I made a Nirvana fan page In Geocities back in the day. Used basic HTML and had a black and white image from rotten dot com of Kurt's body laying on the floor as the background wallpaper image for the lyrics section. So cringeworthy, but that's what happens when an edgy teen gets behind a computer when trying to make their first webpage.
I brought the cd liner to an Aerosmith album (I can’t remember which one, but it unfolded into a poster) to my fourth grade class and taped it on my desk
We had to go out of our way to rotten to see something edgy.
Little shits be sharing decapitation videos in group chats in elementary school nowadays.
My kids are in their 20s and all shared how they were exposed to weird ass hentai or explicit gore either at school by some kid being like "look at this" on a school computer, or older kids on the bus.
I WISH we still lived in a world where exposure to fucked up stuff was a choice
From what I've seen, this type of revisionist history has been popping up a lot lately amongst Gen Z, and I really have no idea why. You should see some of the shit they say about the early 90s Seattle music scene.
I also want to know what they’re saying. Born (‘82) and raised in Seattle, my partner is older than me and was involved in the music scene as well as a couple of my extended family members.
Off the top of my head, the thing that sticks out the most is how I got into an argument with some of them over Alice in Chains, particularly about how they said Jerry Cantrell was verbally and emotionally abusive towards Layne during recording sessions. That couldn't be further from the truth because they all treated Layne like a brother up until his death. I asked where they all got this information: "I heard it from somebody who knew a guy up there that was connected to the scene".
A choice? You still have to go to websites to view things?
You are acting like the internet is one website that randomly gives pictures and videos.
If you type in Mario Porn it takes you to Porn websites. Just like in 2010 if you typed in decapitated videos it brought you to Rotten or a r/gore or something similar.
It's always been and still is a choice.
If anything its harder now then it used to be. Gore is mostly hidden on mainstream websites in ways it just didnt used to be ( I used to see gore and porn on reddits r/all)
It might have been harder for us to find as kids because we were internet pioneers and didnt know all the tricks of the trade. But this stuff was NOT hidden or hard to find.
That world was an illusion of choice. I’m sure you remember using a p2p app like Kazaa or Limewire to download music right? (WWF Titantrons too for me)
Trolls would share a video you’d be seeking and the next thing you know you’re exposed to something truly devastating. I saw czechclear when I was 13, if that. I can still hear the gurgles and it sucks man.
Now, yes it’s arguably easier to find should you wish. (Don’t do it) But it’s also just as easy to get trolled and the sad truth is if your kids have access to the internet it’s truly a risk.
Not much different from back then. I was in HS by the time we got to the forum age of the internet, but my friends would expose me to fucked up gore threads from 4chan or the other sites listen above all the time. It was at the point that if someone said, "hey, check out this cool video I found" I knew better to say no way and look away. It was a super common "prank" then to show some unsuspecting person some fucked up shit. They weren't even the edgelord type. It was just that common. Sounds like the only real difference is that everyone has access to that kind of shit in their back pocket at all times now and it's no longer in forum format. People were doing the exact same thing 10-20 years ago tho.
Yeah, you had to choose to go to those sites, but the people that did subjected everyone else to that fucked up bullshit just the same. I'm a 90s kid that's been exposed to so much gore entirely against my will. Countless types of death, torture, animal cruelty, you name it.
tubgirl, ass eels, church of fudge, one man one jar, goatse... the pre-2010 internet was a wild ride. last time i explained this - i brought up lemonparty & meatspin a couple years ago & they were still around (not checking again, so I have no idea if they're still live)
The thing that's burnt into my mind about that dude was he had a wedding ring on... He was married! Imagine walking downstairs on your husband and finding that.
I accidentally saw the Daniel pearl video at fucking school. Something in me changed after that. I have always browsed the internet much more carefully.
God, I remember Piers Anthony books. I read a ton of them when I was 8-12. I tried re-reading one of my favorites when I was in my 20s. It was bad. Really bad.
The one with the character Stile is literally the only one I read. The only thing I remember from it is that I learned the ladder over the fence in our back pasture was called a 'stile.'
It's obviously best known for the gross stuff, but the Rotten Library actually had a whole lot of very well-written and interesting article cover a whole lot of topics.
Your post has been removed for using a “Does anyone else remember…” or “Remember when…” format for an obviously well remembered or popular topic. A suggestion box should have appeared before the post was submitted advising you to change the title. We apologize if it did not.
