Wish I could remember how I found my way there back in 96/97
>his real name, aptly, was Thomas E. Dell
Could someone explain why this is apt?
Rotten Dot Com
91–100 of 133 posts
Re: Rotten Dot Com
#92if you stared too long into rotten.com did not rotten.com also stare into you?
No no, websites staring back at you is a more modern phenomenon.
Re: Rotten Dot Com
#93Earlier 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…
> to deny all of advertising
I don’t think that is true. Advertising relies on manufactured needs, portraying the hawked goods and services as things one needs to live a comfortable, easy, pleasurable or socially worthy life.
None of that resonates with shock content.
As an extreme example, you supposedly can’t sell guns by showing pictures of gun suicide victims. This is also why some governments require tobacco products to feature gruesome images of smoker lungs, cancer, etc. Ironically, kids in those countries have started collecting and trading those images cut out from tobacco packages.
Curiosity lands squarely opposite of control.
Re: Rotten Dot Com
#94Re: Rotten Dot Com
#95I loved rotten dot com when I was a teenager (97ish time). Simpler times, where I was looking for gore and (a year or so later) Joes Cartoons (I’m super fly).
I do think the site, along with watching horror such as puppet master and reading Stephen King at 14, affected my psyche though.
Re: Rotten Dot Com
#96I 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…
It's kind of a miracle that most of us people who got exposed to all that stuff are still sane.
I think that seeking disturbing content is a normal part of being a teenager, especially for boys. rotten.com is just one of these things. If it drove people insane, I guess that evolution would have selected against this behavior.
It may even have some positive effects, like preparing for real life events in a safe environment. Not all about rotten.com is about violence, it shows diseases, injuries, surgeries, etc... things that getting desensitized about may be good. I don't know the opinion of psychologists is on the subject, but positive or negative, I believe the effects of internet "shock" content are mild at best and interest in it not unhealthy, though maybe revealing of an underlying condition if done in excess.
Re: Rotten Dot Com
#97reading 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 parent…
Dont regret that you retained your humanity.
Everybody is different, but exposure to such graphic content at young age leaves some scars, no way to avoid that regardless of what some claim. Its 'growing up' as much as lashing or getting beaten to pulp would make you grow up, there is transition for sure, away from childhood, but hardly in a good direction.
Been there during those times, saw a bit, there was undeniable magnetism to such stuff for young minds, but more than happy to say I didnt get addicted to it unlike author of the article, and overall saw the page only few times. One can irrepairably damage oneself quite easily, and there are no warning signs along the road.
Re: Rotten Dot Com
#98Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
I know someone who developed schizophrenia in contact with rotten.com
I know someone who won the lottery after watching the film National Lampoon’s Vacation
Re: Rotten Dot Com
#99Perhaps adolescents were attracted to this content as a reaction to the sanitized upbringing in western culture. In my experience, these sites were compelling because they showed what was "beyond the veil". Teenage me was invincible, my own death unthinkable, so exposing myself to this content was almost a rebellious reactionary activity.
Now the current crop of curious teens are watching drone drops and soldier suicide compilations. Trench clearing, close combat. Executing surrendering soldiers. Industrialized trench warfare in high def. Yeah its brutal. What was beyond the veil is not something nice to be discovered. It hurts us to watch it. It hurts me, but maybe its supposed to hurt. Hollywood has proven to be laughably unrealistic. Almost any movie with violence is. Maybe the silver lining to watching war in HD, and by extension rotten et all, is a natural aversion to hollywood bullshit.. Surely that's got to count for something.
Re: Rotten Dot Com
#100I 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…
I'm grateful that my friends and I all grew up to be functional adults considering we would spend hours after school looking at ogrish and ebaumsworld.