About

Rotten.com^[1] is a shock site that curates a wide range of media depicting morbid curiosities and paraphilia, including gore, violence, autopsies, physical deformities and sexual acts.

History

On July 23rd, 1996, founder of the web hosting company Soylent Communications Thomas E. Dell registered the domain Rotten.com after writing a program that scraped and listed domain names available for purchase on the Internet. According to the Rotten.com FAQ^[4], Dell launched the site initially as a "'what should I do with this domain now that I blew a hundred bucks on it' excuse." The website's design has remained largely unchanged over the years, with the 1997 layout (shown below, left) nearly matching the 2015 layout (shown below, right).

Controversies

On April 26th, 1999, Rotten received a legal notice from the Burlington Coat Factory for listing the clothing retailer under a section labeled "Who To Sue" on the website trenchcoat.org.^[11] On October 11th, 2000, the Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation sent Rotten legal notice regarding sexually explicit artwork featuring characters from the animated television show Futurama.^[10] On February 5th, 2001, the Coca-Cola corporation sent Rotten a Cease and Desist letter for hosting a explicit photograph of a bottle placed up a person's rectum in which a Coca-Cola logo is partially visible.^[7] On June 1st, Rotten received a letter from the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals for hosting the hoax website Bonsai Kittens, featuring photographs of kittens placed into glass containers.^[9] On June 24th, 2005, Rotten was ordered by the United States federal government to removed the "Fuck of the Month" section from the site.

Features

In 1999, Dell launched the companion site The Daily Rotten,^[8] featuring news articles about terrorism, murder, suicide, cruelty and other disturbing content. In 2000, The Gaping Maw was launched by Rotten staff as an archive for satirical news articles, many of which were written by cartoonist Tristan Farnon. In 2002, the Notable Names Database^[6] was created to provide information on various notable individuals, including politicians, celebrities, criminals and athletes. In November 2003, the Rotten Dead Pool game site was launched, in which players pick 10 individuals they believe will die over the next year. Points are awarded to players who guess correctly, with the exception of people who were picked after death, awaiting execution or killed by the player. In 2005, The Gaping Maw was taken offline due to new government requirements regarding the online distribution of pornography.

Search Interest

External References