[nommm-nommm]

Wow, I'm surprised rotten.com is still up; it was the web's original shock site (that and goatse). I remember it being pretty viral around 1996. Well, as viral as a website could get in 1996.

I am going to go ahead and assume that there's much more terrible shit on the web nowadays. 1996's Rotten.com is probably pretty tame by today's standards.

Back on the original topic, I remember another early satire site that was taken seriously and created very real outrage, Bonsai Kitten.

[ddebernardy]

Bonsai Kitten was really good. I also remember the Stinky Meat project at around the same time. Fun times. :-)

[herbst]

Oh god yeah. We had a project in school about animal abuse and stuff and had several groups to cover individual projects (my group made a website about the other groups content) one group went with the bonsai kitten.

From todays perspective i can't even tell how we were not able to easily disprove this, and as far as i remember everyone, including all the parents who had to witness our presentation were shocked about the bonsai kittens.

There was no wikipedia or anything stating that it was wrong, and if there was a article somewhere that mentioned it, we either did not find or (also likely) it was written in english when our internet bubble was mostly german.

[aphextron]

>Wow, I'm surprised rotten.com is still up

Really? I'm sure the domain alone is a cash machine.

[nommm-nommm]

Yes, I am surprised; the majority of the early web outside of major companies has either link rotted or turned into major companies. Especially those for niche topics.

Look at the top websites from before the turn of the century:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-intersect/wp/2014/12...

I doubt CompuServe.com or geocities.com is a cash machine.

That being said, rotten.com might actually be owned by a bigger parent company for all I know.

[lolptdr]

you forgot stileproject.com haha

[dkersten]

Bonsai Kitten

Hah! That and manbeef