Rotten.com: Difference between revisions

'''Rotten.com''' was a [[shock site]] that collected pictures of dead people, diseases, deformed bodies, violent acts, perverse sex acts, and other [[wikipedia:Curiosity#Morbid_curiosity|morbid curiosities]]. It stopped updating in 2012, and was eventually closed in 2018.<ref name=":0" /> It was one of the first shock sites to be created on the internet. Pictures were largely submitted by the site's userbase, but staff would occasionally buy images or take images themselves.<ref name=":1" />

The website was first registered in 1996 by a developer named "Soylent".<ref><nowiki>https://www.salon.com/2001/03/05/rotten_2/</nowiki></ref> He wrote a program that could easily identify unregistered internet domain names consisting of a single dictionary word. After some searching, he found that the word "rotten" was one of these unclaimed names, and later went on to register Rotten.com.<ref name=":1">web.archive.org/web/20050516235424/<nowiki>http://www.rotten.com/FAQ/</nowiki> (<u>NOTE</u>: This link contains graphic images!)</ref> Rotten.com postured itself as an online free speech platform, in a time where Internet censorship laws and regulations had begun to restrict access to material online.<ref name=":0">web.archive.org/web/20191005094145/<nowiki>https://kernelmag.dailydot.com/issue-sections/features-issue-sections/10700/rotten-history-shock-site/</nowiki></ref>

The site received a lot of attention and coverage following an incident in which the site posted alleged images of medical personnel recovering Princess Diana's body from her fatal car accident. This picture was eventually revealed to be fake.<ref>web.archive.org/web/20050516235424/rotten.com/about/press.html</ref> The website was also one of the first websites to publish images of jumpers from the September 11 terrorist attacks, under the title "Swan Dive".<ref>esquire.com/news-politics/a48031/the-falling-man-tom-junod/ (<u>NOTE</u>: This article contains graphic images!)</ref>