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Much has been made
of the fact that sex -- images,
writings, even the prurient sounds
of orgasm -- is one of the mainstays
of the Web. But few people, let alone
the U.S. Congress, have tried to
understand why there's so much demand
for this kind of information. And it
*is* information, isn't it? Assuming the
Communications Decency Act is struck
down, will we ever get enough
information about how people look
without clothes, how they look
copulating, how they copulate?
Probably not.
Looking at sex, the shrinks tell us, is
the next best thing to having sex. And
since the computer experience is all
about virtuality -- about experiencing
things vicariously -- it makes sense
that sex would be the thing people seek
online as well as off.
But -- and now we
come to the issue of today's hype and
hysteria -- how does one explain the
recent proliferation of grotesque pages?
If looking at sex is the next best thing
to having it, what can we say about the
apparent upsurge in home pages that
deliver images of dismemberment, death
and feces worship? (It's not too late to
turn back now, friend...)
"I made my page to
be a beacon to other people who are into
this stuff," said "Psycho" Dave,
whose Psycho
Dave's Dark And Scary Place is among
the whistle stop's on a Cold-Blooded
Campaign Trail that includes Dan's
Gallery of the Grotesque and Brain
Damage. "I know there are plenty of
other psychos out there and this is
their playground."
What's their
playground, Psycho Dave? "Decapitations,
dismemberments, human roadkill --
anything a pathologist is used to seeing
every day," he explained. "There are
actual accident photos and autopsy
photos and stuff like that."
But the Psycho Dave
isn't a pathologist, he's a 30-year-old
computer repairman who describes himself
as "a pretty normal, laid-back, kinda
sedate person with some unique
interests." And the flood of people that
visit his site every day, we can assume,
aren't pathologists, either.
Indeed, Dave's site
is so popular that his Internet provider
is threatening eviction and Dave will be
moving his trove of the disgusting
elsewhere come autumn. "I think
everybody is interested in grotesque
things," he said. "Whenever there's a
deformed person or a naked person or an
unusual person, people stare." Indeed,
given how many people have visited his
Disneyworld of Doom, only a few have
expressed outrage: "I haven't found
anybody who doesn't like my page that
isn't a religious nut."
That's not the case
with Brain Damage,
a site that features
suicides and floaters and traffic
fatalities that's run by "Trauma Bob,"
the pseudonym used by a New York City
paramedic. Or should we say former
paramedic -- the dude told us in E-mail
yesterday that he just lost his job
because of his Web site. (We're still
getting details on this.)
So why are all
these macabre Web sites poopping up?
"Our society has an unhealthy
fascination with death," said Carole
Liebeman, a psychiatrist who consults to
"The Bold and The Beautiful" and "The
Young and The Restless." "People want to
experience someone's death vicariously."
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But as these sites
get more popular, users become
desensitized and look for bigger
thrills. "The same gory photos get
boring after awhile," the psychiatrist
to the soaps said. "The extreme is for
people to go and get photos that are
better than what's currently on the
Net. Maybe Netizens will be motivated to
commit murders of their own."
Web snuff sites, in
other words? We doubt it. Still, there
may be an insidious side to all of this.
Patricia Farrell, a psychologist who
works with the criminally insane at
Greystone Park Psychiatric Hospital in
Mars Plains, NJ, said the photos are
dangerous because they inure people to
human suffering.
"The more you look,
the more you grow an emotional callous,"
she said. "Certain people -- like
doctors and police -- have to develop it
as part of their jobs. The rest of us
don't have to."
By comparison, the
Poopie People who've started sites
celebrating their waste products seem
pretty harmless, albeit, gross. Take
Jeremy Gibbens, keeper of The
Fecal Matter Page. Please.
"I've always been
fascinated with that material because I
think it's funny," the 19-year-old North
Dakota computer science major said.
"People are offended by it, but
defecating is part of being human. I
don't understand what the big deal is."
Or consider, if you
will, the First Family of Feces, Craig
Rosenblatt, a 32-year-old Long Island
Karaoke DJ, and his charming wife,
Michelle.
"You'd be just like
me if you heard these people sing 'I
Will Survive' 150 times a week in
Japanese," Craig Rosenblatt complained
to us the other day. He said he
retaliated by putting up his totally
disgusting page to shock people.
It all started
when, one day, in a fit of elation, he
ran outside and defecated on the
neighbors's car and captured the Kodak
moment with his camera. "That was my
first picture." Then, acting on a
suggestion from Michelle, he started
taking pictures of his own poop.
"I didn't know what
to do for a Web page, so my wife said,
'Why don't you just put up pictures of
shit?" he told TNN. "I thought about it
and decided it was a great idea."
"I think it's
totally digusting but I'm very proud of
him," Michelle said, supportively. "I
think he did a good job. Once my husband
turned 30, you know, he had his good
days and his bad days -- It occurred to
me that if he was so preoccupied with
it, other people would be too."
Craig says he put
up his page as a joke only to discover a
huge subculture beat a path to his Web
site, where, we assume, they find
comfort and solace.
As a tribute to his
new friends, Craig has cooked up Tampon
Man. "It's a used tampon with my head on
the end of a string. He flies around
and says 'Up, Up and Away."
"I've become some
sort of celebrity," he added, noting
that traffic to his page is
astronomical. "People have put me on
this pedestal. People are happy about
it. They say they're going to tell
their family they eat shit. Hey, I'm
glad to make people happy."
And we're glad
you're glad, Craig. The big question in
all this, of course, is when will these
sites start accepting advertising.
--by Chris "El Disgusto" Stamper
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Psycho Dave is not being "evicted" by his service provider. He was hit with extra charges for data transmission due to too many people downloading all 7 megs of images from his disgusting photo gallery. He accumulated over 3 gigabytes of data transmission, and his service provider hit him with $50 in extra fees. After talking to the service provider, it was clear that they were not going to offer any way for any customers to monitor how much data their pages transmit, or even offer a way to limit use when the data flow goes up above a certain limit, so Psycho Dave decided to move his site to a different provider who doesn't charge anything extra. Since Dave is also planning to live in a new city, he decided to wait until he moves to move his page. To avoid extra charges in the mean time, Dave has shut down the photo gallery, and will reopen it after the big move.
The Psychotic one himself, Dave