reading this makes me want to describe the world in a more recklessly imaginative way. what a joy.
"What mattered wasn’t so much the image itself but how it moved. Its value lay in its circulation: whom you could shock, how fast the chat room would combust, how far something would travel before it came back to you like a bad penny."
also, for what it's worth: i did not have access to the early internet. strict parents & computer only available in 'the computer room' where my dad's desk was, so he was always right there. as a consequence, i can't 'handle' movies with graphic sexual assault scenes or similar. i like that about myself tho.
I didn't realize why until much later into adulthood, but I was one of those teenagers fascinated with rotten.com, and all the other weird sites out there during this time.
Looking back it was innocent exploration, but if I did what I did then today, I might get put on some watchlist.
And today I can barely watch an arm breaking contest without cringing.
Anyone else remember orsm, b0g? They rarely get mentioned among the greater sites, but that's where I spent most of my time before 4chan.
No, I think that it actually shows that the idea that information can cause "trauma" or another kind of "harm" unless some third party forcefully restricts your access to this information, is completely insane.
Of course, this "third party" knows better, right.
When I was in high school, before rotten.com, one of my best friends worked in a "fringe" video store. They had a series called "Faces of Death". Eventually, my friend discovered an even more horrifying series called "Traces of Death". We'd get stoned and watch people exploding as they were hit at high speed.
My friend was too into this stuff. He was also a "goth" and a Marilyn Manson fan. Anyway, this culminated in his senior year art project in which he built a full-sized glass coffin with a realistic rotting corpse inside it.
My friend turned out to be one of the most successful commercial artists of our generation, has a wonderful family, great kids, and absolutely is not a psychopath. We had some bloody steaks and martinis recently, his father had passed away and I brought up the fact that he was always obsessed with death. He said something really funny. He said, "I always got that reaction from people, but now I realize it's not that they didn't get what I was saying, about us all dying and being made of guts and meat. They totally got it. They just thought it was obnoxious and didn't want to be reminded of it." To which I said, congratulations, you joined the human race.
rotten, orsm etc were core to my growing up and exploring the internet.
glad i got it out of my system, glad i grew up in a time when it wasnt normalized. I never graduated to 4chan, it all seemed too nasty and pointless to me
Something parallel, there is a Black Mirror episode 7.1 (Common People) where he pulls out his own teeth, tongue in a mousetrap, torture/harm his body, etc. to earn money on the Internet.
Edit/Add: I asked Claude to find that episode as I explained part of the storyline and is now asking me to seek help. Early Internet would now, definitely, be totally banned.
Edit2: Is this new, or am I stumbling on something new? I cannot reply to my replier below. I’m sure @stavros hasn’t blocked me. But, yes, we will always call him Roy. That is the only way we remember him.
Rotten.com felt like one of the first moments where the internet stopped pretending to be curated civilization and instead exposed itself as raw human curiosity.
People often remember the gore, but what I remember more was the texture of the early web: sparse HTML, no engagement optimization, no algorithmic feed, no “creator economy.” You had to intentionally go looking for things. That changed the psychology completely.
Today’s internet is arguably more manipulative, even if it’s less graphic.
The most haunting image I remember from that website was a photograph of a young boy who'd had his lower jaw cut off to punish his mother. It has stuck in my mind for nearly three decades. How could someone do that to a child? Horrifying.
Well, I guess you havent seen the picture from belgian Congo, when they chopped the hands of small daughter of a farm worker and brought them to him to motivate him to work harder.
People can be vicious animals rather easily, once 'the others' are dehumanized its not worse than behavior towards animals in slaughterhouse. it doesnt take much, look at various conflicts around the world, look at how drug cartels in south/central america behave.
Horrible. More recent (i wont post any links) are the reddit community (i wont name it here) where some girl did self harm by cutting to her thigh. It was not the "usual" skin deep cuts, but this girl cut all the way to the bone. Some things you wish you can unsee. The most horrible thing i have seen on the net.
I remember as a kid I went to a local internet café with a few friends to spend the evening playing Halo for one of their birthdays. I was sat at my computer waiting for one of the others to be set up so we could get going. To fill the time I absent-mindedly started browsing rotten.com, not realising (or perhaps just not caring) that the woman in charge of the café could monitor our browsing. After a few minutes I looked over to see her staring at me with a mix of confusion and disgust. I just sheepishly closed the window (no tabs back then). I'm lucky I wasn't kicked out much less put on some list!
I recall back in the late 90s when someone showed me this site, back when no one had own computers. This one pic of some cars crash (i think) where some unlucky dudes face was basically caved in, while he was still alive. That image was burned to my mind, and it still haunts me to this day.
Such a blast from the past. my cousin would often print out pictures from this site, and then stick them up in random places. we would hang around for adults to spot them and then laugh ourselves silly at their reactions.
reading this makes me want to describe the world in a more recklessly imaginative way. what a joy.
"What mattered wasn’t so much the image itself but how it moved. Its value lay in its circulation: whom you could shock, how fast the chat room would combust, how far something would travel before it came back to you like a bad penny."
also, for what it's worth: i did not have access to the early internet. strict parents & computer only available in 'the computer room' where my dad's desk was, so he was always right there. as a consequence, i can't 'handle' movies with graphic sexual assault scenes or similar. i like that about myself tho.
I didn't realize why until much later into adulthood, but I was one of those teenagers fascinated with rotten.com, and all the other weird sites out there during this time.
Looking back it was innocent exploration, but if I did what I did then today, I might get put on some watchlist.
And today I can barely watch an arm breaking contest without cringing.
