Goatse.cx
Encyclopedia
Goatse.cx often referred to simply as "Goatse", was originally an Internet shock site
Shock site
A shock site is a website that is intended to be offensive, disgusting and/or disturbing to its viewers, containing materials of high shock value which is also considered distasteful and crude, and is generally of a pornographic, scatological, extremely violent, insulting, painful, profane, or...

. Its front page featured a picture, entitled hello.jpg, showing a naked man stretching his anus
Anus
The anus is an opening at the opposite end of an animal's digestive tract from the mouth. Its function is to control the expulsion of feces, unwanted semi-solid matter produced during digestion, which, depending on the type of animal, may be one or more of: matter which the animal cannot digest,...

 with both hands, to approximately the width of his hand. The inside of his rectum
Rectum
The rectum is the final straight portion of the large intestine in some mammals, and the gut in others, terminating in the anus. The human rectum is about 12 cm long...

 is also clearly visible. Below his gaping anus, his dangling penis
Penis
The penis is a biological feature of male animals including both vertebrates and invertebrates...

 and scrotum
Scrotum
In some male mammals the scrotum is a dual-chambered protuberance of skin and muscle containing the testicles and divided by a septum. It is an extension of the perineum, and is located between the penis and anus. In humans and some other mammals, the base of the scrotum becomes covered with curly...

 are visible, as well as a gold
Gold
Gold is a chemical element with the symbol Au and an atomic number of 79. Gold is a dense, soft, shiny, malleable and ductile metal. Pure gold has a bright yellow color and luster traditionally considered attractive, which it maintains without oxidizing in air or water. Chemically, gold is a...

en ring on the ring finger
Ring finger
The ring finger is the fourth digit of the human hand, and the second most ulnar finger, located between the middle finger and the little finger. It is also called digitus medicinalis, the fourth finger, digitus annularis, digitus quartus, or digitus IV in anatomy.- Etymology :According to László A...

 of his left hand. This site became a notorious surprise image and Internet meme
Internet meme
The term Internet meme is used to describe a concept that spreads via the Internet. The term is a reference to the concept of memes, although the latter concept refers to a much broader category of cultural information.-Description:...

, and was—and, through external hosting, still is—used regularly for bait-and-switch pranks, preventing hot-linking in a hostile manner, and defacing websites
Website defacement
A website defacement is an attack on a website that changes the visual appearance of the site or a webpage. These are typically the work of system crackers, who break into a web server and replace the hosted website with one of their own....

, in order to provoke extreme reactions. Even though the display of the site was removed in 2004, its images are mirrored
Mirror (computing)
In computing, a mirror is an exact copy of a data set. On the Internet, a mirror site is an exact copy of another Internet site.Mirror sites are most commonly used to provide multiple sources of the same information, and are of particular value as a way of providing reliable access to large downloads...

 throughout the Internet today.

Website

Goatse.cx had four sections, two of which had images noted for their shock value.
  • "Receiver", the main index page, contained the titular hello.jpg image. The image, originally named gap3.jpg, originates from a set of 40 images called gap.zip, showing a man using dildo
    Dildo
    A dildo is a sex toy, often explicitly phallic in appearance, intended for bodily penetration during masturbation or sex with partners.- Description and uses :...

    s and butt plug
    Butt plug
    A butt plug is a sex toy designed to be inserted in the anus and rectum for sexual pleasure. In some ways, they are similar to a dildo, but they tend to be shorter, and must have a flanged end to prevent the device from being lost inside the rectum.- Basics :...

    s to stretch his anus. The forty images including the main hello.jpg image were "located by the Stile Project
    Stile Project
    Stile Project is a website founded by writer and webmaster Jonathan Biderman who writes under the alias Jay Stile. Stile Project has grown into a large network of counter-culture, amateur adult entertainment and current-events sites, forums, and more, collectively called stileNET. On December 2,...

