is a website intended to be offensive to most viewers. Usually it displays a particular picture most prominently; some shock sites also show animations or galleries of images. Shock sites are often of varying severity; this article discusses the contents of notorious shock sites.

Links to shock sites are often passed around via email or disguised in posts to Slashdot and other discussion sites as a hoax in an attempt to trick readers into following the link to the website. In order to end these practices, Slashdot has changed the software to display the domain name of a linked URL in brackets following the link (example: "Wikipedia (/) [wikipedia.org]"), so that any link to goatse.cx or a similar shock site would be immediately visible as such. To circumvent the measure, people began to set up mirror sites and use public CGI redirect scripts run by sites such as Yahoo! or Slashdot itself.

Relevance to Wikipedia

The images of notorious shock sites have also occasionally been used for vandalism on Wikipedia. The English Wikipedia has disabled the ability to embed images on external servers by merely typing their URL, in part because of these acts of vandalism. It is now required to upload such images to the Wikipedia server first, which can only be done by registered users.

Goatse.cx

The domain name of this shock site is a wordplay on the phrase "goat sex". Its front page contains an explicit picture (with filename hello.jpg ) of a man opening his anus and rectum to approximately three times the normal size of such an orifice. The identity of the man is unknown though he has been nicknamed "Bob Goatse" and "The Goatse Man". The site has been online since March 1999.

Goatse.cx has four sections, three of which have images of questionable taste:

The "Receiver" section, showing the picture ( hello.jpg ) described above of the man stretching his anus. It also has links to http://www.dolphinsex.org/ and http://www.urinalpoop.org/.

section, showing the picture ( ) described above of the man stretching his anus. It also has links to http://www.dolphinsex.org/ and http://www.urinalpoop.org/. The "Giver" section, showing a picture ( giver.jpg ) of a man on a boat, which has been artificially altered (probably with Photoshop) to appear that he has an oversized penis.

section, showing a picture ( ) of a man on a boat, which has been artificially altered (probably with Photoshop) to appear that he has an oversized penis. The "Feedback" section, where e-mails are exhibited.

section, where e-mails are exhibited. The "Contrib" section showcasing visitor contributions to the site. Contrib has additional variations of hello.jpg and giver.jpg , as well as other images and files. The title of this page is "Contributed Work". Warning: The page begins with an ASCII version of hello.jpg . bush.jpg is a picture of United States President George Walker Bush in his office with hello.jpg framed on his desk. goatse-wwii.jpg is a picture of a large snowball, with "goatse.cx" written on the side, chasing Adolf Hitler and other members of the Third Reich. giver2.jpg is a picture of the Goatse giver holding his oversized penis. magiceye.jpg is a Magic Eye picture. After about 16 seconds, the image changes to that of a 256 color version of hello.jpg . warning.jpg is a warning sign picture telling people not to go to goatse.cx goatsex.swf is a Flash Movie. Goatman.mp3 is an mp3 Music file. It takes up 518 KB. Foxy_goatse.mp3 is another mp3 music file, based off of Foxy Lady. Foxy Lady was a song in the 1979 album Three Imaginary Boys released by The Cure. It takes up 1061 KB. goatsecx-winamp.zip is a ZIP file containing a Winamp skin. It takes up 313 KB.

section showcasing visitor contributions to the site. Contrib has additional variations of and , as well as other images and files. The title of this page is "Contributed Work". The page begins with an ASCII version of .

People sometimes link to goatse.cx images not shown on the actual webpages, such as loopback.jpg , a picture of a man looping his penis into his anus.

The image hello.jpg originates from a set of 40 images depicting the man performing various anal sexual acts. In those images, the man used a peg to stretch his anus. The images were located by the Stile Project[?] and are also available from the "Contrib" section of the goatse.cx website under the filename gap.zip .

Goatse.cx has an IRC server located at irc.goatse.cx, which shows the ASCII hello.jpg in the MOTD. The server is part of the IRC network Evolnet[?].

