Shock Sites - Why I'm Dead Inside

Added: 2026-06-02

[00:00:04]So, I talked about the silly haha childhood traumas. I talked about screamers.

[00:00:10]It only makes sense that I eventually got around to the final boss, as it were. Shock sites. Shock sites, as the name implies, were websites made with the sole purpose of showing you the most gruesome, grotesque, and upsetting depravity that could ever be witnessed by mortal eyes. As a result, unlike the childhood traumas or screamer videos, I cannot show you much. So, I hope you like stock footage because that's a majority of what you're getting in this video. I'm not going to go into massive detail into the media that we'll be bringing up, mainly because that would require me to look at or rewatch some of these, and for reasons I'm going to get into later in this video, I did not want to do that. But I do know that just hearing about death or gross stuff can ruin someone's day, so viewer discretion is advised, especially if you're eating something. I would strongly advise against doing that. And also, much like the previous video in this, I guess trilogy at this point, I'm not going to play a screamer that any of these sites might have or pull any kind of pranks.

[00:01:20][music] I'm not that kind of person. So, in keeping with the kind of format I had last time, let's have a history lesson before we talk about man-made depravity beyond our comprehension.

[00:01:33]You probably don't need me to tell you this, but shocking content in general was not wildly showcased as it is these days, nor were the criteria for such a thing even close to being on par. As late as the 1960s, you still had many TV shows that were heavily suggested to not show a couple, married or otherwise, sleeping in the same bed because of the implication that included the Flintstones, who were cartoon characters. Now, by the 1970s, this practice was phased out as more and more shows started to showcase that it's not crazy to show a wife and her husband laying in bed and talking about stuff. However, something that was crazy around this time was Mondo Kain.

[00:02:24]Coining the term mondo film, this 1962 Italian film was the first shock documentary, a documentary that is explicitly made to shock or disturb you with graphic contentious material.

[00:02:39]Mondocane ranges from animals getting butchered and canned to ship across the world to people getting trampled during the running of the bulls, all with commentary detailing how horrific all these things that happen around the world truly are.

[00:02:54]Though a fraction of these moments are actually staged or presented in such a way to suggest a more shocking outcome that what truly occurred and also has this air of man wouldn't it suck to live in this country just constantly germinating throughout the film which is more gross than the actual grotesque things they show on camera. But point is, people around the world were fascinated by this movie. And this filming style would go on to be copied or used as inspiration for many other films like it, such as Savage Man, Savage Beast, Faces of Death, and everyone's favorite, Cannibal Holocaust.

[00:03:33]All of these movies were not made to be good. They were not even made to try and say anything beyond mankind brutal lau.

[00:03:41]They were just made to shock and discuss and made a quite a pretty penny while doing it. And that started to turn some heads. By the 1980s, people around the world started to realize if you showed something disturbing to try and get your point across, you'll get attention.

[00:04:00]Not all of it might be good, mind you, but you'll get it. In enters the dawn of PSAs that wanted to scare you. Their information was often wrong or grossly exaggerated, but it didn't matter because they got to show you blood, dead animals, and more blood.

[00:04:18]>> Then they harpoon them [music] and then cut them up with hunting knives while they're still alive.

[00:04:26]>> The fact that they needed to get in there, oh, they're still alive when they're being cut up with hunting knives, is so emotionally manipulative, it's almost comedic. Now, a lot of these movies and PSAs ended up getting banned or in the case of Cannibal Holocaust actually taken to court because people genuinely thought director Reto Deodato legit murdered people and filmed it. But the thing about trying to stop people from seeing something is that it only makes a sizable amount of people want to see it more. [music] And not just what's been done before, but anything else in that vein. It's my belief that all these prior events eventually led to the first shock site in 1994, Dan's Gallery of the Grotesque, named after the site's creator, who only went by the name Dan. It was a site that had crime scene photos, war footage, pictures of dead bodies, and murders, just all kinds of stuff. And this site was popularized by the fact that Howard Stern talked about it on his talk show.

[00:05:34]I went to a website called Dan's Grotest Gallery. It's unbelievable. You got to see this. Oh, it's so sick. This guy's got pictures of deformed babies, birth defects.

[00:05:44]>> Disgusting.

[00:05:44]>> Oh, you should see it. I got to bring it in for you. You're going to go nuts.

[00:05:47]>> No, I don't want to look at that.

[00:05:48]>> You have to see this. Unbelievable stuff. When do you see that?

[00:05:51]>> Can you look at that?

[00:05:53]>> I have it on my computer now.

[00:05:54]>> Find that [clears throat] entertaining.

[00:05:54]>> I have a whole collection of deformed babies. This one guy got run over by a car. He's laying in the road and he's got no face. And then you see like a couple of feet up, his face is laying on the ground. It's unbelievable. Yeah.

