Why do people watch gore

But amidst the videos of accidents, drug violence, bombings and executions, an occasional video of private citizens killing other private citizens for kicks pops up.

So when the Magnotta video debuted, most gore site users were less shocked than you might think. After all, they'd been following his career all along. Warning: the referenced sites, videos, and links contain graphic content of torture, gore, and violence. Surf at your own peril.

Like anything that blows up on the Internet, it started with cat videos. Niki she asked us not to use her full name is a UK-based administrator at GoreGrish. In December of , one of GoreGrish. The video had also been on other top gore sites, and was causing a stir. Many users will calmly watch human beings getting their heads chopped off, but draw the line at cuddly, cute animals being hurt.

Gorehounds began digging up dirt on Magnotta and posting it online. It wasn't hard to find: Magnotta was an avid blogger and self-promoter. They made fun of his pitted skin. His receding hairline. His failed career in porn and prostitution due to, they said, the size of his penis. Magnotta followed up with a video of himself feeding a kitten to a python.

The video of Magnotta apparently killing what authorities now believe was Chinese student Jun Lin to the soundtrack of New Order's "True Faith," was available online roughly 5 days before authorities became aware of him. Most viewers of the video, judging from their comments, were somewhat shocked, but mostly detached. Over on TheYNC. Many wished there had been more "gurgling" or otherwise eerie sound effects.

The fact that most of the video's action takes place with an already dead corpse was a big point of contention. And then somebody from BestGore. This is big. Anybody's who's ever rubbernecked at an accident which is to say everybody knows it's human nature to want to see gore. It's not morally justifiable to gawk at human suffering, and most people don't indulge in their curiosity. But a lot of people do. One of the earliest web sites, still alive today, was a shock site called Rotten.

Created in , it's mostly links to still images of things like weird medical conditions and horrible accidents involving meat grinders.

It wasn't until the mid s that shock sites really came into their own, dovetailing with widespread Internet access, even in the third world, and the speeding up of peoples' connections, so they could easily watch video online. Starting in the early s, the site published timely images and video, like jumpers at the World Trade Center and gruesome political executions in Russia.

A tight and passionate forum developed among the site's users. By the mid-aughts, anyone with a cellphone could take and share photos and videos of anything, anywhere, at any time. The number of video-focused shock sites proliferated. Once a private act with an aura of solemnity, death had become something whose sights and sounds could be freely consumed by millions of people.

Watch People Die was created in It grew in relative obscurity until this March, when Motherboard reported that the top post on a popular subreddit was a link to a video of an year-old killing himself — a video that, at the same time, topped Watch People Die.

This was too much. How was it any different from shock sites or the now-banned subreddits featuring dead kids and bloody self-harm? We are attempting to provide a service by showcasing this content. No scholarly study has focused on Watch People Die yet. His post got 10, responses, nearly all of which demonstrated the other, perhaps less immoral, gazes.

The reason we keep coming back to is because it really shows us how precious life is. Redditor Bender told me coming to terms with death really is what the subreddit is for. He, of all people, would know. Like other Redditors I interviewed for this article, he asked me to only identify him by his username. His Watch People Die origin story is rational: factory worker watches workplace-safety videos, has his curiosity piqued, seeks out more videos of industrial accidents, stumbles across Reddit, and starts posting.

What his death had been like. Whether or not a person should have access to this kind of footage is well-trodden territory for many arguments related to freedom of speech. Media want clicks and shocking, provocative content gets clicks. Or don't.

Traditional news outlets like the New York Times offer a sanitized, mostly safe description using vaguery and euphemism. And just how much teasing of a bad thing can you do before your audience wants all of the bad thing and more? Images can be stark and terrifying, but they also naturally provide a kind of curiosity gap, especially when video is available. You remember that story from last year? The guy had a fetish for cooking and eating women, and he sought out realizations of that fantasy online, reportedly at sites like BestGore.

Which is not really the question I was asking. The question was: What does it look like when a woman is cooked and eaten?

And then the question becomes: What does it feel like to be cooked? And if you knew, after you were dead, that you had been eaten, what kind of humiliation and devastation would you feel? I turn my laptop away from my husband, mute the volume, and let the horror make my head go dizzy and my stomach turn upside-down.