At lot of those things on rotten and similar sites have basically desensitised me to any violence, apart from my phobia of breaking bones and shit bending the wrong way. (I squirmed in my seat typing that)
The best part of Rotten wasn’t the shock content it was their library section. Articles based on topics from A-Z and they were so well written and informative. Yes, everyone was exposed to the shock but you stayed for the library once the novelty went away. Wish that part could have stayed up.
Nah. I was in Iraq when that site had its heyday. I got plenty of real life gore and I have absolutely no respect for people who seek it out for the thrill of it.
I find it quite a luxury that people are so sheltered from dark realities that they want to peek behind the curtain and see it. But the first time you encounter a murdered child in your life I promise that desire will go away forever... or it's a sign of a deep pathology.
I love the theatrics of gory horror movies like Terrifier because it's obviously theatrical, but no one should want to see a real life mutilated body. And everyone in this sub should be old enough to know better. It's excusable for a teenager but we're all in our 40s here.
I don't necessarily disagree with what you want to do it's your call to make. I just expect most people to be gawkers and my horse isn't high enough to look down on people just for gawking
While we're on the subject, not sure if anyone remembers Phone Trace. You'd tell someone it was a way to locate anyone with a phone anywhere in the world, which made it a really easy prank to sell since it appealed to people's curiosity. You'd type in a phone number and then it would open some fake mapquest map that would zoom in like you were watching some CSI computer scene after someone had yelled ENHANCE. Seconds later they'd see a giant swinging dick in their face.
I sent the link via AOL instant messenger to a buddy who was studying abroad one summer, not realizing that with the time difference he'd be in the middle of class. Fortunately he was sitting in the back of the room, but he sent it to everyone he knew in class so their were just dicks swinging everywhere in the middle of a college lecture. I laugh just thinking about it.
Yes. Back in the late 90s I could be sitting in the computer lab among other students working on projets after classes, and all these mouth-breathing failures would show up trying one by one kick people off the computers. PCs were expensive, and using the internet from home was slow. So, these guys would be pressuring others to give in and let them use the computers just to browse ONE website. And they wouldn't give up. They would circle the room for an hour in their Cradle of Filth shirts going "c'mon lemme use the fokken innernet". And if you entered the lab and saw a PC or two unoccupied with rottencom open in the browser, you'd know the morons were on a smoke break and would be back soon.
I remember one where the caption was "This is why we don't drive motorcycles." I think it is the same image (jawless guy looking at camera?). But, for me that was one of the images that was burned into the back of my eyelids and made me turn away from these shock/gore sites. I can handle gore, I can't handle people in distress.
I remember surfing this page with friends in the library during lunch Because the school had a 10Mbps connection for the entire campus. Ah, high school in the late 90s. Netscape Navigator was king. Metacrawler too. Search the search engines!
Steak and Cheese.com FOREVER! That was just enough shock and more just disgusting stuff rather than straight gore. And there was another one like rate my shit or something like that?! Where people posted pictures of their shit for people to rate. Our generation had it made haha.
Pennywise rightfully sued the website for posting a suicide pic of their bassist. I never went on the site, but I remember reading about this. Sick shit
I actually used something from there as evidence in a court proceeding once. I obviously need to be a little vague, but I had a witness who authenticated the video by pointing to himself on the screen.
I do! My hubs was a friend of the site's owner. Been to his place a couple times, though last time was well over a decade ago now. He's a bird guy, has a small aviary in his house. Also adopted an African grey parrot Cujo from a former colleague who passed, which had the odd talent of repeating early 14.4k and 28.8k modem noises, among other beeps and boops.
In the end it was mostly social media that killed the site, afaik. Private sharing of edgy stuff reduced demand for website content and its revenue dropped below the hosting costs.
Also around the time of filesharing as well. My college roommate would Limewire all kinds of gore videos, some were probably also on rotten but a lot were not. Some of those live recordings of straight up murder desensitized so many to the horrors of the world, myself included. Feels like around this time the hope for the future that the world was trending in a better direction and true change was possible started to dwindle. Stuck between a dreamer and a realist.
Now it's no wonder I can see hd footage of the Ukraine war and not even flinch. Or seeing Charlie Kirk getting shot in the neck wasn't shocking. I mean I'm not seeking this stuff out. But it doesn't affect me the same either. I'm sure there's still plenty that does and would shock me if I stumbled on it though. And I don't want to know or see that anyway.
