all other organs are deprived of the au ...
,
execution
Capital punishment, also known as the death penalty, is the state-sanctioned practice of deliberately killing a person as a punishment for an actual or supposed crime, usually following an authorized, rule-governed process to conclude that ...
,
electrocution
Electrocution is death or severe injury caused by electric shock from electric current passing through the body. The word is derived from "electro" and "execution", but it is also used for accidental death.
The term "electrocution" was coine ...
,
suicide,
murder,
stoning
Stoning, or lapidation, is a method of capital punishment where a group throws stones at a person until the subject dies from blunt trauma. It has been attested as a form of punishment for grave misdeeds since ancient times.
The Torah and Ta ...
,
torching,
police brutality,
hangings
Hanging is the suspension of a person by a noose or ligature around the neck.Oxford English Dictionary, 2nd ed. Hanging as method of execution is unknown, as method of suicide from 1325. The ''Oxford English Dictionary'' states that hanging ...
,
terrorism
Terrorism, in its broadest sense, is the use of criminal violence to provoke a state of terror or fear, mostly with the intention to achieve political or religious aims. The term is used in this regard primarily to refer to intentional violen ...
,
cartel violence,
drowning
Drowning is a type of suffocation induced by the submersion of the mouth and nose in a liquid. Most instances of fatal drowning occur alone or in situations where others present are either unaware of the victim's situation or unable to offer as ...
,
vehicular accidents, war victims,
rape
Rape is a type of sexual assault usually involving sexual intercourse or other forms of sexual penetration carried out against a person without their consent. The act may be carried out by physical force, coercion, abuse of authority, or ...
,
necrophilia,
genital mutilation
The terms genital modification and genital mutilation can refer to permanent or temporary changes to human sex organs. Some forms of genital alteration are performed on adults with their informed consent at their own behest, usually for aesthetic ...
and other
sexual crimes.
Some shock sites have also gained their own
subcultures and have become
internet memes on their own.
Goatse.cx featured a page devoted to
fan-submitted artwork and tributes to the site's
hello.jpg, and a parody of the image was unwittingly shown by a
BBC #REDIRECT BBC #REDIRECT BBC
Here i going to introduce about the best teacher of my life b BALAJI sir. He is the precious gift that I got befor 2yrs . How has helped and thought all the concept and made my success in the 10th board exam. ...
...
newscast as an alternative for
the then-recently unveiled logo for the
2012 Summer Olympics. A 2007 shock video known as ''
2 Girls 1 Cup
''2 Girls 1 Cup'' is the unofficial nickname of the trailer for ''Hungry Bitches'', a 2007 Brazilian scat fetish pornographic film produced by MFX Media. The trailer features two women defecating into a cup, taking turns in what appears to be ...
'' also quickly became an Internet phenomenon, with videos of reactions, homages, and parodies widely posted on video sharing sites such as
YouTube
YouTube is a global online video sharing and social media platform headquartered in San Bruno, California. It was launched on February 14, 2005, by Steve Chen, Chad Hurley, and Jawed Karim. It is owned by Google, and is the second mo ...
.
History
There have been several shock galleries that have launched and shut down.
Rotten.com
Rotten.com was a shock site active from 1996 to 2012. The website, which had the tagline "An archive of disturbing illustration", was devoted to morbid
A disease is a particular abnormal condition that negatively affects the structure ...
hosted murder videos and images of deceased people,
and brandished the motto "Pure Evil Since 1996".
During their operation, the owners of Rotten.com launched
several new sites, one of which was Shockumentary.com in 2006. Shockumentary.com was created to sell
mondo film
Mondo films are a subgenre of exploitation films and documentary films. Many mondo films are made in a way to resemble a pseudo-documentary and usually depicting sensational topics, scenes, or situations. Common traits of mondo films include p ...
s like ''
Traces of Death
''Traces of Death'' is a 1993 Z movie mondo shockumentary that consists of various scenes of stock footage depicting death and real scenes of violence.
Unlike the earlier '' Faces of Death'' which included fake deaths and reenactments, ''Trace ...
