Replacement for porn
1999 was the lanuch of the goatse website. Quickly it became a part of internet culture. Then in 2004 it went offline.
So what happened? Why did it go away? Heavy handed enforcement by a police state? Prudish close minded zealots intimidating them into closure? Actualy I would argue that it wasent the actions of any indvidual group[ or person, but rather a sign of the times.
In 1999, sex with everyting on the internet. Napster came out that year and people quickly learned that it could be used to swap porn just as easily as it could be used to swap pirated music. Pay sites fuled the introduction of using the internet to shop. And in among it all was shock websites. Tricking you into clicking a picture of somethign amazingly sexual. from Lemon party to tubgirl to the ever clasic goatse.
But what is the internet now? All web2.0 apps have lost their sex appeal. Youtube came first before any of its sex-related peers, and is much larger than all of them put together. If anything would be sex based you woudl think it would be video sharing. But its not. Blogs. Video blogs. Wikipedia. Though sex certinaly exists in these web aplications, thats not its driving force.
Politics is. The entire blogsphere is run by political rantings. The 9/11 truth movement. The ron paul revolution. Even wikipedia generats more contrversy on wether it has liberial bias or consertive bias than the contreversy abotu its sexual content.
This has all been seen before. History repeats itself. Sexual revolutions cycle through about every 70-80 years. And if you look back to the hypersexed flapper era of the 1920, they eventualy got sexual burnout as the political implications of the new progresive party hit durring the great depresion. Talking about sex was old and tired. Talking about politics was the new hot issue.
And thats what happened to goatse. Its back online once again, but the sex aspect of its gone.