I felt like this was almost a rite of passage in the early internet days; you hear about it, morbid curiosity takes over, you view it and traumatize yourself briefly and rarely return.
Now, you get shit like this seeping into social media, group chats etc on unsuspecting people, which is even more traumatizing, IMO.
On a side note, this is a prime example of why I think it's weird that Americans make fun of Brits for saying bottle of water like "a bo'ol o' wa'er" when Americans drop the T from words too. I see so many YouTube videos where an American says "Hit the subscribe bu'en". Or saying co'on instead of cotton.
And yes, I sadly remember Ro'en.com. I think that's where I saw the Budd Dwyer suicide video.
Yeah... out of all the crazy stuff on there, there's this picture called "The Brit" that kinda stills lives rent free in my head after all these years.
It's not even that crazy from what I remember, but that thing was so weird and creeped me out a bunch.
The Mattes shocked the mainstream art world with the invention of "Darko Maver",a reclusive radical artist, who achieved cult status and was paid tribute to in the 48th Venice Biennale, before being exposed as pure fiction.The fiction was that this Serbian artist created very gruesome and realistic models of murder victims and positioned them so to obtain media attention. He was exposing the brutality of war in the Balkans to the world. In reality, the photos were found on the web site rotten.com and depicted real-life atrocities. They mutated reality to mimic fiction but in doing so produced an alternative reality. Their message to the world was: while artists are making shocking artwork, absorbed by the market, real violence is being perpetrated and ignored by a media-anesthetized world.
Similar to the guy above, I just had a morbid curiosity.
But man, the absolute pinnacle of the worst of the worst.
Cartel executions, middle east beading (most of them NOT quick) murder videos, crashes, everything.
I remember a homeless guy getting murdered by some who filmed themselves continually stabbing him and it just kept going and going and going.....screams.....until there wasn't anymore.
The other than that has always stayed with me was an Afghan beheading where it just took soooo long with them sawing away at his neck with clearly a not very sharp knife.
Then when it came to the spine, he was hacking away at it for what felt like at least 10 minutes.
Brutal shit.....most of which is all still available somewhere I'm sure.
I still remember one of a South American prison where they beat a dude to death then crushed his skull and were scooping his brains out and everyone commenting was just like “yup that’s how prison is there”.
One of the pictures on that site actually gave me nightmares. It was someone who had cooked themselves alive in the bathtub. I never went back on it again.
Rotten was a morbid curiosity visit, but I spent more time on the still weird but not as gross Fractal Cow. Anyone remember that site? They gave us Bert is Evil and while not as popular, I always liked their Suicide Boy comics too.
Now I'm thinking about all the other oddball websites I used to frequent in the late '90s/early '00s and feeling nostalgic for what the internet used to be.
There was a crowd of people I knew, mostly friends of friends, who were always looking at that site and sending each other chain emails of disgusting images. Every time I met one of them around a computer, they were pulling up horrendous images. It was so odd as they seemed otherwise normal, and would pull this stuff up at parties when nobody wanted to see it.
TelevisionKooky3041@reddit
I made a Nirvana fan page In Geocities back in the day. Used basic HTML and had a black and white image from rotten dot com of Kurt's body laying on the floor as the background wallpaper image for the lyrics section. So cringeworthy, but that's what happens when an edgy teen gets behind a computer when trying to make their first webpage.
Jokierre@reddit
GeoCities FTW! Tell me you had a site counter and green smoke skull gifs.
TelevisionKooky3041@reddit
Yep. I went all out with the smoke skull gifs, multicoloured line gifs, blood gifs, and even used comic sans as the main font.
Jokierre@reddit
Nicobeak@reddit
I brought the cd liner to an Aerosmith album (I can’t remember which one, but it unfolded into a poster) to my fourth grade class and taped it on my desk
Listening_Stranger82@reddit
You gotta be fucking kidding me.
We had to go out of our way to rotten to see something edgy.
Little shits be sharing decapitation videos in group chats in elementary school nowadays.
My kids are in their 20s and all shared how they were exposed to weird ass hentai or explicit gore either at school by some kid being like "look at this" on a school computer, or older kids on the bus.
I WISH we still lived in a world where exposure to fucked up stuff was a choice
Mr_Snub@reddit
From what I've seen, this type of revisionist history has been popping up a lot lately amongst Gen Z, and I really have no idea why. You should see some of the shit they say about the early 90s Seattle music scene.
kungfuabuse@reddit
Now I'm super curious. What are they saying?