    " and were available from the "Contrib" section of the Goatse.cx website.
  • "Giver", a photo-edited
    Photo manipulation
    Photo manipulation is the application of image editing techniques to photographs in order to create an illusion or deception , through analog or digital means.- Types of digital photo manipulation :...

     photograph of a man reclining on a boat with an anatomically impossible penis
    Penis
    The penis is a biological feature of male animals including both vertebrates and invertebrates...

     reaching up to his chest, suggesting that the man in the first image is stretching his anus to fit the giant penis.
  • A Feedback
    Feedback
    Feedback describes the situation when output from an event or phenomenon in the past will influence an occurrence or occurrences of the same Feedback describes the situation when output from (or information about the result of) an event or phenomenon in the past will influence an occurrence or...

     page containing user emails.
  • The "Contrib" page, a collection of homages and parodies of the Goatse images sent in by users.


The index
Webserver directory index
When an HTTP client requests a URL that points to a directory structure instead of an actual Web page within the directory, the Web server will generally serve a general page, which is often referred to as a main or "index" page....

 page also contains a disclaimer
Disclaimer
A disclaimer is generally any statement intended to specify or delimit the scope of rights and obligations that may be exercised and enforced by parties in a legally recognized relationship...

 about the content ("...if you are under the age of 18
Minor (law)
In law, a minor is a person under a certain age — the age of majority — which legally demarcates childhood from adulthood; the age depends upon jurisdiction and application, but is typically 18...

 or find this photograph offensive, please don't look at it. Thank you!") and a disclaimer warning about unofficial Goatse.cx merchandise, re-assuring that official Goatse.cx merchandise would be made available. Newer versions of the site had links to dolphinsex.org and urinalpoop.org, while older versions linked to biganal.com.

Domain suspension and sale of domain name

On January 14, 2004, the domain name
Domain name
A domain name is an identification string that defines a realm of administrative autonomy, authority, or control in the Internet. Domain names are formed by the rules and procedures of the Domain Name System ....

 goatse.cx was suspended by Christmas Island Internet Administration
Christmas Island Internet Administration
Christmas Island Internet Administration Limited is a community-owned non-profit Christmas Island company, the objects of which are to be trustee and policy-setting body for the .cx ccTLD, and administrator of the Christmas Island Information Economy Development Trust...

 for Acceptable Use Policy
Acceptable use policy
An acceptable use policy is a set of rules applied by the owner/manager of a network, website or large computer system that restrict the ways in which the network site or system may be used...

 violations in response to a complaint, but many mirror
Mirror (computing)
In computing, a mirror is an exact copy of a data set. On the Internet, a mirror site is an exact copy of another Internet site.Mirror sites are most commonly used to provide multiple sources of the same information, and are of particular value as a way of providing reliable access to large downloads...

s of the site are still available, remaining on display on many other websites. A Christmas Island resident named Rhonda Clarke filed the complaint that resulted in the suspension of Goatse.cx's domain name
Domain name
A domain name is an identification string that defines a realm of administrative autonomy, authority, or control in the Internet. Domain names are formed by the rules and procedures of the Domain Name System ....

.

In January 2007, the Christmas Island Internet Administration put the domain Goatse.cx back into the pool of available domains. The domain was subsequently registered on January 16 through domain registrar Variomedia, and the current registrant tried to auction the right to use the domain.

An early attempt to offer the domain for sale by SEOBidding placed the reserve at $120, which was not met.

The Goatse.cx domain name was reportedly sold at an auction
Auction
An auction is a process of buying and selling goods or services by offering them up for bid, taking bids, and then selling the item to the highest bidder...

 on April 30, 2007 to an unknown bidder. According to SEOBidding.com, the first auction ended with fake bids so the auction was reactivated. This was again won by fake bidders, so in July SEOBidding.com announced that the website would be sold for $500,000 and that legal action would be pursued against the fake bidders. On November 25, 2007, and continuing as of June 2010, the site was still for sale, listed as: "goatse.cx Asking: $50200 minimum".

Control of the domain was passed to the secondary market, and was taken by a domain investor
Investor
An investor is a party that makes an investment into one or more categories of assets --- equity, debt securities, real estate, currency, commodity, derivatives such as put and call options, etc...

 who was trying to sell the domain name for €10,000.

The October 21st, 2009 edition of the Rick Latona "Daily Domains" newsletter
Newsletter
A newsletter is a regularly distributed publication generally about one main topic that is of interest to its subscribers. Newspapers and leaflets are types of newsletters. Additionally, newsletters delivered electronically via email have gained rapid acceptance for the same reasons email in...

 advertised the Goatse.cx domain for sale at an asking price of $15,000, noting it as being a "famous site, [with] tons of backlink
Backlink
Backlinks, also known as incoming links, inbound links, inlinks, and inward links, are incoming links to a website or web page...

s".

