# Rotten.com

Rotten.com was an American video and photographic sharing shock and gore site, promoting morbid curiosity and death, active from 1996 to 2012, known for hosting gruesome and bloody images and videos of blood and gore, death and decomposition, specialising in graphic, gross deaths and violence, including graphic violence. The website, which had the tagline "An archive of disturbing illustration", was devoted to morbid curiosities, which included photos and videos of violent acts, deformities, autopsy photos and videos, forensic investigation videos and images of suicides, dead and decomposing cadavers, mysterious, random and other deaths, etc, taken as part of police investigations and forensic crime scene photos and videos of unlawful killings and homicides, including murder, taken as part of murder and criminal investigations, depictions of perverse sex acts, disturbing or misanthropic historical curiosities, and various recorded media of real events such as shootings, beheadings, suicides, stabbings, mutilations, torture, murders, terrorist attacks (including suicide bombings, terrorist beheadings, and executions), knife attacks, capital punishments (including by beheading and shooting, and executions by shooting and beheading), surgeries, amputations, gang violence (including mafia and cartel-related violence), self-harm, war photos and videos (including crimes during wartime), assassinations, accidents, injuries, CCTV, videos of self-defence, dashcam, assaults (including assaults with deadly weapons), injuries, cadavers, forensic pathology, (including photos and videos), and revenge attacks and killings (including suicides, stabbings, murders, and shootings caught on cell phones, dashcams, and CCTV). Rotten.com also hosted some video footage of these events, but these were not extremely graphic, as it was not allowed on the site; it was more of a morbid curiosity website with bloody, gory, and shocking images to shock viewers about how brutal the things can get, rather than outright horrendous shock. Much of the material depicted was uncensored, graphic, unblurred, uncut, unpixalated, unfiltered, raw, unedited, disturbing, distressing, gruesome, shocking, gory, horrific, horrendous, bloody, explicit videos and images (some of the videos were quite graphic, though not as graphic as on other websites or other graphic adult content websites). Founded in 1996, it was run by a developer known as Soylent Communications. Site updates slowed in 2009, with the final update in February 2012. The website's front page was last archived in February 2018.

## History

In late 1996, Soylent wrote a program that identified unregistered Internet domain names consisting of one word with a corresponding dictionary entry. "Rotten" was one of the unclaimed words, and Soylent went on to register Rotten.com in the same year. Rotten.com presented itself as a bastion of online free speech, in an era when censorship rules in some countries had begun to restrict internet access.
Rotten.com had a sparse layout; no thumbnail images were present next to links, and the links had one-line descriptions couched in morbid humor, often carrying no hints at their content. Content consisted of user-submitted images, with developers rarely posting content themselves. Though submissions were marked as "real", often they were misattributed; in one instance, a file submitted as "motorcycle.jpg" was given the description of depicting a motorbike accident, but the developers admitted it was probably an attempted shotgun suicide.
Rotten.com received an alleged image of medical personnel recovering Princess Diana's body from a car accident, though this was later confirmed as fake. However, due to wide interest in the crash, the image was posted anyway, resulting in a large traffic spike. The website was also one of the first to publish images of the September 11 jumpers from the Twin Towers, under the title "Swan Dive".
The site also hosted videos of some these graphic events, including on cell phones, dashcam, forensic and autopsy cameras, CCTV, and film cameras.
Rotten.com also hosted autopsy videos, and forensic case and crime scene videos taken by coroners and forensic services worldwide, and submitted by users via email, or request developers to post images or videos which were unreleased, which users could not find online and submit via email. Rotten.com was one of the first adult content websites to host pornography, (fake and real) violence, gore, decomposition, and the promotion of death and morbid curiosity.

## Legal disputes

Rotten.com was threatened with many lawsuits over the years, mostly in the form of cease and desist notices. These ranged from serious matters, such as requests to remove pictures of dead relatives from the site, to Burlington Coat Factory asking to take down 'trenchcoat.org', a domain bought by Rotten.com as a Trenchcoat Mafia reference, though it simply linked to Burlington Coat Factory's webpage.
On June 24, 2005, the US federal government ordered that the "Fuck of the Month" section of the site be removed, along with content from several ancillary sites. In posting the page's removal notice, the site's moderator criticized supporters of both Alberto Gonzales and the Bush Administration for the enablement of censorship.

## Rotten Library

In 2003, The Rotten Library was created as an encyclopedia to supplement the website. The Library contained hundreds of articles under 17 different headings, including culture, art, medicine, crime, travel, and the occult. Articles contained detailed research, timelines, and occasionally included previously unseen images of various well-known events. The headings inside of entries are humorous in nature, with a description of the subject (for example, a medical condition) in an informal and often insulting tone. In the entry dedicated to eating disorders, the heading above the section for bulimia is titled "Betty Bulimia."

## Merchandise

Rotten.com had a store that carried T-shirts, mousemats, stickers, magnets, and bizarre DVDs.

## Ancillary sites
### The Daily Rotten

In late 1999, The Daily Rotten was started by Thomas E. Dell, which published news stories on a daily basis, focusing mostly on terrorism, murder, suicide, abuse and excrement. Daily Rotten, also known as Rotten News, is driven by user submissions, which are edited by a self-described "Rotten Staff Duder". This also features comments for each one of the articles, posted by the registered members; they usually bring similar histories, gruesome and graphic images of real gore and dead bodies. They refer to themselves as "rotteneers", a satirical reference to Walt Disney's Mouseketeers, and/or "rottentots".

### Boners.com

Rotten.com launched Boners.com in response to viewers who wanted a daily pictures page alongside the Daily Rotten newsboard. The word "boner" suggests an embarrassing mistake or a male organ in a state of arousal. The images typically consisted of amusing public signs, phallic imagery, and members of the public in embarrassing situations.

### The Gaping Maw

In 2000, The Gaping Maw – an editorial/commentary archive – was founded. Most of the articles were written by cartoonist Tristan Farnon under the alias "Spigot" (from Leisure Town) or by other webmasters. The pages contained news, satire, and commentary on modern society. Along with the Rotten Library, this improved Rotten.com's standing in many communities since it introduced a humane and intellectual aspect to the website. On June 22, 2005, The Gaping Maw went dark to comply with new government bookkeeping requirements regarding the distribution of pornography, specifically governmental age-verification of models, under 18 U.S.C. § 2257. All articles were taken down, and the site's title page was replaced with a statement lamenting the passage of the laws, headed by the banner, "CENSORED BY US GOVERNMENT!". In January 2006, The Gaping Maw came back online with some articles heavily edited.

### Rotten Dead Pool

In November 2003, the Rotten Dead Pool was launched. The Dead Pool was a game in which players picked ten people they believed would die over the course of the next 12 months. A point was awarded to a player for each of their correct picks. A pick did not count as correct if the pick was executed or murdered, or died some other way, after the 12 months had passed.

### NNDB

In mid-2002, Rotten.com launched NNDB, an online database. NNDB is a steadily-updated website that contained information about thousands of notable people. The news section ceased updating on January 16, 2016, and the celebrity deaths section last updated on December 31, 2021. The website itself is still live.

### Sports Dignity

Sports Dignity was a gallery of pictures showing embarrassing or NSFW incidents in sports games and tournaments.

## Publications

* The I Hate Dick Cheney, John Ashcroft, Donald Rumsfeld, Condi Rice Reader. Avalon Publishing. 2004. ISBN 1-56025-620-6. (pp. 194–204 consists of the Rotten Library entry for John Ashcroft)