'' (1993).
Ogrish.com
Ogrish.com was a shock site that presented uncensored news coverage and multimedia material based for the most part on war, accidents and executions.
Much of the material depicted was graphic, uncensored, gory videos and images. The content ...
, which was established in 2000, hosted "mutilated corpses, car accidents, burn victims,
congenital malformation
A birth defect, also known as a congenital disorder, is an abnormal condition that is present at childbirth, birth regardless of its cause. Birth defects may result in disability, disabilities that may be physical disability, physical, intellect ...
s and other grotesqueries".
Ogrish.com's reputation rested on its publication of gore media from
terrorists
Terrorism, in its broadest sense, is the use of criminal violence to provoke a state of terror or fear, mostly with the intention to achieve political or religious aims. The term is used in this regard primarily to refer to intentional violen ...
and war.
In 2006, Ogrish.com was rebranded as
Liveleak.com.
, established in 2008 by Mark Marek, was notorious for its extremely graphic content, such as photos and videos of murders, suicides and violent accidents with an estimated 15–20 million monthly visits during its operation.
He pleaded guilty and was given a six-month
conditional sentence
Conditional sentences are natural language sentences that express that one thing is contingent on something else, e.g. "If it rains, the picnic will be cancelled." They are so called because the impact of the main clause of the sentence is ''con ...
for his role in a case where he was accused of corrupting public morals in
Alberta, Canada
Alberta ( ) is one of the thirteen provinces and territories of Canada. It is part of Western Canada and is one of the three prairie provinces. Alberta is bordered by British Columbia to the west, Saskatchewan to the east, the Northwest Territ ...
. Some shock galleries, however, established more specific niches. The sites
Necrobabes
Section 63 of the Criminal Justice and Immigration Act 2008 is a law in the United Kingdom criminalising possession of what it refers to as "extreme pornographic images". The law came into force on 26 January 2009. The legislation was brought in ...
, Cannibal Café, and Gourmet tailored themselves to would-be
cannibals
Cannibalism is the act of consuming another individual of the same species as food. Cannibalism is a common ecological interaction in the animal kingdom and has been recorded in more than 1,500 species. Human cannibalism is well documented, bo ...
in the early 2000s.
These sites gained attention in 2003 when
Armin Meiwes
Armin Meiwes (; born 1 December 1961) is a German former computer repair technician who received international attention for murdering and eating a voluntary victim in 2001, whom he had found via the Internet. After Meiwes and the victim jointl ...
, an aspiring cannibal, used the sites to connect with Jürgen Brandes, a man who desired to be eaten.
The two met, and Brandes' murder and cannibalism were recorded and posted on various sites.
Additionally,
Graham Coutts visited Necrobabes, Rapepassion, Violentpleasure, and Hangingbitches frequently before strangling teacher
Jane Longhurst.
There have also been several individual videos that received viral attention.
Goatse
goatse.cx ( , ; "goat sex"), often spelled without the .cx top-level domain as Goatse, was originally an Internet shock site. Its front page featured a picture entitled hello.jpg, showing a close-up of a hunched-over naked man using both hands ...
was one of the earliest and best-known shock sites, featuring an image of a man stretching his
anus with his hands.
The site featured a page devoted to fan-submitted artwork and tributes to the site.
The site was shut down in 2004; however, various
mirror sites featuring the image still exist.
In 2012, it was resurrected as an e-mail service. In 2008, the
Dnepropetrovsk maniacs posted the graphic murder video "3 Guys 1 Hammer".
This was followed years later by Eric Clinton Kirk Newman's (known now as Luka Rocco Magnotta) video "1 Lunatic 1 Icepick" in 2012—a video of Newman
murdering Chinese student Jun Lin that contained dismemberment, cannibalism, and
necrophilia, and was posted on Bestgore.com.
