The End of an Era

Alas, goatse.cx is no more. See this thread for more information on what happened behind the scenes. (Warning, disturbing inline images.)

What was it? If you don’t know, then consider yourself lucky. And do *not* visit that link above… If you really still want to know, well, it was a very candid look at a particular man’s rectal elasticity capabilities, to put it delicately (nothing to do with goats)…

What was the big deal then? In short, it was a focus of Internet mischief. It was a common volley in wars between people trying to gross each other out. Pranksters of all types would try to trick people into visiting it, through everything from simple direct links to fool newbies who’d never heard of it, all the way up to elaborate scripting to hide the true url to catch the suspicious and wary. In many circles people are now so suspicious that they carefully check each URL they see posted several different ways before daring to click on it. It was a form of punishment, something you would direct people to after you caught them stealing your image bandwidth. It was also a test of mettle, to see just how jaded you’d become to seeing shocking things on the net.

And now it is gone, at least officially. It will live on in various forms, of course. Many, many people have already ‘experienced’ it and it is one of those images that once seen, cannot be un-seen, and will be forever burned into their minds. And certainly some people will have the image cached away, ready to strike from their own private servers. It just won’t be the same, though.

Oh well, there’s always tubgirl…