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File:Times goatse.JPG
The front cover of the September 20 2004 issue of Time magazine (above) is seen by some to look suspiciously like a deliberate allusion to hello.jpg, according to Snopes.

Goatse.cx (variably pronounced "goat see," "goats," "goatsex," "goat say", or "goat see dot cx", and often truncated to goatse) is one of the most infamous Internet shock sites and well-known Internet memes. Its front page contains a sexually explicit picture, hello.jpg, featuring a man wearing a gold ring on his left hand (and nothing else) manually stretching his anus and rectum to a diameter roughly equal to the width of his hand. Below his anus, the man's dangling penis and testicles are visible. The site is commonly linked to by Internet trolls in order to shock unsuspecting users with the image.

As of January 14, 2004, the domain goatse.cx is no longer online. However, many mirrors of the site are still available and the image itself has been posted at many other websites. The most common mirror was goat.cx; however, goat.cx was, like its predecessor, no longer online as of February 22, 2005. As of February 27 of that year, the domain goat.cx, like goatse.cx, had been suspended by the Christmas Island Internet Administration, but the domain as of April 2005 appeared to be back online, showing only the message "be right back." In May 2005, there was an image on the site showing a pumpkin with some hands around it as if it was stretching its anus. Christmas Island Technology Corp has registered goats.cx as of May 24, 2005 with obviously nonexistent name servers, presumably in an attempt to prevent another mirror of the original goatse.cx. In July 2005, goats.cx displayed the text "SIRS! WE HAVE A PROBLEM! ALL YOUR BASE ARE BELONG TO GOATS.CX!"

The mirror that most closely resembles the original is at http://goatse.ragingfist.net/ , but is entirely complete. Four other similar but incomplete mirrors are http://goatse.ca/ and http://www.notgoatse.com/, neither of which have the Giver, Contrib or Feedback sections. The second of the four has links to other shock sites — Tubgirl, Harlequin Fetus, Lemonparty, and Loopback — while the fourth's hyperlinks all point to goat.cx.

The Internet Archive has the original site preserved as it was before it was shut down.

Etymology

The intended meaning of the site's name is not known for certain. It is commonly interpreted as a word play on the phrase "goat sex", although no goats are involved anywhere on the site.

It has been claimed that prior to hello.jpg, Goatse.cx contained a picture of a woman being anally penetrated by a goat. This is incorrect. The alt attribute on the image, "Stinger", actually comes from the EFnet #quake channel. The image itself was discovered on a webpage called members.xoom.com/stinger (it was removed and placed in members.xoom.com/_stinger). Goatse.cx was created by a #quake member expressly for the purpose of displaying the image.

The Internet Archive only lists versions of the Goatse.cx site as far back as March, 1999, at which point hello.jpg was already being used.

Others believe that goatse is actually an acronym for "Guy Opens Ass To Show Everyone", with the usage of the ".cx" TLD being purely coincidental. This is likely a backronym.

Also, a member of another EFNet channel who, tired of the channel being mistaken for a warez channel, began sending hello.jpg to those who requested pirated software, renaming it appropriately to what was requested. Around this same time, members of that channel were also taking advantage of the free domain registration offered by the newly-online Christmas Islands NIC (.cx), many of whom played on the phonetic resemblance of "se.cx" to "sex".

It was then that one of this channel's operators put hello.jpg on one of such domains, to facilitate easier and more effective shocks by replying to such requests with something like "see http://goatse.cx for all your cracks/warez needs."

Identity of the "Goatse man"

A series of pictures by a man identified as Kirk Johnson contain the precursor images to hello.jpg and some following. At this point, it is highly likely that Kirk Johnson is the "Goatse Man." Kirk Johnson is a regular poster to the newsgroup alt.binaries.pictures.erotica.male.anal, among others, and a rather simple analysis confirms this; it is unlikely that there is another practitioner of anal stretching with the same mole on the upper-left edge of his anus. Furthermore, both the gap.zip (see below) pictures and Kirk Johnson's pictures show the same large yellow buttplug being used.

He has been given many nicknames by various Internet communities, including "The Goatse Guy", "Goatse Man", "G-Man", "Assman", "Bob Goatse", "The Ass Pirate," "Mr G.", "The Goatman", "The Receiver", "Stinger" (hello.jpg was originally passed around on IRC as _stinger.jpg, with the intent of prodding an op), "Gman", "Goatsemon", "The Ass that started it All", "Goatse", "Gaping Ass Man", "Gay Byrne", "Señor Goatse", "MVG", "Mr. Goatse", and many others.