Newman also shared a video one year prior of him using a vacuum and plastic bag to suffocate two
kittens to the song "
Happy Xmas (War is Over)
"Happy Xmas (War Is Over)" is a Christmas song released in 1971 as a single by John & Yoko/Plastic Ono Band with the Harlem Community Choir. It was the seventh single release by John Lennon outside his work with the Beatles. The song reach ...
" by
John Lennon
John Winston Ono Lennon (born John Winston Lennon; 9 October 19408 December 1980) was an English singer, songwriter, musician and peace activist who achieved worldwide fame as founder, co-songwriter, co-lead vocalist and rhythm guitarist of ...
to several gore sites.
Meatspin is a shock site containing a looping video (set playing to "
You Spin Me Round (Like a Record)
"You Spin Me Round (Like a Record)" is a song by English pop band Dead or Alive, featured on their second album, '' Youthquake'' (1985). Released as a single in November 1984, it reached No. 1 in the UK in March 1985, taking 17 weeks to get ...
by
Dead or Alive") of two people engaging in anal sex, while the penis of the receiving partner spins endlessly. Although frequently reported to be
gay pornography
Gay pornography is the representation of sexual activity between males. Its primary goal is sexual arousal in its audience. Softcore gay pornography also exists; it at one time constituted the genre, and may be produced as beefcake pornogr ...
, it has been mentioned that the clip was derived from a
transgender pornography
Transgender pornography is a genre of pornography featuring transsexual or transgender actors. The majority of the genre features trans women, but trans men are sometimes featured. Trans women are most often featured with male partners, but they ar ...
film. A counter keeps track of how many "spins" the viewer has watched.
In 2013, a student at
Florida State University hacked the wireless network of his campus and redirected all traffic to Meatspin.
In 2015, consternation followed when a family restaurant played the website in front of young children.
In 2016, the website was played on a public digital billboard in
Sweden, resulting in international media attention.
The site first went live on March 10, 2005. , the domain is now meatspin.cc. John-Michael Bond of ''
The Daily Dot
''The Daily Dot'' is a digital media company covering the culture of the Internet and the World Wide Web. Founded by Nicholas White in 2011, ''The Daily Dot'' is headquartered in Austin, Texas.
The site, conceived as the Internet's "hometo ...
'' stated that to an extent, "casual
homophobia" of the 2000s helped popularize Meatspin.
Legality
Currently, there is no federal or state legislation in the United States that outlaws possessing or viewing videos or images that depict the death of a human being.
In 2000,
California
California is a state in the Western United States, located along the Pacific Coast. With nearly 39.2million residents across a total area of approximately , it is the most populous U.S. state and the 3rd largest by area. It is also the m ...
introduced a bill to outlaw these films, but after the
American Civil Liberties Union
The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) is a nonprofit organization founded in 1920 "to defend and preserve the individual rights and liberties guaranteed to every person in this country by the Constitution and laws of the United States". T ...
(ACLU) raised protest over First Amendment Concerns, the bill failed to pass. No other bill has passed since.
In the case of ''
Miller v. California
''Miller v. California'', 413 U.S. 15 (1973), was a landmark decision of the U.S. Supreme Court modifying its definition of obscenity from that of "utterly without socially redeeming value" to that which lacks "serious literary, artistic, polit ...
'', the
U.S. Supreme Court
The Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) is the highest court in the federal judiciary of the United States. It has ultimate appellate jurisdiction over all U.S. federal court cases, and over state court cases that involve a point o ...
established a test to determine whether content falls under the category of unprotected obscenity.
The
Miller test
The Miller test, also called the three-prong obscenity test, is the United States Supreme Court's test for determining whether speech or expression can be labeled obscene, in which case it is not protected by the First Amendment to the United St ...
requires that content "appeals to the prurient interest" to be obscene, meaning content must have a sexual component.
That test was modified by United States v. Richards, which ruled that
animal crush videos (videos that involve the killing of animals) can be obscene and therefore, are unprotected by the First Amendment even though they do not clearly appeal to sexual interests.