[00:06:05]Wait till you see this. You're going to see it. I'm going to make you watch it.

[00:06:08]>> Is it on the [laughter] tire?

[00:06:10]>> No. He's laying on the road. You've never seen anything like His whole face is off. [laughter] >> And I'm like I'm going, "Oh, I have to have these pictures now. I have these pictures. I don't know what to do with them."

[00:06:19]>> Yeah. I would assume you don't know what to do with all those pictures.

[00:06:24]>> I don't know why you saved them if you didn't know what you wanted to do with them. It is very important that I also point out that someone by the name of Andy made a parody on his site Andy's Arcade, which instead of hosting dead bodies, is just pictures of arcade cabinets, but it's still labeled like a site for the Macob.

[00:06:49]And I just want to say this is a level of whimsy and charm that I think we need a lot more of these days. Andy still does stuff on YouTube, by the way. it makes videos about his collection. So, I'll put a link to his channel and his site in the description if you're interested. That fun little detour aside, while Dan's Gallery was the first, it wasn't the first site that was wellnown. That honor goes to rotten.com, which debuted in 1996.

[00:07:16]It was a little second verse same as the first kind of deal, but the difference this time around was that users could submit their own pictures to the site and have them get added to the gallery.

[00:07:29]With time, Rotten grew to have many affiliate sites under the umbrella of its company, Soilent Communications.

[00:07:36]These included a sports site that had pictures of athletes mooning or flashing their genitals, a website where you rated poop, a news site called the gaping ma that wrote satirical pieces and reflections on society, and had a storefront where you could buy Mondo films and shock of plenty. The site also had pictures and articles of celebrities that had died and famously attracted attention to the site by claiming they had pictures of Princess Diana's body postc car accident. Those pictures ended up being fake, but what wasn't fake was the fact that Rotten was the first site to publicly host pictures of the jumpers from the 9/11 attacks. Dan's Gallery and Rotten have since closed down along with many other sites like LOL Shock, going the way of the Dodo after the end of Adobe Flash Player. But until that happened, the 2000s continued to bring disturbing content to [music] the worldwide web. Chief among them was ogish.com, or as you might have known it, Live Leak. This site prided itself [music] on showing uncensored news, but very soon became a hotbed for gore, suicide videos, cartel killings, you name it. At the very least, Lively didn't encourage making light of or outright mocking the deceased like Rotten and other similar sites. But it still wasn't without its own laundry list of controversy, which eventually led to the team behind the site shutting things down in July of 2021. [music] Trying to go to that URL now redirects you to the site item fix, a safe for work video sharing site that bans any media containing excessive violence or gory material. But so far, this is just one side of the shocking media coin because there was also a lot of very gross pornography that had vomit, urine, feces, and people just interacting with those three bodily functions in ways that you would never want to see unless you were into that. I told you you didn't want to start eating while watching this video. I don't know why you didn't listen to me. The most infamous video of them all is of course two girls one cup, which much like the scary maze game was a prime subject for reaction videos in the early days of the internet. Oh, she's throwing up.

[00:10:03][music] Oh, she's got up.

[00:10:07][music] JACKIE, WHAT'S WRONG WITH YOU?

[00:10:13]Good grief. You need to talk to someone.

[00:10:17]>> That poor grandma. But yeah, that video, one guy, one jar, two guys, one horse, and many others also started to make the rounds on the internet, and I'm going to be very honest with you. I have been trying to write this next part for about two years because part of me has been saying, "Okay, Yuri, you can't just say those titles and not elaborate on them." But as the years have passed, I've started to think, "No, maybe I can just say those titles and not elaborate on them."

[00:10:52]Moreover, I was also debating whether or not to bring up the two infamous murder videos that were uploaded by the murderers themselves. But I decided out of respect for the deceased, I don't really need to bring them up in detail.

[00:11:06]Everything that can be said about those tragedies has been said already, and I don't feel it necessary for me to perpetuate those videos as the lasting legacy of people who had their lives taken away from them, nor to bring further attention to the murderers who committed these acts.

[00:11:24]From then on, I was pretty conflicted on how to continue. I could list more and more of the bait and switch sites like Lemon Party or Goatsy and how that site got into cryptocurrency.

[00:11:37]I could double dip into the screamer bin and point out cases like agore.io, which was a misspelling of agar.io that went to a flashing picture of Jeff the Killer with one of the loudest screams I have ever heard in my life that looped endlessly. or the fact that last year the official White House account posted a screamer, which has gone on record to be the first government screamer. But eventually, I decided to dedicate this next part to my experience with shock sites, mainly how someone could find themselves seeking these videos out for far too long.

[00:12:20]So, I did not have a happy childhood.

