Shock site

Goatse.cx is an infamous site on the World Wide Web. It consists of a rather gory picture of a man opening his anus and rectum to approximately three times the normal size of such an orifice. Several other images of questionable taste are also located on that site.

The link was often disguised in posts to Slashdot as a hoax, in an attempt to get readers to click on it. Once Slashdot began to display the domain name of a linked URL in brackets following the link (example: Wikipedia: The free encyclopedia [wikipedia.com]), people began to set up mirror sites and use public CGI redirect scripts run by sites such as Yahoo!. The actual server is located in the Kansas City metro-region.

The .cx domain is that of the Christmas Island, a tiny island 300 kilometres from Java with about 500 residents, which is an Australian external territory. Goatse.cx (the name being an obvious wordplay on "goat sex", a form of bestiality) is by far the best known site using that domain (as most of the few sites hosted on or relating to the island have .au names). It is unknown what the local residents think about this, or indeed whether any of them are aware of the site at all. The .cx domain is popular among internet gambling sites and other operations because it won't disclose registrant's personal information.

Additional Resources

• http://goatse.cx/ -- WARNING! This link takes you directly to the picture described above. Or rather it would, but that goatse.cx ceased to exist early 2002.