The court ruled animal crush videos to be unprotected obscenity for two reasons. First, animal crush videos can appeal to a "specific sexual fetish," which fits the sexual conduct requirement of the Miller test. Second, United States v. Richards modified the Miller test by ruling that obscenity "can also cover unusual deviant acts" even if they are not directly sexual.
Child pornography also falls under the category of unprotected obscenity by these tests.
Due to the combination of murder and
pornography depicted on shock sites that contain murder videos like gore2gasm.com, legal scholars have argued that murder videos also appeal to specific sexual interests and are thus unprotected under United States v. Richards.
In terms of liability, unless death videos are illegal, third party providers like shock sites that host death videos are protected by the
Communications Decency Act of 1996
The Communications Decency Act of 1996 (CDA) was the United States Congress's first notable attempt to regulate pornographic material on the Internet. In the 1997 landmark case ''Reno v. ACLU'', the United States Supreme Court unanimously struck ...
(CDA).
However, websites that require users to upload illegal content or actively encourage users to create and share illegal content can be held liable.
Additionally, courts have granted increasing
privacy rights
The right to privacy is an element of various legal traditions that intends to restrain governmental and private actions that threaten the privacy of individuals. Over 150 national constitutions mention the right to privacy. On 10 December 194 ...
to families over the publication and distribution of images of deceased relatives.
The owners of
Rotten.com
Rotten.com was a shock site active from 1996 to 2012. The website, which had the tagline "An archive of disturbing illustration", was devoted to morbid
A disease is a particular abnormal condition that negatively affects the structure ...
were successfully sued by families for hosting photos of dead people and videos of their deaths on the site.
In the UK, legislators passed the
Criminal Justice and Immigration Act of 2008, which included a section outlawing
extreme pornography
Section 63 of the Criminal Justice and Immigration Act 2008 is a law in the United Kingdom criminalising possession of what it refers to as "extreme pornographic images". The law came into force on 26 January 2009. The legislation was brought in ...
(that which is intended to sexually arouse viewers that threatens a person's life, is likely to seriously harm a person's anus, breasts, or genitals, or involves a human corpse or an animal).
This has resulted in shock sites, as well as US pornographers including
Max Hardcore
Paul F. Little (born August 10, 1956) is an American pornographic actor, producer and director better known by his stage name Max Hardcore. He rose to prominence in 1992 with the film series ''The Anal Adventures of Max Hardcore'', which in 1994 ...
and
Extreme Associates
Extreme Associates, formerly known as Extreme and Extreme 2.0, is a pornographic film production company, featuring a catalog of DVD titles and Internet content. It is owned by Rob Zicari ("Rob Black") and his former wife Janet Romano ("Lizzy Bo ...
, being convicted of
obscenity in the UK.
During the
Christchurch mosque shootings
On 15 March 2019, two consecutive mass shootings occurred in a terrorist attack on two mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand. The attacks, carried out by a lone gunman who entered both mosques during Friday prayer, began at the Al Noor Mosque ...
in
New Zealand
New Zealand ( mi, Aotearoa ) is an island country in the southwestern Pacific Ocean. It consists of two main landmasses—the North Island () and the South Island ()—and over 700 smaller islands. It is the sixth-largest island count ...
, the shooter broadcast the killings live on
Facebook
Facebook is an online social media and social networking service owned by American company Meta Platforms. Founded in 2004 by Mark Zuckerberg with fellow Harvard College students and roommates Eduardo Saverin, Andrew McCollum, Dustin Mosk ...
.
The video was shared on Facebook and uploaded to
YouTube
YouTube is a global online video sharing and social media platform headquartered in San Bruno, California. It was launched on February 14, 2005, by Steve Chen, Chad Hurley, and Jawed Karim. It is owned by Google, and is the second mo ...
shortly after. Footage of the mass killings were hosted on
4chan
4chan is an anonymous English-language imageboard website. Launched by Christopher "moot" Poole in October 2003, the site hosts boards dedicated to a wide variety of topics, from anime and manga to video games, cooking, weapons, television, ...
,
8chan
8kun, previously called 8chan, Infinitechan or Infinitychan (stylized as ∞chan), is an imageboard website composed of user-created message boards. An owner moderates each board, with minimal interaction from site administration. The site ha ...