[00:12:24]I won't go into gratuitous detail about what was done to me because it's not really important, but I tried pretty hard to make friends or any kind of connection with people, but all I ended up doing was annoying everyone since most of these kids lived in my neighborhood. Soon, even going outside and walking down the street was dangerous. These same kids followed me to middle school and grew more and more determined to make my life dreadful. It wasn't enough to shoot BB guns at me on the street or dump my stuff in the trash during class. No, they wanted to break me. And because I couldn't help but react to what they were doing, it only fed their shoden Frea even more. By the second half of seventh grade, I'd attempted suicide twice. The first time I chickenened out and the second time my belt that I used to try and hang myself snapped as it was a really old belt. I practically shambled through the rest of seventh and eighth grade wanting anything at all to make it stop.

[00:13:33]Then one day something unexpected occurs.

[00:13:38]One of the students in our English class, once we were given access to the laptops available, wanted to show my teacher something, and that something was two girls, one cup. But later in that same class, that same student had another video to show. One guy, one jar.

[00:13:58]Needless to say, the teacher was just as grossed out the first time around, and so were other students that were curious enough as to know what was going on. But once that moment occurred, something clicked.

[00:14:12]The student in question was just laughing. Despite how gross and disgusting the videos that he showed were, he didn't seem phased by them even in the slightest.

[00:14:23]Now, sure, in retrospect, the enjoyment of just pranking somebody was probably enough to distract him from those videos. But as a dumb teenager, I took it that this kid had seen so many videos like this that it just didn't bother him anymore. And this was a student that on and off would be one of the many that would bully me. So, I felt like I finally learned their secret. If they had grown so numb as to inflict pain and emotional trauma onto someone and not feel any remorse, I could utilize the same tactic and grow numb to their torment so they could grow bored with my indifference and leave me alone. I kept track of the name on the web page, and when I was home, I booted up my own laptop and searched for One Guy, One Jar. I stumbled across the video on a site that hosted other shocking material [music] and watched everything on that site over and over and over. But I didn't stop there. I kept seeking this stuff [music] out. The more it bothered me, the more I pursued it. From watching videos of people dying on live leak to gory pictures and horrific workplace accidents, I watched it all every day after school and every night when everyone in the house was asleep. And after a few months of doing this, a repeat offender walked up to me in the halls and did that thing where you act like you're going to hit somebody just to make them [music] flinch.

[00:15:58]And I didn't react. He then would lunge his body forward as in an attempt to get me to flinch. And again, I just looked at him, blinking.

[00:16:09]He walked away, looking at me weirdly, and I didn't think anything of it. A few more days would go by with my bullies trying to bother me. I didn't say anything to them. I didn't react to anything they said or did. And in the last quarter of 8th grade, they didn't bother me at all. Middle school ended. I moved on to high school and barely anyone I knew from middle school went to this high school. So, everyone who bothered me from elementary up to that point was gone. It was in a way a fresh start. And while high school was a better experience overall, led to me learning about anime, creepy pasta, and other stuff that shaped me to be the weirdo I am today, there was a problem.

[00:16:54]If something caught my ear, like the most disturbing movie ever made, the darkest news stories, horrific 911 calls and anything else in that vein, I would still seek it out.

[00:17:09]I would still watch it, unblinking and unbothered, but empty.

[00:17:17]I felt nothing about what I was seeing anymore. No dread, no sympathy, nothing. I felt nothing about anyone or anything for that matter.

[00:17:34]As I graduated and started to actually keep a group of friends, I did the only thing that made sense to my brain. Act like someone likable, adapt to my environment, and be a person worth keeping around.

[00:17:49]The problem being that you can only pretend for so long till you realize that the you under all that pretending, the person that you're hiding behind fake smiles, still has something horrifically wrong with them. And something was wrong with me. I had my first panic attack trying to get a retail job. I grew afraid of people in general and what they were capable of. I grew depressed and nihilistic. I eventually realized I spent so much time trying to please anyone who spared a shred of kindness to me that I didn't even know who I was anymore. I grew hopeless over my inability to amount to anything. I grew resentful for all those people who got to feel nostalgic and have fond memories to look back on when all I can look back on is a dozen vindictive kids who robbed me of a childhood that I would never get the chance to have. And yet through it all, I was still looking up videos of people dying. I was still seeking out terrible accidents and horrific things happening to people all over the world. Even though I was out of school for over a decade at this point and there was no reason for me to keep doing this, it was a habit now. It was a fragment of whatever personality I left back in 2010.

[00:19:17]The single tether that bound the Yuri back then to the Yuri of the present and kept me from being anyone or anything because for almost 15 years there wasn't anyone left anymore.

[00:19:36]And do you want to know what finally snapped me out of it?

[00:19:42]It was Nexo, specifically his video, Disturbing Things from Around the Internet, Volume 14.