KronlampQueen@reddit
I also want to know what they’re saying. Born (‘82) and raised in Seattle, my partner is older than me and was involved in the music scene as well as a couple of my extended family members.
Mr_Snub@reddit
Off the top of my head, the thing that sticks out the most is how I got into an argument with some of them over Alice in Chains, particularly about how they said Jerry Cantrell was verbally and emotionally abusive towards Layne during recording sessions. That couldn't be further from the truth because they all treated Layne like a brother up until his death. I asked where they all got this information: "I heard it from somebody who knew a guy up there that was connected to the scene".
KronlampQueen@reddit
Oh wtf that’s so wrong. What is with this revisionist nonsense?
Listening_Stranger82@reddit
So bizarre because it's like...um...y'all have had active shooter drills your whole lives.
We had a handful of edgy websites you had to access via dialup from "the computer room."
We had some weird and awful shit. But their weird and awful shit is steady stream bombardment from age, like, 5
Ubilease@reddit
A choice? You still have to go to websites to view things?
You are acting like the internet is one website that randomly gives pictures and videos.
If you type in Mario Porn it takes you to Porn websites. Just like in 2010 if you typed in decapitated videos it brought you to Rotten or a r/gore or something similar.
It's always been and still is a choice.
If anything its harder now then it used to be. Gore is mostly hidden on mainstream websites in ways it just didnt used to be ( I used to see gore and porn on reddits r/all)
It might have been harder for us to find as kids because we were internet pioneers and didnt know all the tricks of the trade. But this stuff was NOT hidden or hard to find.
Different_Stand_1285@reddit
That world was an illusion of choice. I’m sure you remember using a p2p app like Kazaa or Limewire to download music right? (WWF Titantrons too for me)
Trolls would share a video you’d be seeking and the next thing you know you’re exposed to something truly devastating. I saw czechclear when I was 13, if that. I can still hear the gurgles and it sucks man.
Now, yes it’s arguably easier to find should you wish. (Don’t do it) But it’s also just as easy to get trolled and the sad truth is if your kids have access to the internet it’s truly a risk.
RichardBCummintonite@reddit
Not much different from back then. I was in HS by the time we got to the forum age of the internet, but my friends would expose me to fucked up gore threads from 4chan or the other sites listen above all the time. It was at the point that if someone said, "hey, check out this cool video I found" I knew better to say no way and look away. It was a super common "prank" then to show some unsuspecting person some fucked up shit. They weren't even the edgelord type. It was just that common. Sounds like the only real difference is that everyone has access to that kind of shit in their back pocket at all times now and it's no longer in forum format. People were doing the exact same thing 10-20 years ago tho.
Yeah, you had to choose to go to those sites, but the people that did subjected everyone else to that fucked up bullshit just the same. I'm a 90s kid that's been exposed to so much gore entirely against my will. Countless types of death, torture, animal cruelty, you name it.
Listening_Stranger82@reddit
Bro.
My kids are in their 20s so we are BOTH talking about 10-20 years ago.
When i was a teen 4chan didn't exist. Rotten did. And cell phones didn't exist and/or you couldn't share anything.
We are talking about two different time periods.
Canesjags4life@reddit
Lol I was about to comment 4chan been around since I graduated highschool until I saw you edit lol
Ordinary_Awareness71@reddit
My driver's ed class in high school (taught by the football coach) involved showing "Red Asphalt" and "Faces of Death" most days.
Aiverson6902@reddit
Hey thats where I saw my first beheading video! And the bathtub girl image is still burned in my brain. Thanks Rotten.com!
Clear_Tangerine5110@reddit
Oh shit I forgot about tub girl.
nrek00@reddit
tubgirl, ass eels, church of fudge, one man one jar, goatse... the pre-2010 internet was a wild ride. last time i explained this - i brought up lemonparty & meatspin a couple years ago & they were still around (not checking again, so I have no idea if they're still live)
Clear_Tangerine5110@reddit
One man one jar was “jar squatter”.
HomelessKitchenCat@reddit
Hopefully she's thriving and still finding her purpose
somekindofhat@reddit
Daniel Pearl?
