Rotten.com

		Content Warning! The following work contains content and material that some may find shocking. Reader discretion is advised.

		Closed Website This article is about a website that no longer exists. Links to its archive on the Wayback Machine or a saved copy are provided.

“

PURE EVIL SINCE 1996

”

Rotten.com was a shock site that collected pictures of dead people, diseases, deformed bodies, violent acts, perverse sex acts, and other morbid curiosities. It stopped getting new articles in 2009, and was eventually closed in 2018. 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.

History

The website was first registered in 1996 by a developer named "Soylent". 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. 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.

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. 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". The site hosted a picture, named "Motorcycle" because it arrived as "motorcycle.jpg". The picture featured a man with his face blown off because of an attempted shotgun suicide. A attorney wrote to the site to take down the picture, however the attorney did not provide enough details for the request.

The website has also had multiple legal threats. In March 2000, the website received a legal threat from The Coca-Cola Company because of an image on the site featuring a Coca-Cola bottle up a woman's anus. On May 17th, 2000 the Pillsbury Company sent a legal threat to Soylent Communications because of an image featuring the Pillsbury Doughboy in an oven looking at a woman cooking their species..

Soylent Communications also registered a site, named trenchcoat.org because of the Columbine High School massacre. The site depicted as the official site for the Trenchcoat Mafia. At the bottom of the page, there was a link titled "who to sue" which linked to the website of the Burlington Coat Factory. This would result in a legal threat from Burlington.

PenisBird

PenisBird, also known as the "The Incident With The Bird" is a shock image hosted on Rotten.com and Encyclopedia Dramatica. The image displays a close-up picture of a naked man standing in the middle of a concrete parking lot with a scarlet macaw perched on the man's erect penis. Links to the image and ASCII versions were spammed on the Slashdot messageboards. There is an edited GIF version of PenisBird which shows the macaw masturbating the man's penis with semen discharging from it.

Soylent Communications

Soylent Communications is a web-hosting company that hosted multiple shock sites and pornography sites.

Rotten Library

“	We are all in this together, but we all die alone.	”
Rotten Library

The Rotten Library was created in 2003 as an encyclopedia to supplement the website. The library contained hundreds of articles written in a humorous fashion under 17 different headings, including culture, art, medicine, crime, travel, and the occult.

Celebrity Morgue

The Celebrity Morgue in 1999.

The Celebrity Morgue was created on March 6th, 1999 dedicated to dead celebrities with pictures of their corpses or information about their death. It featured multiple celebrities and historical figures such as Tupac Shakur, Adolf Hitler, Abraham Lincoln, Joseph Stalin, Kurt Cobain, John F. Kennedy and Jason Thirsk. The site was last updated in 2005 and stayed up until 2018.

Sports Dignity

“	Thoughts and ruminations from your fearless leader and other various minions	”
The Gaping Maw

The Sports Dignity was another site hosted by Soylent hosting shocking or offensive photos related to sports, such as athletes flipping off the camera or exposing their genitalia.

Rotten Dead Pool

“	FEEL THE PAIN BABY	”
Rotten Dead Pool

The Rotten Dead Pool was a game released in November 2003, where players would pick around ten people who would die in the next 12 months. If a player was correct with celebrity dead, a point would be given. However, a player would not be given a point if it was incorrect. The Number 1 player before the site shutdown was named MitchellStirling, who had a total score of 7.

Rate My Poo

Rate My Poo was a website where people could vote pictures of other people's fecal matter from a scale of 1 to 10. In 2019, the site shutdown and every page redirected to a picture of Donald Trump. Later in 2020 when Joe Biden won the election, the site redirected to bonequest.com and later another pornography site known as "Rate My Pussy". There were multiple variations of Rate My Poo aswell, such as:

• Rate My Kitten
• Rate My Vomit
• Rate My Kitty
• Rate My Puppy
• Rate My Boobies
• Rate My Boner
• Rate My Finger

The Gaping Maw

“	Thoughts and ruminations from your fearless leader and other various minions	”
The Gaping Maw

A screenshot of The Gaping Maw.

The Gaping Maw was a shock site affiliated with Rotten.com that gained attention for its offensive content. It was established in 2000 as an editorial and commentary archive. The majority of the articles were written by cartoonist Tristan Farnon, known by the alias "Spigot," who was also involved in projects like Jerkcity and Leisure Town. These articles often featured news satire and reflections on modern society. The inclusion of The Gaping Maw and the Rotten Library, which provided intellectual and humane perspectives, helped improve Rotten.com's reputation beyond being just a puerile "shock" site.

However, on June 22, 2005, The Gaping Maw was forced to shut down temporarily due to new governmental regulations related to the distribution of pornography. These regulations, specified under 18 U.S.C. 2257, required age verification of models. In compliance with the law, all articles were removed from the website, and the site's title page displayed a statement expressing disappointment with the passage of these laws. The page was prominently labeled "CENSORED BY US GOVERNMENT."

The Gaping Maw eventually returned online in January 2006, but with some articles remaining unpublished and othersh heavily edited to comply with the regulatory requirements. Despite these changes, the website continued to offer its distinct brand of content to its audience. The site was eventually shutdown on a unknown date.

Bonsai Kitten

BonsaiKitten.com was a hoax shock site made in December 2000 by a graduate student at Massachusetts Institute of Technology. It claimed that kittens could be "raised in jars". Multiple people thought the site was serious, leading to the site being reported to animal rights organizations and later investigated by the FBI. The ownership of the site changed multiple times before finally being picked up by Soylent Communications in March 2001. The site raised concerns about free speech and animal cruelty on the internet.

References

Videos

Links

NOTE: The following shock site contains extremely graphic content!

• web.archive.org/web/20040113023130/rotten.com
• PenisBird: web.archive.org/web/20000815234302/smoke.rotten.com/bird/
  • GIF version: edramatica.com/File:Jackoff110we.gif
• Rotten Library: web.archive.org/web/20170824154553/rotten.com/library
• The Gaping Maw: web.archive.org/web/20081205091013/gapingmaw.com

Further reading

• Wikipedia article: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rotten.com (This article contains content derived from this page, which is licensed under CC-BY-SA.)

Rotten.com is part of a series on

Psycho (1960) Theatrical Trailer ⟡ Monkey on Their Backs ⟡ The Exorcist - Original Theatrical Trailer ⟡ Burger King Kids Club Commercial - The Simpsons ⟡ NightMare ⟡ Peperami - Running ⟡ Rotten.com ⟡ BME Pain Olympics ⟡ Teletoon at Night Bumper ⟡ Goatse ⟡ Frau1.exe ⟡ SuperSucker.com ⟡ 2 Kids 1 Sandbox ⟡ Creepy Ugly Guy

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