Give Me You Worst Shot

February 8, 2009 2:39 PM

I'm looking for the grossest/most painful pictures on the internet.

I'm looking for some seriously awful pictures/video to use in a social experiment. They should be the kind of pictures that provoke either the response "That's disgusting!" or "Ouch! Painful!" They should also be real, undoctored photos/video, as far as you know.

A trip through the metafilter archives found me:
http://www.snopes.com/horrors/insects/wormeye.asp
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/england/3077300.stm

But I need more! And worse! Help?

posted by shaun uh to media & arts (50 comments total)

Well, goatse almost goes without saying.
posted by zoomorphic at 2:43 PM on February 8

Rotten.com. For all your disgusting, horrifying, and mentally scarring picture needs.
posted by DulcineaX at 2:44 PM on February 8 [2 favorites has favorites]

Cruise 4chan.
posted by Inspector.Gadget at 2:48 PM on February 8 [1 favorite has favorites]

Oh my God, there are corners of the internet that would mentally scar Jeffrey Dahmer, Ted Bundy and Idi Amin.
Beware that Rotten.com and subsequent links will open a Pandora's box of horror you haven't even imagined. Seriously. The worst of humanity has been posted on the 'net.
posted by dawson at 2:52 PM on February 8 [1 favorite has favorites]

Two words: Harlequin ichthyosis. There are image and video search results out there.
posted by CKmtl at 2:52 PM on February 8 [4 favorites has favorites]

PETA for sure!
posted by 6:1 at 2:53 PM on February 8

Well, for gut-check, "Ouch! Painful!", check out the fork in the nose.
posted by niles at 2:56 PM on February 8

There are many sets of photos of brown recluse spider bites out there.
posted by The Michael The at 3:03 PM on February 8

Cruise 4chan.

Don't. Or at least stay away from /b/ (which is where all the worst stuff would be anyway). Unless you like seeing extreme hardcore child pornography.
posted by DecemberBoy at 3:05 PM on February 8 [2 favorites has favorites]

Search for the videos of mma fighters breaking their legs, like this one.

Also, try a GIS for pain2.jpg

And a search for the "1 guy 1 cup" video (no way I'm linking to that one).
posted by mikesch at 3:06 PM on February 8

1 guy 1 cup. VERY, VERY NSFW.
posted by C17H19NO3 at 3:06 PM on February 8 [2 favorites has favorites]

I'm seconding 4chan. Just go there, and dare them. Also look up something called the 'pain series' (I forget the exact name). I generally avoid these sorts of things. My imagination is too active to distance myself enough to be analytical. I usually run around the room squealing until someone finds me and shuts off the monitor. But, by all means... enjoy yourself.
posted by TwelveTwo at 3:07 PM on February 8

If videos qualify, do a search for "BME Pain Olympics". This is absolutely the worst thing you will ever see, especially if you are a male. It consists of two men alternately going apeshit on their own nutsacks with various sharp objects. No special effects, what you are watching are men actually turning their junk into kibble. Be warned, though, once you see it you can't unsee it.
posted by DecemberBoy at 3:09 PM on February 8

Gurochan will give you nightmares.
posted by Chocolate Pickle at 3:10 PM on February 8

A note: A large number of the pictures on the internet labeled "brown recluse spider bite", are not such bites, or could very well be something else. It's ovediagnosed to the extreme. But it's a good search term to find pictures of nasty necrotic wounds in general.
posted by Coatlicue at 3:13 PM on February 8

Just configure google for proper search terms and look for ftp archives with disgusting pictures. Like this. If you want to keep trying, you can replace the word "disgusting" in the search field with whatever term (like "gross," although that seems to turn up mostly German sites with larger pictures) you prefer.

Sorry; I'm not going to wade through them all for you, since it's your experiment.
posted by koeselitz at 3:14 PM on February 8

I'm seconding 4chan. Just go there, and dare them.

No, really, don't do that. They will post child porn. Really, really awful child porn. The one time I went there to check out if it was as bad as people said it was, there was a picture clearly depicting what looked like a maybe 8 year old girl performing a sex act on an adult man. They go beyond "OH MAN THAT'S GROSS" to "holy shit I could get arrested for having this in my cache". I don't know how they've gone this long without getting shut down.
posted by DecemberBoy at 3:16 PM on February 8 [4 favorites has favorites]

(Got that search term through www.g2p.com, which can be handy so that you don't have to take the time to construct search terms.)
posted by koeselitz at 3:16 PM on February 8

ogrish.com used to be a destination for this sort of thing.
posted by fatbird at 3:24 PM on February 8

I dunno about the kiddie porn, I've only ever seen some terrible gore memes on 4chan - like "Insurgent Guy is a pretty cool guy. Eh gets ripped to shreds by a .50 BMG and doesn't afraid of anything!"
posted by Inspector.Gadget at 3:32 PM on February 8 [1 favorite has favorites]

DecemberBoy - I believe you're exaggerating. A lot. I used to go to 4chan a lot and I have NEVER - let me say that again - NEVER seen child pornography. There's a lot of joking about it though - the pedobear and "why don't we have a seat over here".

