13 Things You Should NEVER Google
- Photo: Metaweb (FB) / Fair use
In October of 2006, Nikki Catsouras perished in a car crash at age 18 in Lake Forest, California. (Catsouras had been driving her father's Porsche, before losing control of the vehicle and colliding with a toll booth.) The result of the crash was gruesome enough that Catsouras's parents were not asked to confirm her identity, but photographs of the scene were still taken, according to protocol.
California Highway Patrol Officers Aaron Reich and Thomas O'Donnell later admitted to leaking said photographs on to the internet by e-mailing them to friends. Despite the family's best efforts to remove them, photographs of the horrific Catsouras crash scene remain relatively easy to find on the Internet to this day. As intriguing as that sounds, you probably shouldn't Google them.
- 11
Brian Peppers
Brian Peppers is a registered sex offender from Ohio suffering from some kind of grim deformity. A photo of Peppers was taken in 1998 for Ohio's Electronic Sex Offender Registration and Notification system, after Peppers was convicted of "Gross Sexual Imposition." In 2005, this photo of Peppers made the internet rounds and became something of a meme, although at first many doubted the veracity of the image. (Snopes has since confirmed that it is, in fact, real.)
It has been speculated that Peppers peculiar appearance may be due to Apert Syndrome, a congenital disorder marked by malformations of the skull, or Crouzon Syndrome, a genetic disorder that causes malformations of the face and skull in embryos. If you're really curious but don't want to get creeped out, just imagine a guy with a super bloated face covered in gray paint.
- Photo: Noblevmy / Wikimedia Commons / CC BY 3.0
Meatspin.com is a website that features an embedded video of two men having gay sex. One of the men is "spinning around" atop the other man, giving rise to the website's name. The site also features a counter showing you, the viewer, how long you have managed to watch the action unfold.
In some ways, the concept is similar to the popular Nyan Cat meme, only in place of two men making love on one another, that site counts down how long you have watched a cartoon feline with rainbows coming out his backend.
- 9
4 Girls Finger Paint
Photo: Quinn Dombrowski / Flickr / CC BY-SA 2.0"Oh, how nice, some young ladies expressing themselves artistically and enjoying an afternoon of... OH SWEET LORD NO!!!!" That would've been your reaction if someone had fooled you into Googling this. But now, I have spared you the trauma.
In what was commonly referred to as a "sequel" of sorts to famed Internet shock video "2 Girls 1 Cup" (a video of two young women using each other like a port-a-potty), "4 Girls Finger Paint" features a quartet of women painting themselves and one another using their own f***s. Not grossed out yet? Don't worry! They eventually find a way to work some vomit in there as well. - 8
Lemon Party
Photo: Andre Karwath / Wikimedia Commons / CC BY-SA 2.5A site called "Lemonparty.org" features a video clip of 3 elderly gentlemen in a bed together kissing and then engaging in oral sex. Because of its innocuous sounding name (which is also shared by a "frivolous" Canadian political party!), Lemonparty is one of the most popular gross out memes online.
This is one of the few items on this list to receive any kind of real mainstream attention. It even scored a subtle mention on an episode of "30 Rock":
- 7
Harlequin Fetus
Photo: J. Bland Sutton / Wikimedia Commons / Public DomainAdmittedly, if someone tells you to Google any term with the word "fetus" right there in it, you can sort of tell they're up to no good. But this is extreme, even by "fetal photo" standards. The term refers to a baby born with the congenital skin disease ichthyosis. By thickening the layer of keratin in a fetus' skin, it causes rough diamond-shaped "scales" to appear, limiting the infant's movement and making it susceptible to all sorts of infections.
The disorder is always fatal, and typically infants born suffering from severe ichthyosis don't survive for more than a few days. Most of the gross out internet things on this list can be fun to trick people into viewing, but harlequin fetuses are incredibly depressing.