As of 16 May 2010, the site was once again active, containing an announcement stating:
"Goatse.cx 'Stinger' 2.0 Beta is coming
Only 24 days to go until Goatse Stinger 2.0 goes beta on May 9, 2010!"
The page showed a stylized representation of hello.jpg, which featured a pair of silver robotic hands 'stretching' a metallic, circular wall aperture
Aperture
In optics, an aperture is a hole or an opening through which light travels. More specifically, the aperture of an optical system is the opening that determines the cone angle of a bundle of rays that come to a focus in the image plane. The aperture determines how collimated the admitted rays are,...

 in what appears to be a futuristic factory setting. Later in May, a new page was hosted at Goatse.cx, for the stated purpose of offering email service at the site, featuring a sketch with hands spreading wide a view onto a mailing envelope
Envelope
An envelope is a common packaging item, usually made of thin flat material. It is designed to contain a flat object, such as a letter or card....

.

In July 2011, goatse.cx remained unchanged while www.goatse.cx began redirecting to a Web Hosting company.

Reception and parodies

Because many Internet users have been tricked into viewing the site or a mirror of the site at one time or another, it has become an Internet meme.
On November 24, 2000, the Goatse "giver" and "receiver" images were posted to the official online Oprah Winfrey
Oprah Winfrey
Oprah Winfrey is an American media proprietor, talk show host, actress, producer and philanthropist. Winfrey is best known for her self-titled, multi-award-winning talk show, which has become the highest-rated program of its kind in history and was nationally syndicated from 1986 to 2011...

 Message Boards in the Soul Stories board. Trystan T. Cotten and Kimberly Springer, authors of Stories of Oprah: the Oprahfication of American culture, said that this "seemingly considerable male intrusion drove many of the women elsewhere, and the board was retired shortly afterwards".
Slashdot
Slashdot
Slashdot is a technology-related news website owned by Geeknet, Inc. The site, which bills itself as "News for Nerds. Stuff that Matters", features user-submitted and ‑evaluated current affairs news stories about science- and technology-related topics. Each story has a comments section...

 altered its threaded discussion forum display software because "users made a sport out of tricking unsuspecting readers into visiting [Goatse.cx]".
The Los Angeles Times
Los Angeles Times
The Los Angeles Times is a daily newspaper published in Los Angeles, California, since 1881. It was the second-largest metropolitan newspaper in circulation in the United States in 2008 and the fourth most widely distributed newspaper in the country....

Wikitorial
Wikitorial
A wikitorial is a term coined by the Los Angeles Times to describe a traditional editorial that can be edited in the fashion of a wiki . On June 17, 2005 the Los Angeles Times wrote the first Wikitorial, entitled: War and Consequences. The new Wikitorial was about the War in Iraq...

 was introduced on June 17, 2005, to be a publicly accessible method of directly responding to the paper's editorials; Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales
Jimmy Wales
Jimmy Donal "Jimbo" Wales is an American Internet entrepreneur best known as a co-founder and promoter of the online non-profit encyclopedia Wikipedia and the Wikia company....

 had consulted on the project, and on its first day contributed a "forking" of the page to accommodate opposing opinions. Prior to the feature's introduction, L.A. Times editorial
Editorial
An opinion piece is an article, published in a newspaper or magazine, that mainly reflects the author's opinion about the subject. Opinion pieces are featured in many periodicals.-Editorials:...

 and opinion editor Michael Kinsley
Michael Kinsley
Michael Kinsley is an American political journalist, commentator, television host, and pundit. Primarily active in print media as both a writer and editor, he also became known to television audiences as a co-host on Crossfire...

 stated that "Wikitorials may be one of those things that within six months will be standard. It's the ultimate in reader participation". The wiki
Wiki
A wiki is a website that allows the creation and editing of any number of interlinked web pages via a web browser using a simplified markup language or a WYSIWYG text editor. Wikis are typically powered by wiki software and are often used collaboratively by multiple users. Examples include...

 was closed two days later on June 19, 2005, because, The Guardian reported, "explicit images known as Goatses appeared on [it]".