,
LiveLeak,
Voat
Voat Inc was an American alt-tech news aggregator and social networking service where registered community members could submit content such as text posts and direct links. Registered users could then vote on these submissions. Content entries ...
,
Zero Hedge
0 (zero) is a number representing an empty quantity. In place-value notation such as the Hindu–Arabic numeral system, 0 also serves as a placeholder numerical digit, which works by multiplying digits to the left of 0 by the radix, usuall ...
, and
KiwiFarms.
Rather than the Australian government trying to ban this specific instance of murder video, internet service providers in Australia chose to place temporary blocks on any sites that hosted the footage until all the footage was believed to be removed.
Ethics
Several ethical concerns have been raised on the topic of shock sites and murder videos. One concern is that the popularity of shock sites will encourage an increase in violent murders, which can result in more extreme and violent videos that will likely generate more views on shock sites.
Murder videos can inspire copycats to replicate the snuff films. After one of the Dnepropetrovsk Maniacs' videos leaked on the internet as "3 Guys 1 Hammer" in 2007, Luka Magnotta
murdered Lin Jun, a Chinese student, and uploaded the video (including scenes of
dismemberment
Dismemberment is the act of cutting, ripping, tearing, pulling, wrenching or otherwise disconnecting the limbs from a living or dead being. It has been practiced upon human beings as a form of capital punishment, especially in connection with ...
, cannibalism, and
necrophilia) under the similar title of "1 Lunatic 1 Icepick" in 2012.
Another concern is the right of a victim and the victim's family to privacy after death.
This is the issue of whether Lin Jun's parents have a right to remove the video of their son's murder from the internet.
Murder victims cannot consent to the footage of their deaths being used and uploaded, and several court cases have agreed that parents and loved ones should have a right to prevent the widespread viewership of a personal tragedy and stop the video from being published.
Finally, while shock value is not sufficient to justify banning content legally (as was determined by
Cohen v. California),
there are still ethical concerns about the emotional damages caused by the jarring nature and content of shock sites. Viewing violent content such as murder videos on social media can cause or trigger
post-traumatic stress disorder
Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is a mental and behavioral disorder that can develop because of exposure to a traumatic event, such as sexual assault, warfare, traffic collisions, child abuse, domestic violence, or other threats o ...
(PTSD) and cause other
emotional distress
In medicine, distress is an aversive state in which a person is unable to completely adapt to stressors and their resulting stress and shows maladaptive behaviors. It can be evident in the presence of various phenomena, such as inappropriate so ...
.
Media
As more people upload and view murder videos on shock sites, some believe that this practice is being mirrored in the
horror movie
Horror is a film genre that seeks to elicit fear or disgust in its audience for entertainment purposes.
Horror films often explore dark subject matter and may deal with transgressive topics or themes. Broad elements include monsters, ap ...
genre. The presence of
CCTV in ''
Saw
A saw is a tool consisting of a tough blade, wire, or chain with a hard toothed edge. It is used to cut through material, very often wood, though sometimes metal or stone. The cut is made by placing the toothed edge against the material and mov ...
'' and the online torture auctions in ''
Hostel Part II'' raise questions on the nefarious use of monitoring systems and the widespread access to videos of
Al-Qaeda beheadings
Decapitation or beheading is the total separation of the head from the body. Such an injury is invariably fatal to humans and most other animals, since it deprives the brain of oxygenated blood, while all other organs are deprived of the au ...
, executions in American prisons, and other real depictions of violence and murder on the internet.
In examples like ''Saw'', the contemporary horror genre reflects real horror on the internet.
Additionally, a parody of Goatse was shown by a
BBC #REDIRECT BBC #REDIRECT BBC
Here i going to introduce about the best teacher of my life b BALAJI sir. He is the precious gift that I got befor 2yrs . How has helped and thought all the concept and made my success in the 10th board exam. ...
...
newscast as an alternative for the then recently unveiled logo for the 