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Rotten Dot Com

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Re: Rotten Dot Com

#51

Post by ruszki »

vova_hn2 wrote: post #31
Kovah wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

But it can cause trauma, and harm. What this shows is that it’s not inevitable. It maybe even shows that it causes trauma and harm rarely.

Who should be protected from it, and by who is a different thing. I strongly against blanket restrictions, but one for sure they are easier. And they definitely protect people who wouldn’t get this protection in other scenarios, because for example their parents are shit. Another viewpoint is that probably this is the least important thing for people who wouldn’t get this protection otherwise, so maybe it doesn’t matter at that point. One for sure, there should be a better argument to restrict access than the currently provided ones.

Re: Rotten Dot Com

#52

Post by Joeboy »

My recollection from this era is there was a common argument that provocation and boundary pushing were the way to ensure an uncensored internet. To me, it seems like that argument has been defeated by reality, but I've never seen much discussion of it. Maybe it's a last-year's-war now anyway.

Re: Rotten Dot Com

#54

Post by pegasus »

rockskon wrote: post #46
pegasus wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Large-scale exposure caused no discernible degree of trauma. How do we know this? All I've seen so far is anecdata. As my own anecdata, an ex of mine felt she had been traumatized by watching horror movies at a very young age. Many years later she still had flashbacks.

Statistical anomalies exist, sure. But if there was any meaningful negative impact at scale, you'd think it would've shown up over the decades in trending therapy topics, to people bringing up traumatic memories of the old Internet, to....to something at scale.

Knowing what she's seen at that age, I'm pretty sure I'd have flashbacks as well. This wasn't the old internet, and it's not like the new internet is free of such content. I really don't think that we have a way to quantify this, but, as one sibling comment said, expecting no influence seems unrealistic – as is expecting that influence to be easily detectable. I'm sure my ex is not the only one bringing up such experiences in therapy and I bet if you ask experienced therapists they will have similar stories.

Re: Rotten Dot Com

#55

Post by lostmsu »

virgildotcodes wrote: post #42
pegasus wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It shows that exposure doesn't always cause trauma (which I don't think anyone claimed), not that it can't.

The uncomfortable truth is that monkey see monkey do is a real phenomenon. The majority of people who play violent video games and watch violent movies and watch real snuff vids online won't commit these acts. That said, to say they do not influence you in any way is to deny all of advertising, if not the basic reality that the stimuli to which we are exposed in life are the primary thing that shape us beyond our gen…

Evidence?

Re: Rotten Dot Com

#56

Post by shevy-java »

rotten dot was weird. I did visit it a few times but the general perception was that the website was - as I would call it nowadays - trolling people. There was virtually no "historic lesson" or anything here. It's like Rick Rolling with a darker undertone.

I guess people like the novelty factor in general, but I quickly realised that I don't really have the slightest interest in cruelty or giving credibility to this by watching anything in this regard. Nowadays such troll videos are more commonly seen but I quickly skip to do something else than waste time watching any of these. Back in the 1990s, though, it was quite a bit hard to realise any of this, largely because of finding images and videos being harder back then. Even Rick Rolling wasn't quite a real "thing" in the 1990s; that became more of a thing in 2006, with our usual suspect, the 4chan troll army (though, Rick Rolling is very harmless compared to some content that was on rotten dot com).

Re: Rotten Dot Com

#57

Post by shevy-java »

INTPenis wrote: post #6

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…

> Looking back it was innocent exploration, but if I did what I did then today, I might get put on some watchlist.

Well. Innocent ...

I agree with regards to the law, but unless I misremember ... were there only images? No videos? Because some videos were ... mega-suspicious. Perhaps these were on other websites, I don't remember the late 1990s/early 2000s era that well. Several images were just for the shock factor and I also suspect that some of those were partially fake, to "intensify" the shock factor.

> that's where I spent most of my time before 4chan

Ah, so the dark side of the www got you early. Thankfully I never got into 4chan.

Re: Rotten Dot Com

#58

Post by virgildotcodes »

I wish I'd had more weird friends like these growing up. A girl I had an enormous crush on introduced me to rotten when I was 14, then disappeared from my life, and all my friends since that I shared anything along these lines with thought "wtf is this weird gross shit". Led to me developing for the rest of my life a circle of friends who never really shared my curiosity about "weird" or "nerdy" subjects.

I now develop software, and have nobody to really talk to about it. I'm even kind of bored of the idea of talking about it, feels like talking about World of Warcraft or something.

Was too concerned with being "cool", oh well. It's nice to see so many people were wiser and more headstrong and confident/authentic at a young age and found their people who they could more fully connect with.

Re: Rotten Dot Com

#59

Post by shevy-java »

vova_hn2 wrote: post #31
Kovah wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

This kind of conflates two issues though.

I have no real interest in any shock video or shock image; but I reject any form of censorship even more so, such as is currently tried via age sniffing on everyone and killing off VPNs. The world wide web is currently privatized.

Re: Rotten Dot Com

#60

Post by virgildotcodes »

lostmsu wrote: post #55
virgildotcodes wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The uncomfortable truth is that monkey see monkey do is a real phenomenon. The majority of people who play violent video games and watch violent movies and watch real snuff vids online won't commit these acts. That said, to say they do not influence you in any way is to deny all of advertising, if not the basic reality that the stimuli to which we are exposed in life are the primary thing that shape us beyond our gen…

Evidence?

Evidence of the fact that I ordered doordash? Evidence of the fact that people are a product of their genetics and their environment?

Are you asking for evidence that humans tend to emulate what they see other humans do?

Are you asking the more direct classic question of if there's evidence that violent media correlates with violent acts?

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