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If I had the chance I'd ask the world to dance
by anna at 06:44 PM on October 20, 2004
"Parents should realize that the Internet contains dark corners. It's like letting their children walk unsupervised through Amsterdam or New York." - Dan Klinker, purveyor of fine online beheadings
The Net showed such great promise early on. We were all going to e-commerce. All our day to day dealings would be done online. Then the dot-com bubble burst and we're left to drown in the swirling cesspool infested with spyware, information highwaymen, viruses, pop-ups, porn mazes and error messages.
Huge online business collapsed like houses of cards. Only porn, gambling and blogs have weathered the storm and come to thrive. That is, until the spate of beheadings in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere. (Remember the collective shock and horror at Daniel Pearl's demise? Now it all seems as commonplace as a roadside bomb or naked pyramid.)
Indeed, now there's... this. Per an article by Olga Craig for the London Sunday Telegrah, it's one of the most popular sites in all cyberspace. On any given day it gets 300,000 distinct hits. When a fresh decapitation occurs, that number surges to 750,000 and swamps Klinker's six servers. 2 million people have downloaded Ken Bigley's grisly beheading. Those are Paris Hilton-like numbers!
I have to wonder how Klinker makes money off this venture. Maybe he charges for immediate email notification of decaps in progress. You're in a meeting and your Blackberry signals a new message. "Sorry to cut this short but I have a pressing engagement," you lie.
Naturally most of the visitors are dudes. But not all. 25% are chicks! 65% log in from the gore-obsessed USA, which is hardly a surprise given the stateside success of Natural Born Killers, Texas Chainsaw Massacre I&II and Hellboy.
Ten years ago who could have envisioned 3/4 million people all watching this lurid spectacle in front of their dingy little screens. Who could have fathomed us seeing bearded fanatics gledfully holding amputated heads up to webcams and yelling some Arabic nonsense? About as many as could have predicted that a sex scene involving puppets would earn a film the dreaded NC-17 death knell.
Fun beheading fact: The French used their guillotine on somebody as recently as 1977. Now that it's out of commission maybe they should send it to Mr. Zarquawi. At least it would be far less gruesome that those 10 minute ordeals involving bolo knives.
comments (14)
Thanks for the link and I couldn't agree more. In defense of teh US though we're not all gore obsessed but I'm probably in the minority.
by Trench at October 20, 2004 11:39 PM
I remember those Faces of Death videos... seemed more intrigued by them as a child, but it sickens me these days. That people are downloading the beheadings is beyond my comprehension... I'm glad you bring light to this issue, I find it utterly reprehensible and I think the IP addresses should be identified and the people caught downloading such atrocities be forced to watch the entire ALCS series over and over and over, no surprise that Jesus shows up out of no where and saves the day with a grand slam. It defies all logic. A total random walk.
by LOCKHEED at October 21, 2004 12:31 AM
Welcome Trench. I have no idea about the inner workings of websites so I don't know how you knew I linked to your site. But now that you're here, stick around. Lock, I thought the series was supposedly exciting and historic. Go Sox. Oh wait, you're in NYC. Never mind. Boston's not a big college town.
by anna at October 21, 2004 7:37 AM
Hellboy is a movie based on a comic book and is rated PG-13. It wasn't very successful either. If you want some fun, gory, splatstick rent "Dead Alive". Perfect Halloween fun.
by MrBlank at October 21, 2004 9:18 AM
I believe if was Dead Alive that had the best movie line ever. A priest is standing in a graveyard, possibly in his jammies, is about to be attacked by what are basically zombies and shouts, "I kick ass for the lord!" in a Aussie/Kiwi accent and proceeds to kick major ass. Silly, gory fun. Great stuff.
by Mike Sheffler at October 21, 2004 4:02 PM
Blank I based that on having seen the video cover. Looked and sounded like it would be gory. Will check out Dead Alive. And then, of course, there's American Psycho. You want gratuitous violence and debauchery?
by anna at October 21, 2004 6:27 PM
Dead Alive is gory, but it is a comedy. It was directed by lord of Lord of the Rings, Peter Jackson. American Pyscho was not a comedy.
by mg at October 21, 2004 11:22 PM
All I can remember about "American Psycho" is the scene where he chases a woman with a chainsaw and he dops the chainsaw down the stairwell timing it just right so it impales her on the last step. I laughed at that for a long time. Yeah, I'm sick.
by MrBlank at October 21, 2004 11:23 PM
I hated the book American Psycho and the movie, and they dared make a sequel where the protagonist looks like my fiancee. What was the point behind the 'book' and/or the 'movie', except an attempt at 'gratuity' just below the x rated level? Any monkey with a camera and some bills can come up with creative madness. It's second nature. Does anyone remember the philosophy behind the plot? Like in a liberal arts way, 'it reflected the hedonism of the 80's?' or something like that. I felt so bad for Fidel Castro when he fell. Did you see the video of it? That was so sad. Che Guevara must have been rolling in his grave.
by LOCKHEED at October 23, 2004 2:59 PM
Lock in a way I agree. Never bothered with that sequel or any other. But there was just something about the sheer... emptiness of Patrick Bateman that I found haunting.
by anna at October 24, 2004 8:50 AM
Some of the stuff on the Internet really is rotten, but some of the stuff is really great. Of course, there is this site. There is also an e-mail list I'm on, where some people said such incredibly insightful things things tonight that I felt honored to even have those letters in my in-box. I saved them, of course.
by jean at October 25, 2004 4:03 AM
And Lockheed, I thought that video of Fidel Castro breaking his knee was sad, too. I watched it the first time it came on TV, but not afterwards.
by jean at October 25, 2004 4:06 AM
Fidel Castro is old.
by anna at October 25, 2004 7:44 AM
What was up with the guys trying to pick him up immediatly after he fell? What were they trying to do? Break the old man's spine?
by MrBlank at October 25, 2004 3:32 PM