- 6
Blue Waffle
Photo: flickr / CC0This is one of those cases where, if you search with Google's "Safe Search" mode enabled, you will simply get some pictures of blueberry waffles and a few weird PhotoShopped images of actual blue waffles. But turn "Safe Search" off and grab hold of something, because you're about to get a lesson in severe vaginal infections!
In March of 2010, a photo of what appears to be a woman's severely infected vagina appeared on the Internet. Though it could potentially be an advanced, particularly gruesome form of vaginitis, there has been significant speculation that the image is a fraud and part of an Internet hoax. (No actual women have come forward to "claim" the photo, and it has yet to appear in any sort of reputable medical or scientific journal). Regardless of whether the image is real or not, it's still super gross and you definitely shouldn't look it up. - 5
Kids in a Sandbox
Photo: Artaxerxes / Wikimedia Commons / CC BY-SA 3.0Yet another sexually explicit shock video with an innocent-sounding (even pleasant) title. The Internet just can't seem to get enough of them.
This video opens with a woman pleasuring a man with her hand. So far, so not-permanently-scarring. But then things take a turn. The woman takes out a large vibrator and begins to forcibly place it inside the man's penis. Yeah, there, I said it. Aren't you glad you just had to read the words and not actually come face-to-face with this imagery via the magic of Internet search? - 4
Mr. Hands
Photo: Toasterb / Wikimedia Commons / CC BY-SA 3.0"Mr. Hands" is the professional name of one Kenneth Pinyan, a former Boeing engineer who expired in 2005 after receiving anal sex from a horse. The act was intentional, though it eventually led to the perforation of Pinyan's colon and his eventual death. It was also being videotaped by Pinyan's friend. The incident led to the immediate passage of a bill in Pinyan's home state of Washington, prohibiting both sex with animals and the videotaping thereof.
Pinyan's death photo is not readily available online, but there are previous videos made by Pinyan and his associates widely distributed under the name "Mr. Hands." (See, I brought it all back around.) If you'd like to learn more about the case but in a more artistic way, it is the subject of the actual documentary film "Zoo," which debuted at the 2007 Sundance Film Festival.
- 3
Eel Girl
Photo: Nhobgood / Wikimedia Commons / CC BY-SA 3.0Not the first bestiality-themed video to make this list, but probably the most horrifying. A video alternatingly known as "Eel Girl," "Eel Girls" and, most troublingly of all, "Eel Soup," features a duet of Japanese women and a large collection of eels. One of the women uses a funnel to insert the eels into the other's anus, and then eats them after they are expunged.
Filmmaker Paul Campion made a legitimate short horror movie called "Eel Girl" in 2008, about a scientist who obsesses about the half-eel/half-woman creature he's studying. This is already succeeding at driving the "other" Eel Girl down the Google results, which can only be seen as a good thing for unsuspecting searchers. So in the aid of that effort, here's Campion's movie.
- 2
Tub Girl
Photo: Christopher / Flickr / CC BY-SA 2.0Tub Girl is arguably the most infamous image on the Internet, a title it shares with the entry in the #2 spot. It stars an overweight Japanese woman wearing a mask. She's projecting diarrhea into the air, and as we all learned from Galileo or maybe Isaac Newton or somebody... what goes up inevitably comes down. In this case, all over poor poor Tub Girl. Some have suggested, due to the orange-ish discoloration of the excrement, that it may contain materials other than human f***s.
If you would like to know more details about this controversy, please get off the Internet for a while and do something else. You've had quite enough for now.
- Photo: Laurence Simon (Crap Mariner) / Flickr
The vile picture that in many ways defines the "shock site" craze, the image hosted at Goatse.cx (commonly referred to simply as "Goatse") features a naked man stretching out his anus using both hands, and making the interior of his rectum fully visible.
The image (which originally was uploaded with the filename happy.jpg) has become so well-known and recognizable, any combination of two hands surrounding a circle has become a kind of Internet shorthand for it. In other words, we're likely doomed as a species.
