Goatse.cx
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Goatse.cx was an infamous Internet shock site, which became well-known on various Internet forums because of the habit of certain trolls to post links to it in order to upset other forum readers.
The site's front page contained a picture, hello.jpg, featuring a man wearing a gold ring on his left hand with no visible clothing (although his entire body is not visible) manually stretching his anus and rectum to a diameter roughly equal to the width of his hand. Below his anus, the man's dangling, flaccid penis and scrotum were visible.
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[edit] Etymology
The domain Goatse.cx is a word play on the phrase "goat sex", although no goats are involved anywhere on the site. Goatse.cx is one of the first domain hacks, although not a perfect one due to the extra "c" (the current mirror goatse.cz preserves a close phonetic resemblance). "Guy Opens Ass To Scare/Show Everyone" is a common backronym for the site.
[edit] Origin
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A member of another EFNet channel (named Merlin) 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."
[edit] The site goes offline
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, taken offline as of February 22, 2005. As of February 27 of that year, the domain goat.cx, like goatse.cx, were suspended by the Christmas Island Internet Administration, but the domain as of April 2005 appeared to be back online, showing only the message "eat my goatse'd penis!" 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.
The Internet Archive has the original site preserved as it was before it was shut down. [1].
[edit] 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, 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. The initial image, a legitimate autostereogram of a helix, changes after about 16 seconds to that of a lower resolution, 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.
Goatse.cx also had a robots.txt file at one point [2].
[edit] Geographic location
The site used the .cx country code, 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, a website about computer programming and bathroom humor. The Hick.org domain was registered by Matt Miller in Overland Park, Kansas[1]. 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, formerly a mirror of Goatse.cx, was located in the Dallas, Texas metro-region, while current mirror Goatse.cz seems to be located in Clifton, New Jersey.
[edit] The Goatse phenomenon
Goatse's popularity arose from the fact that it was one of the Internet's first widely used shock sites. The site was often disguised by other links and sent to other people via IM and on forums in order to gross them out. This gained the site considerable notoriety by virtue of its shocking and disgusting content.
[edit] 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.
- Inside the CD case of the album Pie Full of Knives by rapper Wombstretcha: the Magnificent- if you remove the CD from its case, the hello.jpg image can be found on the casing underneath.
- The game Doom 3: Resurrection of Evil by Nerve Software and id Software features blocks forming a rough image of hello.jpg in level 3 of the Hellanoid game.
- Unreal Tournament 2004 featured an assault level for which the final objective was to move the Hellbender through an object that bore similarity to the Goatse.cx anus.
- The online role-playing game Kingdom of Loathing features two tributes-
- 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."
- In an adventure during The Daily Dungeon called "Seriously, I Just Read It For the Articles." If the adventurer does not have sleaze resistance, s/he buckles down and looks at a centerfold, only to have it be from the magazine "Secret World of Goatse."
- Alex Albrecht of Diggnation fame made a reference to Goatse.cx on episode 20 of Tiki Bar TV. The Tiki Bar crew were having Internet bandwidth issues, and Alex (playing the character "Son of the Internet"), said that their issues were effecting the whole Internet. - "Goatse's down, people are happy about that."
- The German Industrial Techno Porn Grind Band Libido Airbag used hello.jpg as their Cover on the infamous Split CD Release with German Gore Legends Cock and Ball Torture.
- 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 hosted by XOOM (now defunct). Goatse.cx was created by a #quake member expressly for the purpose of displaying the image.
- A satirical story mashing up H. P. Lovecraft's Cthulhu mythos with Goatse (by art group monochrom).
- Australian ISP Westnet's most recent logo is considered by many to resemble the Goatse.cx anus.
[edit] References
- ^ Whois.net Lookup for Hick.org. Retrieved on 2006-10-25.
- ^ Hidden Goatse in Unreal Tournament 2004