Some have speculated that "he" is actually an intersexual who is pulling open his vagina. However, the rest of the images in the series are unambiguously male. An interview with a man who shows similar elasticity can be found at: http://www.bmezine.com/news/people/A20210/plp56/index.html (Note that this site contains similar photos on the front page.)

Organization

Goatse.cx had four sections, three of which have images intended to shock the viewer:

  • The "Receiver" section, showing the aforementioned hello.jpg. Hello.jpg has the alt attribute "stinger". Before the picture is the text in black, "The goatse.cx lawyer has informed us that we need a warning! So.. if you are under the age of 18 or find this photograph offensive, please don't look at it. Thank you!" This text was not a sincere warning in the minds of some, as hello.jpg is very close to it. It also had links to http://www.dolphinsex.org/ and http://www.urinalpoop.org/, and it once had a link to http://www.biganal.com/ (all of which are now occupied by cybersquatters). The text below hello.jpg reads, "IMPORTANT NOTE: There are many merchandising attempts for goatse.cx around the web-- none of them are real, none of them are official. Do not buy this gimmick merchandise. The official goatse.cx merchandise is coming soon!" The title of this page is "Eh."
  • The "Giver" section, showing a picture (giver.jpg) of a man reclining in an orange convertible (later versions show him on a yacht or speedboat of some kind, with ocean or river waves in the background). He has an oversized penis which reaches up to his chest. The length and girth of mentioned penis is exaggeratedly anatomically disproportionate to the rest of the man's body; the photo shows obvious signs of being "photoshopped" or otherwise graphically altered for shock value or humor. The title of this page is "Whoa." The whole website contains an anal sex joke: either that the Giver will be able to insert his oversized penis into the Receiver; or that the Giver's oversized genitals are responsible for the Receiver's condition.
  • The "Feedback" section, where e-mails are exhibited.
  • The "Contrib" section showcasing visitor contributions to the site. Contrib has additional variations of hello.jpg and giver.jpg, as well as other images and files. The title of this page is "Contributed Work".
    • bush.jpg is a picture of United States President George W. Bush, calling someone on a telephone in his office, with hello.jpg displayed on a laptop computer on his desk.
    • goatse-wwii.jpg is a picture of a large snowball, with "goatse.cx" written on the side, chasing Adolf Hitler, Benito Mussolini, and Hideki Tojo.
    • giver2.jpg is a picture of the Goatse giver holding his oversized penis.
    • magiceye.jpg is a Magic Eye picture. After about 16 seconds, the image changes to that of a 256 color version of hello.jpg. It attempts to fool viewers by exploiting the fact that, although the server sends a MIME type stating the filename is a JPEG image, the image is in fact an animated GIF.
    • warning.jpg is a warning sign picture telling people not to go to goatse.cx
    • goatsex.swf is a Flash Movie, set to the hook from "MMMBop" by Hanson. The movie shows a large dildo being inserted into the anus of the man posing in hello.jpg. The background is from another gap.zip picture, gap8.jpg.
    • Goatman.mp3 is an mp3 Music file. It takes up 518 KB.
    • Foxy_goatse.mp3 is another mp3 music file, a parody of the Jimi Hendrix song Foxy Lady. It takes up 1061 KB.
    • goatsecx-winamp.zip is a ZIP file containing a Winamp skin, depicting hello.jpg. It takes up 313 KB.
    • hello.mpg is a movie, first showing the text "HI" on a black background, followed by shots of gap.zip pictures. At the end of the movie, the following text appears next to a picture of a teenage boy:
      "http://www.goatse.cx
      The goatse.cx lawyer has informed us that we need a warning! So.. if you are under the age of 18 or find this photograph offensive, please don't look at it. Thank you!"

People sometimes link to goatse.cx images not shown on the actual webpages, such as loopback.jpg, a picture of a man looping his penis into his anus. There are also numerous other files in the directory http://www.goatse.cx/contrib/.

The image hello.jpg originates from a set of 40 images depicting the man performing various anal sexual acts. In those images, the man used dildos and butt plugs to stretch his anus. The images were located by Stile Project and are also available from the "Contrib" section of the goatse.cx website under the filename gap.zip. hello.jpg is the third file in the archive, gap3.jpg.

Geographic location

The site used the .cx country code, which is the top-level domain of Christmas Island, whose operators will not disclose registrants' personal information. The actual server of Goatse.cx was not located on Christmas Island, but in the United States and is owned by Hick.org, which is a website about computer programming and bathroom humor. The Hick.org domain was registered by Matt Miller in Overland Park, Kansas. Both Goatse.cx and Hick.org originate from the same IP address; the server is located in the Kansas City, Missouri metro-region. Goat.cx, a mirror of Goatse.cx, is located in the Dallas, Texas metro-region.