The practice of using Goatse.cx as a "fake" link to shock friends became popular, according to ROFLcon
ROFLCon
ROFLCon is a biennial convention of Internet memes that first took place April 25–26, 2008, at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. The meeting was first announced in late 2007....

 organizer Tim Hwang in an interview
Interview
An interview is a conversation between two people where questions are asked by the interviewer to obtain information from the interviewee.- Interview as a Method for Qualitative Research:"Definition" -...

 on NPR
NPR
NPR, formerly National Public Radio, is a privately and publicly funded non-profit membership media organization that serves as a national syndicator to a network of 900 public radio stations in the United States. NPR was created in 1970, following congressional passage of the Public Broadcasting...

, because
"it's ... the spectacle of the thing, right? You really want to be there when the person is seeing it. To the extent that there's all these sites online of sort of people taking pictures of their friends and showing them Goatse..." [In photos online,] "It's like thousands and thousands of people looking really shocked or disgusted. It's really great."


The Goatse.cx image has been used by website authors to discourage other sites from hot-linking to them. By replacing the hot-linked image with an embarrassing image when hot-linking has been discovered, an unsubtle message is sent to the offending website's operators, visible to all who view the web page in question. In 2007, Wired.com
Wired (magazine)
Wired is a full-color monthly American magazine and on-line periodical, published since January 1993, that reports on how new and developing technology affects culture, the economy, and politics...

 hot-linked to another site in an article about the "sexiest geeks of 2007"; the said site swapped the hot-linked image with one from Goatse.cx. This action is practiced by website owners either because bandwidth
Bandwidth (computing)
In computer networking and computer science, bandwidth, network bandwidth, data bandwidth, or digital bandwidth is a measure of available or consumed data communication resources expressed in bits/second or multiples of it .Note that in textbooks on wireless communications, modem data transmission,...

 is an issue to them, or simply for the enjoyment of pranking.
Images on the site such as hello.jpg and others have become subjects of parodies, mirrors, and tributes.

Following Hurricane Charley
Hurricane Charley
Hurricane Charley was the third named storm, the second hurricane, and the second major hurricane of the 2004 Atlantic hurricane season. Charley lasted from August 9 to August 15, and at its peak intensity it attained 150 mph winds, making it a strong Category 4 hurricane on the...

 in August 2004, a photograph purporting to show "the hands of God" in the cloud formations in the aftermath of the disaster circulated via email. The image was eventually proven to be a parody, the clouds having been photo-manipulated to include hands, as in the Goatse.cx image.

Disc images supposedly containing a leaked Mac OS X
Mac OS X
Mac OS X is a series of Unix-based operating systems and graphical user interfaces developed, marketed, and sold by Apple Inc. Since 2002, has been included with all new Macintosh computer systems...

 build, OSx86
OSx86
OSx86 is a collaborative hacking project to run the Mac OS X computer operating system on non-Apple personal computers with x86 architecture and x86-64 compatible processors...

, which could run on standard "x86 architecture" computers, were distributed during 2005 on BitTorrent filesharing networks. But rather than load the expected Mac OS, the discs reportedly displayed the Goatse image when booted.

In The Long Tail
The Long Tail
The Long Tail or long tail refers to the statistical property that a larger share of population rests within the tail of a probability distribution than observed under a 'normal' or Gaussian distribution...

(2008) Chris Anderson wrote that Goatse.cx is well-known only to a relatively small Internet-using "subcultural tribe" who reference it as a "shared context joke" or "secret membership code." Anderson cited a photo accompanying an "otherwise innocuous article" about Google in the June 2, 2005 The New York Times
The New York Times
The New York Times is an American daily newspaper founded and continuously published in New York City since 1851. The New York Times has won 106 Pulitzer Prizes, the most of any news organization...

, in which Anil Dash
Anil Dash
Anil Dash is a blogger, entrepreneur and technologist. He is currently the Director of Public Technology Incubator Expert Labs and a partner at ACTIVATE.com, a media & technology consulting firm....

 wore a t-shirt emblazoned with stylized hands stretching out the word "Goatse".