[00:19:51]In this video, Nexo plays the audio of a 911 call, one of an elderly woman who cannot move, stuck in a house that is on fire, and filling with smoke.

[00:20:03]In July of 2021, I lost my great-g grandandmother, someone who was a constant in my life, someone who I foolishly thought would always be there until I had to face the fact that my family will die before I even start my own life, if it even happens at this point.

[00:20:26]I don't know if it was because of this happening. I don't know if it was simply the culmination of everything that's happened to me, but as I sat there watching that video, listening to this woman grow scared, begin to cough, and soon stop responding altogether, I sat there and asked myself, what am I doing?

[00:20:51]Why am I doing this to myself?

[00:20:56]So I stopped.

[00:20:58]I stopped seeking out videos of horrible accidents, people ending their own lives, all of it. I waned off this habit that I developed for years and years until finally I cut it off completely.

[00:21:15]And I don't care if you believe this next part to be hyperbole, but I've felt more like a person now than I have in over a decade.

[00:21:28]I smile without having to force it. I cry when I would otherwise feel nothing.

[00:21:36]I stopped viewing others as meat and remembered that their people with thoughts, feelings, and troubles of their own.

[00:21:48]I got back what I had lost so long ago, and I'm genuinely happy to have it back once again.

[00:21:59]I'm sure some of you will point a finger at people like Nexo, Nick Crowley, and others who make a living by documenting the darkest parts of humanity, chastising them, or even YouTube for allowing stuff like that onto this platform in the first place. Sure, I can say how I feel about the morality of broadcasting the last moments of someone's life and profiting off of their demise, but you only have to look at the numbers to understand that it doesn't matter what you think. It doesn't matter what any of us think. It gets attention. It makes money. And we've seen it happen time and time before ever since Mondo Kain.

[00:22:47]It's not like I don't get it. It's understandable to want an easy, comfy life, especially in this day and age. I mean, I've been attempting to do it for the better part of 8 years on this channel alone, trying to make videos about the weird stuff that I enjoy. and how nearly every single time it all results in nothing.

[00:23:10]That's why I won't be surprised if this video gets more views than anything I've felt passionate about recently. After all, once is an accident, twice is coincidence, three times is a pattern, 50 times and it is simply the way of the world.

[00:23:32]I don't believe there's anything to really do about any of this. People clearly seek things like this out regardless if they've trapped themselves in their own head like I once did.

[00:23:44]But if you are watching this and still engage with the morbid side of humanity, I'd like you to ask yourself why.

[00:23:55]And then I ask you, is that reason that important?

[00:24:03]If your answer is yes, then don't heed my ramblings any longer. But if your answer is no, take a break.

[00:24:15]Wayne yourself off of this habit of looking up the depraved and disturbing and then take note of how you feel without it.

[00:24:24]I trust you will reach your own verdict on what you should do going forward.

[00:24:30]You're a strong person, stronger than you know. And strength isn't a matter of throwing away your emotions, becoming this empty wall that shambles throughout their life. Nor is it any excuse that you can't be ignorant to the awful stuff happening out there in the world.

[00:24:50]Because let me just say none of those videos or pictures or websites have benefited me in any regard.

[00:25:02]I understand morbid curiosity, but that's always why I feel fiction is so important because we can watch, read, or play some of the most haunting, [snorts] soulcrushing things to happen to a character, but then we can smile afterwards because it's not real. It's art and entertainment, but it's not something you have to live with the fact that you can't do anything about it. If my favorite character dies in a video game, I can appreciate it for being a powerful storytelling tool. And if I really get that bummed out about them dying, I can just imagine that they're fine. They're a cartoon character. You can do whatever you want with them. What am I supposed to do about the cartel killing people? Try and stop them? I can't even stop the pretend cartel in Blue Archive, and all they do is smuggle art supplies. All I'm really saying at the end of the day is maybe it's fine to be a little ignorant if it means you focus more on the things you can directly affect and not something happening on the other side of the globe.

[00:26:13]But that's just my two cents.

[00:26:16]Either way, that'll do it for today.

[00:26:20]Once again, I had to give big props to the people at the Screamer Wiki for cataloging the sites and videos mentioned because I would hate having to track down any of the stuff and undoing all the progress I've made in the past 2 years. Even then, I accidentally stumbled across some gore pictures when researching Live Leak on Google. So, whoops.

[00:26:43]At least now I never have to think about this stuff ever again.

[00:26:48]Thank you to everyone that watched this video to the end. I understand that this is probably one of the more uncomfortable videos of mine to sit through, but I appreciate it so very much. And I hope if you're going through or have gone through something similar that you know you're not alone and moreover, you can overcome that and you can get back that part of yourself that you thought was completely broken. Make sure you all are careful out there. Be safe and I'll see you guys next time.

[00:27:21]Take care.

[00:27:29][music] [music] >> [music]