But the fact is 4chan has a community of moderators that's quite quick to act when/if this stuff shows up. I don't dispute you might have seen something. However, I can offer my counter example - months accessing the site without seeing anything that vaguely resembled child porn.

I'm not in the mood to "defend" 4chan. It's not one of those things one feels good defending. However, I am very uncomfortable to see this OMG CHILD PORN attitude around it when it's clearly based on emotions rather than fact.
posted by falameufilho at 3:36 PM on February 8 [2 favorites has favorites]

You might find what you're looking for at The Celebrity Morgue or Find A Death.
posted by cloudsandstars at 3:39 PM on February 8

There's also the "human blowhole" video question from back in December.
posted by CKmtl at 3:43 PM on February 8

Are you eligible to use IAPS? You'd be able to compare your results to the literature, and IAPS has been carefully designed and vetted for cultural neutrality.
posted by mr_roboto at 3:56 PM on February 8

The 1 guy 1 cup is the most cringeworthy thing I have seen on the internet.
posted by demon666 at 4:11 PM on February 8

You could search around for more pics of these guys.
posted by gueneverey at 4:12 PM on February 8

Well, you can violate your tender young eyeballs browsing through the archives of Stile Project (look it up, I'm not linking it, and as NSFW as NSFW gets). Although primarily a porn portal and porn adfarm, and a nasty one at that, a regular feature used to be and I imagine still is (not going back there, my "how weird and bad can it all get" phase is decidedly over) was a top pictures of the week which were a combination of porn, gross porn, and simply gross and weird. I name this because these reliably produced "oh dear god why the fuck did I click that" moments for me.

Search for tubgirl.

I warn you: if you continue on this path you're going to hit things that you will really, really wish you could un-see. You will not be able to do so.

Oh, and jessamyn can hook you up with a picture of a guy fucking a chicken.
posted by nanojath at 4:15 PM on February 8

Don't forget the video of football player Joe Theisman breaking his leg. Almost 25 years later and it still makes me want to hork.
posted by _Mona_ at 4:16 PM on February 8

There was a time when I thought Tub Girl was the worst email link surprise.

I was so wrong.
posted by Pomo at 4:16 PM on February 8 [1 favorite has favorites]

b0g.org has two image collections, "fun images" and "offensive".

Both are pretty bad as far as these things go.
posted by troy at 4:32 PM on February 8

Okay, so, clarification here. I'm looking for things that are not morally disgusting (such as pedophilia) - more viscerally disgusting. Mold, feces, vomit, rotting things, etc. And painful things, don't forget the painful things, folks!

Mr. Roboto - we've already decided against using IAPS, since most of their disgusting and painful photos are both at once, and we need separate stimuli for gross and painful. They also tend to be people-focused and ideally there won't be full people in the shots.
posted by shaun uh at 4:48 PM on February 8

Here you go. Scroll down.

Click if you want to see what the request "I'm looking for the grossest/most painful pictures on the internet" results in. OTHERWISE LEAVE WELL ALONE. NSFW, NSFA.
posted by fire&wings at 4:50 PM on February 8

I was convinced along with a lot of other people at a party to watch 2 Girls 1 Cup, and I was the only person who wasn't nauseous- or perhaps everyone else was sanctimoniously pretending. Goatse? So played out. Encyclopedia Dramatica is a good place to start for all of that stuff, though.

http://encyclopediadramatica.com/Emo_Cutter_Girl
http://encyclopediadramatica.com/Pain_Series
BME on subincision
Another video from BME. I can't tell if they're really perverted or mentally ill.
posted by dunkadunc at 5:02 PM on February 8

Search for meatspin....very NSFW...don't say I didn't warn you....
posted by Confess, Fletch at 5:14 PM on February 8

This is the pain series mentioned above. I have never scrolled down this more than a fraction of the way through it, and I never intend to. In fact, I would strongly advise against clicking on this link at all.

Also, BME Hard has some delightful self-mutilation.