Goatse also got his start on Rotten, didn't he?
palmerry@reddit
Cottoncloudhigh@reddit
Oh god why
palmerry@reddit
The thing that's burnt into my mind about that dude was he had a wedding ring on... He was married! Imagine walking downstairs on your husband and finding that.
Cottoncloudhigh@reddit
Maybe it was his wife who took the picture
Spiritual-Strike481@reddit
I accidentally saw the Daniel pearl video at fucking school. Something in me changed after that. I have always browsed the internet much more carefully.
PetuniaPicklePepper@reddit
Me too. 😅
vanderpump_lurker@reddit
Its where I saw the pics of Lisa left eye Lopez on the side of the road after her car accident somewhere in Central America.
Jonestown_Juice@reddit
Rotten, Stileproject, eFukt, Ogrish...
the_ballmer_peak@reddit
I remember stileproject. Unfortunately.
External-Flight-4680@reddit
Named after a Piers Anthony character, which is . . . something.
the_ballmer_peak@reddit
God, I remember Piers Anthony books. I read a ton of them when I was 8-12. I tried re-reading one of my favorites when I was in my 20s. It was bad. Really bad.
somekindofhat@reddit
Such a terrible author.
OshetDeadagain@reddit
The one with the character Stile is literally the only one I read. The only thing I remember from it is that I learned the ladder over the fence in our back pasture was called a 'stile.'
send_in_the_clouds@reddit
Damn I just had a memory of a video on stileproject flood back - it was a close up of someone being stabbed in the throat.
I was horrified and turned it off quickly, still have no idea if it was real but quickly learnt my limitations as a kid
nobot4321@reddit
Ogrish, there is a name I haven’t thought of in a long time. That was the really nasty shit.
Diggitydave76@reddit
I remember one on there where there was someone who got ran over by a train and it literally ripped their face off.
TrustAffectionate966@reddit
Don't forget LiveLeak and MundoNarco. 💀☠
charcarod0n@reddit
I miss liveleak
TrustAffectionate966@reddit
Russian dashcams were some of my favorites. This was before dashcams were prevalent. The Russians were way ahead of us.
☠💀
BillyDMountain@reddit
Seak and Cheese too. I've been thinking about this stuff a lot cause Eric Salvia often references it.
Acceptable-Double-98@reddit
Like what?
weltvonalex@reddit
a man eating a baby
SalsaSmuggler@reddit
Don’t forget Bestgore lol
6ynnad@reddit
Faces of death, cartel videos…
johndicks80@reddit
Ogrish was ROUGH
BelliBlast35@reddit
So was LiveLeake
Mr_Snub@reddit
Pour one out for SteakAndCheese
ManbadFerrara@reddit
It's obviously best known for the gross stuff, but the Rotten Library actually had a whole lot of very well-written and interesting article cover a whole lot of topics.
Different_Stand_1285@reddit
Yes! I posted in this thread mentioning the library, holy shit I’m so happy it was archived. Thank you for sharing!
dianabowl@reddit
Here on Reddit we've had a few gore subs as well. Watchpeopledie, etc
Cthulhus-Tailor@reddit
Great site if you like watching cartel members and terrorists remove people’s heads. Not really my thing.
Xennials-ModTeam@reddit
Your post has been removed for using a “Does anyone else remember…” or “Remember when…” format for an obviously well remembered or popular topic. A suggestion box should have appeared before the post was submitted advising you to change the title. We apologize if it did not.
Cutthechitchata-hole@reddit
We all became rotten enough to no longer need rotten.com
TenBear@reddit
At lot of those things on rotten and similar sites have basically desensitised me to any violence, apart from my phobia of breaking bones and shit bending the wrong way. (I squirmed in my seat typing that)
Do_it_My_Way-79@reddit
Who remembers steakandcheese.com?
PaleontologistOld861@reddit
"Meat Crayon" ensured that I will never buy a motorcycle....
Square-Adeptness7192@reddit
I hate these tiktok videos where there's a person talking in front of the images 😒
mattjh@reddit
I hate "does anyone remember" posts about things everyone in here is constantly remembering every single day
Different_Stand_1285@reddit
The best part of Rotten wasn’t the shock content it was their library section. Articles based on topics from A-Z and they were so well written and informative. Yes, everyone was exposed to the shock but you stayed for the library once the novelty went away. Wish that part could have stayed up.
TrixieLaBouche@reddit
Yes. Those were some hella college days.
