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Revision as of 03:38, 26 August 2006 by 216.186.171.117 (talk) (→Major shock sites)(diff) ← Previous revision | Latest revision (diff) | Newer revision → (diff)A shock site is a website intended to be offensive or shocking to most viewers, containing material many people would consider frightening and/or extremely distasteful and crude, generally of a pornographic, scatological, or extremely violent nature. In most cases, it displays a particular picture most prominently; some shock sites also show animations or galleries of images, particularly shock images. Links to shock sites are often passed around via email or disguised in posts to discussion sites as a hoax in an attempt to trick readers into following the link to the website. Discussion site Slashdot has changed their software (Slash) to display the domain name of a linked URL in brackets following the link (example: "CLICK HERE "), so that any link to goatse.cx or a similar shock site would be immediately visible as such. The change has been effective in reducing the number of links to shock sites even though people began to set up mirror sites and use public CGI redirect scripts run by sites such as Yahoo! or Slashdot itself in an attempt to circumvent the measure.
Other shock sites
- Penis Bird is an image of a Scarlet Macaw perched on a man's erect penis. The page contains a note from a Slashdot reader asking that the image be relocated (if not removed) because Slashdot trolls are using hyperlinks to send unsuspecting users there. The page also mentions a crude ASCII art version of the penisbird, which appears from time to time on Slashdot.
- Teletorrents.org contains a picture (applefish.jpg) of one man's hand immersed in a second man's anus. Large text below the picture reads "Surprise, asshole!". The domain of the site is purposely misleading, implying that it contains BitTorrent files.
Former shock sites
Goatse.cx
Main article: Goatse.cxGoatse.cx is one of the most well-known shock sites.. The image which appears on the site's index, hello.jpg, depicts a man stretching his anus with his hands. This same image was formerly called the "shock3r", and was usually featured on various hacked sites. The link to these sites was primarily spread through IRC. This image is somewhat unpleasant.
The site was taken down by the NIC .cx authority in January 2004, but there are several mirrors of the original site.
External Link: Archive.org's archived copy of the page before it was shut down
- ShrewsburyCollege.co.uk was a site containing a photograph of two men, one being anally penetrated by the other with what appeared to be a bicycle pump. In addition to that, both were covered in feces. The name of the site was taken from the Shrewsbury College of Arts & Technology, which used to be known by the acronym SCAT. The website has now been replaced by the actual Shrewsbury College website. This shock site was perhaps the only one to have appeared in a print newspaper, featuring in a front-page article of the Shrewsbury Chronicle on 8 December 2005. In the aforementioned article, the MP for Shrewsbury & Atcham, Daniel Kawczynski, mentioned that the site was brought to his attention by a fellow Member of Parliament. The visitor logs of what are presumably the reporter that wrote the story, and Kawczynski are available to view online. A visitor from the Midland News Association, which publishes the newspaper A visitor from the Houses of Parliament
Anti-shock sites
In recent times, many trolls, instead of linking to shock sites (which can lead to disciplinary consequences, such as banishment from the board in which the link was posted), prefer a tradition known as the anti-shock tradition, where trolls link to traditionally non-offensive material, disguised as shocking or pornographic material.
See also
References
- Letter from Slashdot.org, (along with picture).
- "The Hands of God", snopes.com.
- Official Forum Rules at Hentai Palm.
- "Lazy Guide to Net Culture:NSFW", from news.scotsman.com.