It gets worse. Recently, some European teenagers were convicted of torturing homeless people to death. They taped themselves doing it and that tape can be found online. I'm not even going to look for it. There was also a video making the rounds recently of a guy being beheaded in, I think, Chechnya.

Rotten.com is good for this stuff too. But, yeah, again, there is stuff out there that you truly don't WANT to see.
posted by showbiz_liz at 5:14 PM on February 8

Oh, something not quite as horrible that I just remembered: Squalor Survivors. You can find 'before' pictures of the filthiest houses imaginable.

For all your poo needs, ratemypoo.com! And don't forget ratemyvomit!

Video of that weightlifter who dislocated his arm.
posted by showbiz_liz at 5:27 PM on February 8

All right, I lied. I don't really want your "worst" shot. Although these are all exactly what I asked for and would make great stimuli, I don't see how I could get most of it past an IRB. So if those of you still reading this could try to tame this down a little bit...
posted by shaun uh at 5:28 PM on February 8

If you google for "space ghetto" (NSFW, obviously), you will find a website that specializes in random and really bizarre pictures. Dredge through the archives and you will undoubtedly find plenty of what you are looking for, and plenty more that you aren't. Wound photographs are an almost daily occurrence, as are really bizarre pictures that your subjects might find disturbingly weird.

Of course, you will have to sift through it to find what you want. They also specialize in pictures of cute cats and blinking images that might give you seizures. I'm not vouching for everything on space ghetto, but pretty much anything goes there, so you will probably find what you are looking for if you spend a little time...
posted by wondercow at 6:05 PM on February 8

Go to SickestSites.com and you should find a few non porn categories that should satisfy what you are looking for. Each category lists a bunch of websites that relate to that category.
posted by MaryDellamorte at 6:27 PM on February 8

What is IRB ?
posted by patnok at 7:45 PM on February 8

IRB = institutional review board? my guess is the pics are for a psych experiment, hence needing ones that are distinctly painful vs gross.

Bot fly videos on YouTube for "gross", and surgery/dentistry videos for "painful" .
posted by NikitaNikita at 9:02 PM on February 8

Oh sweet jesus I just had to go find that 1 guy 1 cup video. Why? Why? Why?

Still, I think about the worst I've seen so far would be the Dnepropetrovsk Maniacs video. Ugh.
posted by orme at 9:23 PM on February 8

What you are looking for is called the International Affective Picture System. For the love of science, please do not use random images or movies you found on the internet for this kind of stuff. For stimuli in a controlled environment, you need pictures that are normalized for values such as luminosity and size. You also need data about which images people find more or less affective, and you need ratings to back up the claim that these things are actually repulsive or not so. The IAPS data set has been used extensively in this setting for years, and there exists a wealth of information about it.

You also need IRB approval to conduct human testing, as well as some form of consent form to present people with negatively valenced graphic images (COUHES) and hopefully some familiarity with the scientific method and experimental design.
posted by sophist at 10:24 PM on February 8 [2 favorites has favorites]

It sounds like you probably can't/shouldn't use random things off the internet, but if you were, I'd go here or here. The site is designed as a repository for commonly reposted items so its something of a best-of collection.
posted by CheshireCat at 10:54 PM on February 8

ogrish.com used to be a destination for this sort of thing.

ogrish is dead, but forum.ogrish.com lives on. That site still attracts seriously gross stuff, but hopefull no kiddy porn.
posted by csw at 11:10 PM on February 8

We who restrain from clicking dare to ask.
What (abstractly) is One Guy One Cup?
posted by artdrectr at 11:35 PM on February 8

Abstractly? Guy was anally pleasuring himself with a drinking glass and well I'm sure you can guess what happened. (I haven't seen it either, I'm with you.)
posted by showbiz_liz at 1:16 AM on February 9

Sophist and Cheshirecat, I appreciate your concern. I have been doing psych experiments for going on five years (I've worked on two experiments using IAPS, which just won't work for us here) and I know all about IRB issues and control issues (I've even worried about luminosity issues before, when I was testing monkeys for colorblindness). This is more of an exploratory search to see if we can find enough stuff to create a stimuli set that fit all our criteria. The majority of stuff that's been recommended to me have been way beyond what we can use (my bad for the phrasing) but several have yielded mild but genuinely gross/painful pictures which may be useable and for that I thank everyone who has contributed so far.
posted by shaun uh at 6:22 AM on February 9

Geez, I wish I could still find that slideshow of a flyfishing fly hook being removed for an eye. That made me weak in the knees to look at. Talk about painful!
posted by Redhush at 4:49 PM on February 9

The internet is way bigger that I had ever imagined. Shudder.
posted by madh at 6:47 PM on February 9