One-Earth9294@reddit
Nah. I was in Iraq when that site had its heyday. I got plenty of real life gore and I have absolutely no respect for people who seek it out for the thrill of it.
baudmiksen@reddit
It was just skimming the surface of a world where the depths of depravity seem bottomless
baudmiksen@reddit
I had to log out to read your reply cuz you blocked me lol, I guess you ain't joking when you say you don't want to hear it
One-Earth9294@reddit
I find it quite a luxury that people are so sheltered from dark realities that they want to peek behind the curtain and see it. But the first time you encounter a murdered child in your life I promise that desire will go away forever... or it's a sign of a deep pathology.
I love the theatrics of gory horror movies like Terrifier because it's obviously theatrical, but no one should want to see a real life mutilated body. And everyone in this sub should be old enough to know better. It's excusable for a teenager but we're all in our 40s here.
baudmiksen@reddit
I don't necessarily disagree with what you want to do it's your call to make. I just expect most people to be gawkers and my horse isn't high enough to look down on people just for gawking
One-Earth9294@reddit
I don't wanna hear this 'high horse' bullshit when I've had to watch human remains get shoveled into the back of pickup trucks.
Vadriel@reddit
While we're on the subject, not sure if anyone remembers Phone Trace. You'd tell someone it was a way to locate anyone with a phone anywhere in the world, which made it a really easy prank to sell since it appealed to people's curiosity. You'd type in a phone number and then it would open some fake mapquest map that would zoom in like you were watching some CSI computer scene after someone had yelled ENHANCE. Seconds later they'd see a giant swinging dick in their face.
I sent the link via AOL instant messenger to a buddy who was studying abroad one summer, not realizing that with the time difference he'd be in the middle of class. Fortunately he was sitting in the back of the room, but he sent it to everyone he knew in class so their were just dicks swinging everywhere in the middle of a college lecture. I laugh just thinking about it.
Striking-Access-236@reddit
Ah yes rotten.com and Faces of death, lovely...alsof LiveLeak...later was more into iheather etc. and lost interest.
uncheesypeas@reddit
Yes. Back in the late 90s I could be sitting in the computer lab among other students working on projets after classes, and all these mouth-breathing failures would show up trying one by one kick people off the computers. PCs were expensive, and using the internet from home was slow. So, these guys would be pressuring others to give in and let them use the computers just to browse ONE website. And they wouldn't give up. They would circle the room for an hour in their Cradle of Filth shirts going "c'mon lemme use the fokken innernet". And if you entered the lab and saw a PC or two unoccupied with rottencom open in the browser, you'd know the morons were on a smoke break and would be back soon.
Polkawillneverdie17@reddit
Jfc, where did you go to high school?
uncheesypeas@reddit
Finland.
Asleep_Onion@reddit
So then it was a really really nice prison, at least
pak_sajat@reddit
I hope your day gets better.
Poultrygeist74@reddit
Flush please
CoolReference3704@reddit
I remember watching watchmerot for a hot min
Clear_Tangerine5110@reddit
There was a page there called "Motorcycle". iykyk
Pretty sure it wasn't a motorcycle accident though. Looked like a failed suicide attempt.
Zealousideal_Pay2128@reddit
I remember one where the caption was "This is why we don't drive motorcycles." I think it is the same image (jawless guy looking at camera?). But, for me that was one of the images that was burned into the back of my eyelids and made me turn away from these shock/gore sites. I can handle gore, I can't handle people in distress.
XfreetimeX@reddit
I was there bro. What got me was his eyes and the fact.you could tell he was alive
mechanical_marten@reddit
I remember surfing this page with friends in the library during lunch Because the school had a 10Mbps connection for the entire campus. Ah, high school in the late 90s. Netscape Navigator was king. Metacrawler too. Search the search engines!
MacMommy111@reddit
Steak and Cheese.com FOREVER! That was just enough shock and more just disgusting stuff rather than straight gore. And there was another one like rate my shit or something like that?! Where people posted pictures of their shit for people to rate. Our generation had it made haha.
neityght@reddit
loureed1234@reddit
Pennywise rightfully sued the website for posting a suicide pic of their bassist. I never went on the site, but I remember reading about this. Sick shit
weltvonalex@reddit
I miss Rotten, that shit was different. The daily rotten history part was awesome.
LemonGrass6432@reddit
I remember the cadavers from the Phuket tsunami, the bloated body of Chris Farley and much much more
KayaTay@reddit
Newgrounds had that video game where you were the school shooter and they played KMFDM in the background.
