Goatse.cx was a webserver whose index page contained an incredibly disgusting, anatomically explicit image (if you've seen it, you know what I mean, if you haven't seen it, imagine the biggest squick you've ever had and then put it on a webserver). As a universally squicky image, goatse.cx enjoyed a certain pride of place as the mover behind various Internet sports and countermeasures. For example, large pieces of the slash, the code behind Slashdot, exists to keep pranksters from sending people to the goatse.cx page; every troll's first trick appears to be inlining a copy of the image on a targeted message-board (as Dan Gillmor found out a little while back); and now, one of the image-sharing communities I'm part of has a new fad: showing goatse.cx to people who've never seen it before and taking a picture of the reaction shot to post for general amusement.
A complaint to the .cx registrar has resulted in the goatse.cx DNS being yanked, which means that this page no longer works (of course, "tubgirl," the equally nuclearly repulsive image that you can find with Google if you really want to, is still online). Naturally, a petition has sprung up to bring it back.
(via MeFi)