Anyone else remember orsm, b0g? They rarely get mentioned among the greater sites, but that's where I spent most of my time before 4chan.
It's kind of a miracle that most of us people who got exposed to all that stuff are still sane.
No, I think that it actually shows that the idea that information can cause "trauma" or another kind of "harm" unless some third party forcefully restricts your access to this information, is completely insane.
Of course, this "third party" knows better, right.
When I was in high school, before rotten.com, one of my best friends worked in a "fringe" video store. They had a series called "Faces of Death". Eventually, my friend discovered an even more horrifying series called "Traces of Death". We'd get stoned and watch people exploding as they were hit at high speed.
My friend was too into this stuff. He was also a "goth" and a Marilyn Manson fan. Anyway, this culminated in his senior year art project in which he built a full-sized glass coffin with a realistic rotting corpse inside it.
My friend turned out to be one of the most successful commercial artists of our generation, has a wonderful family, great kids, and absolutely is not a psychopath. We had some bloody steaks and martinis recently, his father had passed away and I brought up the fact that he was always obsessed with death. He said something really funny. He said, "I always got that reaction from people, but now I realize it's not that they didn't get what I was saying, about us all dying and being made of guts and meat. They totally got it. They just thought it was obnoxious and didn't want to be reminded of it." To which I said, congratulations, you joined the human race.
rotten, orsm etc were core to my growing up and exploring the internet. glad i got it out of my system, glad i grew up in a time when it wasnt normalized. I never graduated to 4chan, it all seemed too nasty and pointless to me
What the hell is am arm breaking contest!
Something parallel, there is a Black Mirror episode 7.1 (Common People) where he pulls out his own teeth, tongue in a mousetrap, torture/harm his body, etc. to earn money on the Internet.
Edit/Add: I asked Claude to find that episode as I explained part of the storyline and is now asking me to seek help. Early Internet would now, definitely, be totally banned.
Edit2: Is this new, or am I stumbling on something new? I cannot reply to my replier below. I’m sure @stavros hasn’t blocked me. But, yes, we will always call him Roy. That is the only way we remember him.
> Is this new, or am I stumbling on something new? I cannot reply to my replier below. I’m sure @stavros hasn’t blocked me.
Hacker News hides the reply link on deeply nested replies for a little while to try and prevent flamewars. https://github.com/minimaxir/hacker-news-undocumented#hidden... says you can work around this by clicking on the comment's timestamp.
That was a rough episode to watch. Poor Roy.
> that's where I spent most of my time before 4chan
I rest my case.
Rotten.com felt like one of the first moments where the internet stopped pretending to be curated civilization and instead exposed itself as raw human curiosity.
People often remember the gore, but what I remember more was the texture of the early web: sparse HTML, no engagement optimization, no algorithmic feed, no “creator economy.” You had to intentionally go looking for things. That changed the psychology completely.
Today’s internet is arguably more manipulative, even if it’s less graphic.
I’m pretty sure the same chap ran ratemypoo.com and ratemyvomit.com. Maybe also hotornot.com.
Ahh … bastions of refined taste …
The most haunting image I remember from that website was a photograph of a young boy who'd had his lower jaw cut off to punish his mother. It has stuck in my mind for nearly three decades. How could someone do that to a child? Horrifying.
Well, I guess you havent seen the picture from belgian Congo, when they chopped the hands of small daughter of a farm worker and brought them to him to motivate him to work harder.
People can be vicious animals rather easily, once 'the others' are dehumanized its not worse than behavior towards animals in slaughterhouse. it doesnt take much, look at various conflicts around the world, look at how drug cartels in south/central america behave.
Both are absolutely horrific and evil but I don't see why that one would be worse than the one the comment above you mentioned.
Not really answering your question, but the Belgian Congo photo in question is probably more notable and consequential.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nsala_of_Wala_in_the_Nsongo_Di...
For comparison https://web.archive.org/web/20000510121518/http://noop.rotte...
Horrible. More recent (i wont post any links) are the reddit community (i wont name it here) where some girl did self harm by cutting to her thigh. It was not the "usual" skin deep cuts, but this girl cut all the way to the bone. Some things you wish you can unsee. The most horrible thing i have seen on the net.
Way to roll the nostalgia. AIM and rotten, seeing grotesque human sacrifice and torture at "13" was a unique time to be alive.
Similarly, pain olympics.
The whole article is poetry. Amazing.
“Rotten was a key you turned that locked a door behind you.”
Well put. The kind of doors I don’t want to lock.
This is so beautifully written.
The internet needs more of this.
I always thought it sucked that ratemypoo got taken down but rotten didn't
I remember as a kid I went to a local internet café with a few friends to spend the evening playing Halo for one of their birthdays. I was sat at my computer waiting for one of the others to be set up so we could get going. To fill the time I absent-mindedly started browsing rotten.com, not realising (or perhaps just not caring) that the woman in charge of the café could monitor our browsing. After a few minutes I looked over to see her staring at me with a mix of confusion and disgust. I just sheepishly closed the window (no tabs back then). I'm lucky I wasn't kicked out much less put on some list!
if you stared too long into rotten.com did not rotten.com also stare into you?
I recall back in the late 90s when someone showed me this site, back when no one had own computers. This one pic of some cars crash (i think) where some unlucky dudes face was basically caved in, while he was still alive. That image was burned to my mind, and it still haunts me to this day.
White background with blue links? Why do I remember Rotten as red on black?
Such a blast from the past. my cousin would often print out pictures from this site, and then stick them up in random places. we would hang around for adults to spot them and then laugh ourselves silly at their reactions.