PetuniaPicklePepper@reddit
How about
L E M O N P A R T Y ?
KayaTay@reddit
Meatspin.
Curious_Orange8592@reddit
Dear Gen Z, if you ever wonder why Gen Xers and elder Millenials aren't as shocked as you, this is why
This is not to critisise you, merely to inform you that us olds have seen things
Dreboomboom@reddit
Nightmare inducing shit, terrible stuff.
Substantial_Diver_34@reddit
Ebaums World
Deadshadow84@reddit
Ogrish and Show No Mercy were brutal and I actually preferred those over Rotten.
Username524@reddit
We can just see that shit everyday now…on reddit!
mog_knight@reddit
I remember them linking to Ratemypoo and saying it was the only site more messed up than Rotten
Ordinary_Awareness71@reddit
I used to go to there and the breast version. Those were fun days.
FavoriteFoodCarrots@reddit
I actually used something from there as evidence in a court proceeding once. I obviously need to be a little vague, but I had a witness who authenticated the video by pointing to himself on the screen.
Ordinary_Awareness71@reddit
Dang!
XIENVYIX@reddit
Thatsphuched was my introduction.
TheLastBoat@reddit
They had autopsy photos of Tupac and Chris Farley.
artemis17121985@reddit
There was one image. I’m not sure what happened but there was a giant hole in the middle of the guys face and his tongue was hanging out.
PM_ME_UR_PIKACHU@reddit
Bunch of people in here who weren't part of the lemonparty
ham_cheese_4564@reddit
Oh yeah that was wild. Consumptionjunction was another fun one.
NPC261939@reddit
Yep. Having watched Faces of Death my buddies and I were primed for this shit.
St_ofQualityFootwear@reddit
1996? pepperidge farm remembers
Dean_Proffitt@reddit
Anyone remember their secondary site, Boners.com? It was silly and not gross out stuff. They must have made a lot of money selling the domain.
scrambledhelix@reddit
I do! My hubs was a friend of the site's owner. Been to his place a couple times, though last time was well over a decade ago now. He's a bird guy, has a small aviary in his house. Also adopted an African grey parrot Cujo from a former colleague who passed, which had the odd talent of repeating early 14.4k and 28.8k modem noises, among other beeps and boops.
In the end it was mostly social media that killed the site, afaik. Private sharing of edgy stuff reduced demand for website content and its revenue dropped below the hosting costs.
user_name_unknown@reddit
Man the internet really was the Wild West back then
The_Best_Yak_Ever@reddit
Oh yes… definitely turned my 9th grader stomach, having never seen anything like that before.
URfwend@reddit
Also around the time of filesharing as well. My college roommate would Limewire all kinds of gore videos, some were probably also on rotten but a lot were not. Some of those live recordings of straight up murder desensitized so many to the horrors of the world, myself included. Feels like around this time the hope for the future that the world was trending in a better direction and true change was possible started to dwindle. Stuck between a dreamer and a realist.
Now it's no wonder I can see hd footage of the Ukraine war and not even flinch. Or seeing Charlie Kirk getting shot in the neck wasn't shocking. I mean I'm not seeking this stuff out. But it doesn't affect me the same either. I'm sure there's still plenty that does and would shock me if I stumbled on it though. And I don't want to know or see that anyway.
NoContextCarl@reddit
It certainly lived up to its name for sure.
I felt like this was almost a rite of passage in the early internet days; you hear about it, morbid curiosity takes over, you view it and traumatize yourself briefly and rarely return.
Now, you get shit like this seeping into social media, group chats etc on unsuspecting people, which is even more traumatizing, IMO.
LivingCamel3326@reddit
I saw my first goatse on rotten.com
Polkawillneverdie17@reddit
The way she describes the old internet is hilarious. There was no thumbnail! Only a "hyperlink"!
Disk_Good@reddit
Still trying to forget.
jg-kappa-maan@reddit
I use to go on there.
HereWeFuckingGooo@reddit
On a side note, this is a prime example of why I think it's weird that Americans make fun of Brits for saying bottle of water like "a bo'ol o' wa'er" when Americans drop the T from words too. I see so many YouTube videos where an American says "Hit the subscribe bu'en". Or saying co'on instead of cotton.
And yes, I sadly remember Ro'en.com. I think that's where I saw the Budd Dwyer suicide video.
