What Is 'Goatse'? An Internet 101 Legend And Exploitable Meme Explained

For us at Know Your Meme, a group of internet veterans aged 25-40, it seems like everyone should know what Goatse is, but then we remember some people were born after the year 2000 and realize that might not be the case. Thus, we've taken it upon ourselves to explain Goatse once again to a new generation so that humanity will never forget that one time a guy spread his buttcheeks really far apart.

What Is Goatse?

In 1999, before the internet was more or less smushed into four or five websites, there were things called shock sites, which were URLs to sites containing something horrifying. People would send these to unwitting buddies on a messaging service as a prank or form of bait-and-switch media.

Goatse.cx is arguably the most infamous of these. When you clicked on it, you were brought to a page only containing a JPEG of a guy stretching out his butthole really, really wide. It kinda looked a little like this:

If you saw it once, it was seared into your brain forever. One simply does not forget the frankly concerning lengths to which that butthole can be stretched.

An investigation into the picture identified the man as Kirk Johnson, who at the time was in his 40s and was able to achieve such a stretch through the use of dildos.

How Has Goatse Been Parodied?

Goatse has remained a relevant meme and piece of internet culture thanks to users posting hundreds of images referencing the key subject of Goatse: two hands stretching out a hole.

It's one of the earliest "simulacrum" memes, which are pictures that share enough visual detail with another infamous image to make the viewer think of that image (think Losslikes).

Goatse's Legacy

Goatse has remained lodged in popular culture's brain simply because the "hands/hole" image, which is exceptionally common in design and animation, will almost always cause someone to bring up Goatse.

For example, when Tears of the Kingdom released, much of the internet spent its release day joking about how the new shrines in the game resembled Goatse.

It has also remained relevant among the meme-literate crypto crowd, as "Goatse Coin" launched in 2017. Additionally, and more recently, it's also gotten a boost in renown thanks to the meme coin called "Goatseus Maximus," which is also named after the viral shock image.

Goatseus Maximus (GOAT) was created in 2024 and gained significant investor interest and rapid market performance in October when the AI chatbot known as "Truth Terminal" began shilling the coin when it became obsessed with Goatse.

The AI's stock in $GOAT skyrocketing in value this month thanks to its virality and Truth Terminal then becoming the first AI to achieve millionaire status is undeniably one of the weirdest but most interesting developments of Goatse over the meme's many years.

For the full history of Goatse, be sure to check out Know Your Meme's encyclopedia entry for more information.