In June 2007, a proposed sketch of the 2012 Summer Olympics logo submitted by "Sean Stayte" appeared on the BBC News 24 broadcast and website as one of the twelve best viewer-submitted alternatives to the official logo. In it, two hands stretched the "0" wide in "2012", as Sean wrote, "to reveal the Olympics". The sketch was later shown as part of a gallery of viewers logos on BBC London News
BBC London News
For other uses of the BBC London brand, see BBC London .BBC London News is the BBC's regional television news programme for the English region encompassing London and surrounding suburbs...

 and BBC News 24
BBC News 24
BBC News is the BBC's 24-hour rolling news television network in the United Kingdom. The channel launched as BBC News 24 on 9 November 1997 at 17:30 as part of the BBC's foray into digital domestic television channels, becoming the first competitor to Sky News, which had been running since 1989...

, and was subsequently removed from the website. The editor of the BBC News website acknowledged the mistake in his blog, saying his team "simply didn’t spot it".

In June 2010, a group of computer experts known as Goatse Security
Goatse Security
Goatse Security is a loose-knit, nine-person grey hat hacker group that specializes in uncovering security flaws. It is a division of the anti-blogging Internet trolling organization known as the Gay Nigger Association of America . The group derives its name from the Goatse.cx shock site, and it...

 exposed a flaw in AT&T
AT&T
AT&T Inc. is an American multinational telecommunications corporation headquartered in Whitacre Tower, Dallas, Texas, United States. It is the largest provider of mobile telephony and fixed telephony in the United States, and is also a provider of broadband and subscription television services...

's security which allowed the e-mail addresses of iPad
IPad
The iPad is a line of tablet computers designed, developed and marketed by Apple Inc., primarily as a platform for audio-visual media including books, periodicals, movies, music, games, and web content. The iPad was introduced on January 27, 2010 by Apple's then-CEO Steve Jobs. Its size and...

 users to be revealed. A member of the group
Weev
Andrew Alan Escher Auernheimer 1 September 1985), also known by his pseudonym weev, is an American grey hat hacker and self-described Internet troll who has been linked to several attacks on Internet sites...

 was interviewed by the media and discussed the group's name, among other things. The group uses a stylized cartoon of the cropped Goatse.cx image as their logo and has the motto "Gaping Holes Exposed".

In April 2011 an Audi
Audi
Audi AG is a German automobile manufacturer, from supermini to crossover SUVs in various body styles and price ranges that are marketed under the Audi brand , positioned as the premium brand within the Volkswagen Group....

 billboard campaign was multiply reported as showing an image similar to the Goatse image. One article author asks, "unintentionally hilarious or intentionally evil?"

The Register
The Register
The Register is a British technology news and opinion website. It was founded by John Lettice, Mike Magee and Ross Alderson in 1994 as a newsletter called "Chip Connection", initially as an email service...

reported that Scottish TV News, while reporting on a hacking incident, unintentionally broadcast a link to Goatse images while showing the LulzSec
LulzSec
Lulz Security, commonly abbreviated as LulzSec, is a computer hacker group that claims responsibility for several high profile attacks, including the compromise of user accounts from Sony Pictures in 2011. The group also claimed responsibility for taking the CIA website offline...

 Twitter
Twitter
Twitter is an online social networking and microblogging service that enables its users to send and read text-based posts of up to 140 characters, informally known as "tweets".Twitter was created in March 2006 by Jack Dorsey and launched that July...

 feed on the victim site, which read, "For anyone that doesn't know what goatse is, check it out here, it's really eye-opening: [link]".

External links

  • goatse.cx, archive of original site at the Internet Archive
    Internet Archive
    The Internet Archive is a non-profit digital library with the stated mission of "universal access to all knowledge". It offers permanent storage and access to collections of digitized materials, including websites, music, moving images, and nearly 3 million public domain books. The Internet Archive...

     Wayback Machine
    Wayback Machine
    The Wayback Machine is a digital time capsule created by the Internet Archive non-profit organization, based in San Francisco, California. It is maintained with content from Alexa Internet. The service enables users to see archived versions of web pages across time, which the Archive calls a "three...

    .
  • Lazy Guide to Net Culture: NSFW - The Scotsman
    The Scotsman
    The Scotsman is a British newspaper, published in Edinburgh.As of August 2011 it had an audited circulation of 38,423, down from about 100,000 in the 1980s....

The source of this article is wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.  The text of this article is licensed under the GFDL.
 
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