Goatse.cx (pronounced either ) was an Internet shock site. Its front page featured a picture, hello.jpg, showing a naked man stretching his anus to a large size with both hands, with the inside of his rectum clearly visible. Below his gaping anus, his dangling penis and scrotum are visible, as well as a ring on the ring finger of his left hand.

The image, originally named gap3.jpg, originates from a set of forty images called gap.zip. In those images, the man uses dildos and butt plugs to stretch his anus. The images were located by Stile Project and are also available from the "Contrib" section of the goatse.cx website.

Website

Goatse.cx had four sections, two of which had images intended to shock the viewer, including the "Receiver", the main index page containing the titular hello.jpg image, the "Giver," an edited photograph of a man reclining with an oversized penis reaching up to his chest (contributing to an anal sex joke between the two images, suggesting that the man is stretching is anus to fit the giant penis), a Feedback page containing user e-mails, and the "Contrib" page, a collection of homages and parodies of the Goatse images sent in by users.

The index page also contains a disclaimer about the content ("...if you are under the age of 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 http://www.dolphinsex.org/ and http://www.urinalpoop.org/, while older versions linked to http://www.biganal.com/

Site suspension

On January 14, 2004, the domain goatse.cx was suspended by Christmas Island Internet Administration for AUP violations in response to a complaint, but many mirror of the site are still available, and the image is displayed on many websites. A Christmas Island resident named Rhonda Clarke filed the complaint that resulted in the suspension of the goatse.cx domain. She became prominent in some internet circles afterwards.

In January 2007, 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 off the right to use the domain.

The goatse.cx domain name was reported sold at an auction 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 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, the site was for sale on seobidding; "goatse.cx asking: $50200 minimum."

Control of the domain was passed to the secondary market, and was taken by a domain investor who was trying to sell the domain name for 10,000 euros.

As January 2008, the front page of the site features a stylized rendering of the Goatse.cx image and notification that the goatse.cx domain is once again for sale.

As of June 2009, there is a banner for the No Clean Feed campaign. That banner and hello.jpg both link to www.nocleanfeed.com.

The October 21st, 2009 edition of the Rick Latona "Daily Domains" newsletter advertised the Goatse.cx domain for sale at an asking price of $15,000, noting it as being a "famous site, tons of backlinks"

Geographic location

The site used the .cx country code, the top-level domain of the Australian territory of Christmas Island. The actual server of Goatse.cx was not located on Christmas Island, but in the United States and was owned by Hick.org, 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 originated from the same IP address; the server was located in 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.fr is in France.

Reception and parodies

Because many frequent Internet users have been tricked into viewing the site at one time or another, it has become something of an Internet meme. As such, hello.jpg and the other images on the site are common subjects of parodies and tributes. Tribute to Goatse.cx (Warning: Many pages display hello.jpg)

Following Hurricane Charley 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 fabricated Goatse.cx parody.

False BitTorrent files supposedly containing disc images of a leaked Mac OS X build that can run on standard "x86 architecture" computers distributed during 2005 had been known to display the Goatse image when booted rather than loading Mac OS.

In June 2007, a parody of the 2012 Summer Olympics logo submitted by "Sean Stayte" appeared on the BBC News website under the alternative Olympic Logo entries and was broadcast on their BBC News 24 channel. Two hands were pulling the 0 from 2012 apart. The image was later shown as part of a gallery of viewers logos on BBC London News and BBC News 24, 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".

References

1. " The Receiver," Goatse.cx 2004
2. " The Receiver," Goatse.cx 1999
3. " The Receiver," Goatse.cx 2000
4. Council of Country Code Administrators - Acceptable Use Policy .cx - Christmas Island (.cx ccTLD) > Policies - Sections
5. Variomedia AG - Domain-Registrierung, Webhosting, Reseller
6. Portail d'informations Ce site est en vente!
7. " goatse.cx is for sale." Sedo GMBh
8. " Goatse on BBC." CollegeHumor. June 6, 2007. Retrieved on October 3, 2009.
9. " The Hands of God." Snopes. June 15, 2007. Retrieved on February 23, 2009.
10. " _43006883_sean_stayte_416.jpg." BBC. Retrieved on February 23, 2009.
11. Herrmann, Steve. " Shock tactics." BBC. June 5, 2007. Retrieved on February 23, 2009.

External links

• Lazy Guide to Net Culture: NSFW - The Scotsman
• French mirror of the original site