In recent times the website has been rehosted as www.goatse.ca. The .ca suffix implies that the website is now hosted in Canada, although it is unknown at this time if www.goatse.ca is "official" and was hosted by the original owners of www.goatse.cx, however it remains a popular mirror of the site.

Parodies, tributes, and trivia

Because many frequent Internet users have been tricked into viewing the site at one time or another, it has become something of an Internet-wide in-joke. As such, hello.jpg and the other images on the site are common subjects of parodies and tributes.

  • Some have considered Sheela Na Gig to be a 1,000-year-old foremother of goatse.
  • Unreal Tournament 2004 featured an assault level for which the final objective was to move the Hellbender through the Goatse.cx anus.
  • The following parodies all originate from the same IP address, hosted in the Houston, Texas metro-region:
    • Oralse.cx - The "Pussy" hello.jpg is that of a kitten, and the "Wiener" giver.jpg is that of a dachshund. Oralse.cx also has a "Contrib" section of more shots of the cat and the dog, as well as modified versions of the aforementioned pictures. It also had a "Feedback" section with its own letters.
    • http://analse.cx/ - This site has bunny.gif, which is a picture of bunch of cartoon rabbits, each with a pancake on its head, who open their anuses in imitation of hello.jpg. The title of the page is "GoatsePancakeBunnyDance". A song called "bunny.mid" plays on the site, a version of "The Girl from Ipanema". The string "Now this is something I just don't get. - Matthew 11:42" (Matthew 11 only has 30 verses) is seen in the source code. This site is also a spoof of The Hamster Dance and Oolong the rabbit.
  • In the tradition of oralse.cx and throatse.cx, "anti-shock" (sites that imitate shock/curiosity websites but do not feature objectionable content), has become an Internet trolling phenomenon where people advertise non-shock sites as containing pornographic or shocking matter. Commonly, the actual website linked-to is an image of a family pet, a recipe for sugar cookies, or the Olsen twins' website.
  • Trollse.cx - a parody of the front page of goatse.cx, replacing the original picture with a picture of open source figure Eric S. Raymond, wearing a Unix shirt photoshopped to say LUnix. The giver section has a cartoon of two men, a still frame from Jeff K's animation satirizing Linux users and game designer Cliffy B. One of them is clothed and sitting down in a chair. His oversized penis is bulging through the crotch of his red pants. In the background are pictures of Something Awful characters Cliff Yablonski and JeffK. The "contrib" only has an ascii picture of Raymond. This website is hosted in the Washington, DC metro-region. The site links to Slashdot and Slashnet. The site also links to cowse.cx, which is advertised as "coming soon." Cowse.cx currently simply displays the word "moo".
  • http://web.archive.org/web/20010305142500/http://www.conhugeco.org/goatse.cx - Neo Goatse.cx, which has two sections - The Effect, which shows a picture of a man with a prolapsed rectum, and The Cause, which shows a pair of gap.zip pictures, the first depicting the Goatse man sitting on a large butt plug, the second with a pair of dildos inserted into his anus. The site now states: "Sorry... My web hosting company decided that a man pulling his ass apart wasn't appropriate content."
  • http://www.xcesta.org - features a reversed version of hello.jpg (looking out from the man's anus instead of into it) for the "Receiver" section. The site's name comes from a reversal of the Goatse.cx domain - reversed, Goatse.cx would be Xcesta.og, though the site uses ".org" because there is no such TLD as ".og". The inside of the 'anus' in the picture is actually an undoctored photo of the inside of a cave, something this parody's author claims reflects on the mind's ability to conclude based on assumptions. The text is reversed and the "contrib" section is a poor-quality ASCII version of hello.jpg.
File:Quake2gloomtempleofgoatse.JPG
"Temple of Goatse", a map for the Quake 2 mod Gloom, features a version of goatse.
File:UT2004goatse.jpg
Goatse.cx featured for the final objective in an Unreal Tournament 2004 assault level.
  • The online role-playing game Kingdom of Loathing features a tribute while fighting a Spam Witch - "She shows you a picture of her pet goat. 'This is my goat, see?' she says. Dear god, the horror."
  • The Christchurch, New Zealand rock band The Hairy Nobs recorded a song entitled Stretched, Sagging, Worn-Out Anus which makes reference to Goatse in its title, subject matter and the lyric "Stretch it open like a Goatse, make it breathe the atmosphere". In the band's animated music videos, one of the band members plays a Goatse'd anus.

External links

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