The site uses the .cx country code top-level domain of Christmas Island , where registration is cheap and the the operators will not disclose registrant's personal information. The actual server of Goatse.cx is not located on Christmas Island, but in the United States and is owned by Hick.org, which is a website about computer programming. 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, a mirror of Goatse.cx, is located in the Houston, Texas metro-region.

http://goatse.cx -- WARNING! This link takes you directly to the picture described above. http://www.goatse.cx/giver -- "Giver" subsection with photo of man with oversized penis http://www.goatse.cx/contrib -- "Contributions" subsection with ASCII art and reader contributions http://www.goatse.cx/mail -- "Feedback" subsection with reader email selections http://goatse.cx/contrib/gap.zip -- ZIP file containing the entire image set. It has 40 JPEG files and is 771 KB in size. http://hick.org/goat , http://goat.cx -- known mirrors or alternative URLs

This link takes you directly to the picture described above. http://www.stileproject.com -- originally located the image set. WARNING! This site contains pornographic and potentially offensive materials. The Stile Project server is located in the Chicago, Illinois metro-region.

The following two parodies are hosted on Yahoo! Geocities. http://www.geocities.com/bobmaloogakathy/frogsecx/receiver --The "Receiver" hello.jpg here is a Kermit the Frog doll with an anus stuck on it. The "giver" giver.jpg shows a man taking off his pants. "Feedback" leads to http://hanniballecter.blogspot.com/ and "Contrib" leads to http://darko.blogspot.com/. http://www.geocities.com/electabuzz2002/lite.htm -- like the Goatse.cx reciever section, but with the ASCII version of hello.jpg .

The following parodies all originate from the same IP address, hosted in the Houston, Texas metro-region: http://oralse.cx -- The "Pussy" hello.jpg is that of a kitten, and the "Wiener" giver.jpg is that of a dachshund. Oralse.cx also has a "Contrib" section of more shots of the cat and the dog, as well as modified versions of the aforementioned pictures. It also had a "Feedback" section with its own letters. http://analse.cx -- This site has bunny.gif , which is a picture of bunch of cartoon rabbits, each with a pancake on its head, whom open their anuses in imitation of hello.jpg . This site is also a spoof of Hampsterdance. http://throatse.cx -- Another parody, which is a redirect to http://www.gingerninja.org/throatse/. For the "Receiver" hello.jpg , it shows a wide open mouth, and for the "Giver" giver.jpg , it shows an ice cream. The "Contrib" section has an ASCII version of the Throatse hello.jpg , and two flavors of the "Throatman", a takeoff of the "Goatman" MP3 song. Throatse also has a "Feedback" section.

Another parody was http://xbo.cx, which had an image of a Microsoft Xbox imposed over the opening. Other images were an Atari 2600 imposed over the opening, and the Goatse.cx giver with a joystick in place of the oversized penis. However, the website has since been removed due to the lease expiring. The website was hosted in the Auckland, New Zealand metro-region.

Tubgirl.com

Perhaps even more offensive than Goatse, Tubgirl.com is a redirect to a picture ( tubgirl.jpg ) of a naked woman on her back in a bathtub, legs skyward, shooting her own liquid diarrhea into her latex-masked face.

Tubgirl.com is owned by Redcoat.net, a picture website. The Redcoat.net domain was registered by "absolute redcoat" in Knoxville, Tennessee. The Redcoat.net server is located in Parsippany-Troy Hills Township, New Jersey.

http://www.tubgirl.com/ -- WARNING! This link takes you directly to the picture described above. It is a redirect to

Bakla.net

Bakla.net has a series of pictures of what appears to be a woman. The very last image, ( china3.jpg ), is of that same person naked, lying on a bed, but with a penis instead of a vagina, hence the person turns out to be a "ladyboy". It is very common in Thailand for so-called "ladyboys" to act as escorts and prostitutes. The pictures ( china1.jpg , china2.jpg , china3.jpg ) show a ladyboy that is well-known in certain internet circles, as well as in the bars of Pattaya[?] Beach (not faked). Here is a list of all of the pictures on that page in order.

ann12.jpg is a picture of the person in a white dress in a blank background.

is a picture of the person in a white dress in a blank background. ann17.jpg is a picture of the person, but with her neckline lower as if she was almost going to expose her breasts.

is a picture of the person, but with her neckline lower as if she was almost going to expose her breasts. ann18.jpg is a larger picture of the person in the same outfit.

is a larger picture of the person in the same outfit. china2.jpg is a picture of another "woman" wearing a black shirt and bluejeans. She is in some type of house.

is a picture of another "woman" wearing a black shirt and bluejeans. She is in some type of house. china1.jpg is the picture of the same "woman" in the same clothing and setting looking at the cameraman.

is the picture of the same "woman" in the same clothing and setting looking at the cameraman. china3.jpg is the picture described above of the ladyboy naked with a penis instead of a vagina.

Bakla.net is hosted on Yahoo! servers, which are located in Sunnyvale, California