Goatse.cx

Goatse.cx, a well-known Internet meme, was an infamous Internet shock site. Its front page contained a sexually explicit and extremely graphic 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, erect penis and scrotum were visible. The site was commonly linked to by Internet trolls in order to shock unsuspecting users with the image.

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 acronym for the site.

Origin

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 contains the precursor images to hello.jpg and some following. At this point, it is considered highly likely that Kirk Johnson is the "Goatse Man." 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 Johnson's pictures show the same type of large yellow buttplug being used.

Some have speculated that "he" is actually a hermaphrodite who is pulling open his vagina. However, the rest of the images in the series are unambiguously male. An interview with, and graphic images of 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.) (Also note that the site contains graphic adult material)

Judging by the anatomical similarities between the man seen in the original goatse.cx images as well as those on detroithardcore.com and the man seen in the image on bottleguy.com (same mole near the anus, similar scrotal sack and penis, same slim build), it seems likely that "bottleguy" is also Kirk Johnson.

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.

Mirrors that resemble the original exist at http://goatse.cz/ and http://goatse.ragingfist.net/. However, both lack some less known content. The Internet Archive has the original site preserved as it was before it was shut down. [1].

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, 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.

The Goatse Phenomenon

File:Quake2gloomtempleofgoatse.JPG

"Temple of Goatse", a map for the Quake II mod Gloom, features a version of goatse.

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.

Parodies, tributes, and trivia

File:UT2004goatse.jpg

Goatse.cx "featured" for the final objective in an Unreal Tournament 2004 assault level.

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.

• 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 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." Another goatse moment is in an adventure during The Daily Dungeon called "Seriously, I Just Read It For the Articles." If the adventurer does have sleaze resistance, s/he buckles down and looks at a centerfold, only to have it be from the magazine ""Secret World of Goatse."
• 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.
• The Time magazine cover referencing Goatse was re-referenced in an illustration by Eric Lister in the internet periodical www.gelfmagazine.com accompanying an article by David Downs about wether or not internet networking sites like myspace.com have brought about a drastic increase in child diddling.
• A video of unknown origin depicting a young blonde having anal intercourse and then proceeding to lift her legs into the air forcing her anus inside out. The video often entitled goatsegirl.wmv bears the same goatse moniker as this nefarious image.

External links

• Goatse mirror: http://goatse.cz/
• http://goatse.cx/ - Leads to the notice of the domain suspension.
• http://www.firstgoatse.com/ - Pictures of shocked viewers.