EverybodyPanic81@reddit
I was forced to watch some terrible videos on there by an ex boyfriend. Things I wish I could unsee.
Vectors2_Final@reddit
Yeah... out of all the crazy stuff on there, there's this picture called "The Brit" that kinda stills lives rent free in my head after all these years.
It's not even that crazy from what I remember, but that thing was so weird and creeped me out a bunch.
shawnofnc@reddit
Rotten.Com and Faces of Death. Those were the two sources of my introduction to real gore and shock.
unnccaassoo@reddit
Darko Maver
The Mattes shocked the mainstream art world with the invention of "Darko Maver",a reclusive radical artist, who achieved cult status and was paid tribute to in the 48th Venice Biennale, before being exposed as pure fiction.The fiction was that this Serbian artist created very gruesome and realistic models of murder victims and positioned them so to obtain media attention. He was exposing the brutality of war in the Balkans to the world. In reality, the photos were found on the web site rotten.com and depicted real-life atrocities. They mutated reality to mimic fiction but in doing so produced an alternative reality. Their message to the world was: while artists are making shocking artwork, absorbed by the market, real violence is being perpetrated and ignored by a media-anesthetized world.
Appropriate_Split_97@reddit
Of. Course. I. Remember. Rotten.com.
Seared into my mind. Forever.
SurviveDaddy@reddit
I’d go there once a month, to see if they had posted anything new.
Max_W_@reddit
What were some of the worse things you remember from it?
PrttyPussSoupp1@reddit
Where they watched that man burn inside that car
OhhNoYouNintenDidnt@reddit
Similar to the guy above, I just had a morbid curiosity.
But man, the absolute pinnacle of the worst of the worst.
Cartel executions, middle east beading (most of them NOT quick) murder videos, crashes, everything.
I remember a homeless guy getting murdered by some who filmed themselves continually stabbing him and it just kept going and going and going.....screams.....until there wasn't anymore.
The other than that has always stayed with me was an Afghan beheading where it just took soooo long with them sawing away at his neck with clearly a not very sharp knife.
Then when it came to the spine, he was hacking away at it for what felt like at least 10 minutes.
Brutal shit.....most of which is all still available somewhere I'm sure.
styrofoamladder@reddit
I still remember one of a South American prison where they beat a dude to death then crushed his skull and were scooping his brains out and everyone commenting was just like “yup that’s how prison is there”.
TurtleSandwich0@reddit
The audience left for something even more awful than rotten dot com.
Illystylez619@reddit
One of the pictures on that site actually gave me nightmares. It was someone who had cooked themselves alive in the bathtub. I never went back on it again.
draculawater@reddit
Rotten was a morbid curiosity visit, but I spent more time on the still weird but not as gross Fractal Cow. Anyone remember that site? They gave us Bert is Evil and while not as popular, I always liked their Suicide Boy comics too.
Now I'm thinking about all the other oddball websites I used to frequent in the late '90s/early '00s and feeling nostalgic for what the internet used to be.
cranberries87@reddit
I never visited this site, not my thing, but I had a friend who would go all the time and look.
Realistic_Calendar42@reddit
One word: goiter
VioletVenable@reddit
Oh yeah — I was a regular visitor during high school and college. Totally desensitized to gore now.
CrazyEd38239@reddit
Why has no one mentioned portalofevil.com?
bananabastard@reddit
There was a crowd of people I knew, mostly friends of friends, who were always looking at that site and sending each other chain emails of disgusting images. Every time I met one of them around a computer, they were pulling up horrendous images. It was so odd as they seemed otherwise normal, and would pull this stuff up at parties when nobody wanted to see it.
vid_icarus@reddit
This website is the single reason I am utterly desensitized to gore.
-E-Cross@reddit
I was a bigger fan of godduckingdamnit gfd.com
Voronthered@reddit
ohhhhhh yeah i remmber. Thanks rotten.com
PoorLittleGreenie@reddit
I went to that site all the time and am still haunted by some of the images.
TrustAffectionate966@reddit
Rotten, Ogrish, and TheYNC. I am a fucked-up CHUD.
🙈💦
ericwbolin@reddit
My best friend semi-ironically loved it. I stuck slightly less gross at EbaumsWorld.
audiate@reddit
Doo-doo ca-ca was offensive enough for me.
jcapi1142@reddit
I love how this bish is talking about the best time of the internet like it was a bad thing.
Dumb runt