Rap and Gore Sites

Modern rap music is very heavily intertwined with acts of killing and violence; there is basically no escaping violent lyrical content that details or glorifies it. It all reminds me of a "medium" of showcasing death and human destruction that belongs now to a bygone era.

Although much more brutal and not usually meant to glorify violence in the same way as rap, I am referring to Gore or Shock Websites. Both rap and shock sites often closely toe the line between grisly expression and recklessness.

Now, we even see references to gore sites/videos being made by rappers who grew up in the Wild West of 2000s and early 2010 internet. Take for example Ken Carson, who had an entire gore/snuff video-themed album rollout for "A Great Chaos" and recently released a song called "LiveLeak." Carson has been seen on occasion following gore Instagram pages and commenting on their posts, so it may be more than just an aesthetic thing.

Sematary has also made references to violent internet urban legends and gore media such as "Funkytown," an infamous Mexican cartel torture video from 2016, which he mentions on Haunted Mound Reapers.

As morbid as they may be, now-defunct sites such as Rotten.com and LiveLeak (formerly Ogrish) were at one time bastions of online free speech that challenged U.S. obscenity laws and the mainstream media.

Founded in 1996, Rotten.com was dedicated to collecting gruesome, real-life photos, videos, and stories to present them in an often irreverent nature as "an archive of disturbing illustration." During 2003, Ogrish would comb the internet to find and publish violent media made by extremists during the Iraq Var. Soldiers overseas and even mainstream outlets looked to Ogrish as "altemative media" to help stay up to date on what was happening.

These sites, however, were certainly not without their fair share of pushback. Rotten was heavily criticized for publishing hoax photos which they alluded was Princess Diana's body just days after her death was announced. LiveLeak found themselves in hot water when a member of ISIS uploaded a video of himself beheading an American journalist. In court, the owner of BestGore plead guilty to publishing obscene material.

All of these shock sites made many question whether they were exercises in freedom of speech/press or just straight-up exploitation. What appeared as the sites' dedication to truth and expression felt like callousness to their viewers.

All of this brings me back to an initial thought I had: in rap music, where do listeners draw the line between freedom of expression and recklessness? I wrote an article a few months ago about misogynistic rap lyrics where I talked about something similar. Why is rapping about killing people so normal in this music, and what toll does it take on the subconscious mind?

How much do these lyrics influence real-life violence?

Pop singers would face immense backlash if their lyrics contained even half of what rappers talk about. Is there anything that would personally offend you it it were rapped about by your favorite artist? Is there any sense of a moral code when writing rap lyrics?

The aforementioned sites are all gone now and, for years, it felt like the Internet was sanitized to be a safer and more advertiser-friendly place. Lately, though, it has felt that apps like Instagram and Twitter have been pushing more of this macabre content for whatever reason.

Yesterday, on my Instagram homepage, a video popped up of an American teenager being shot, and it was posted by a page I didn't even follow or interact with. I don't support or encourage watching this kind of stuff—I think it's rather corny to be a fan of it—but it is made popular by a morbid human curiosity that is seemingly ingrained in some people's genetic code.

The Faces of Death VHS tapes were a hit in the 80s that made millions for the same reason these Instagram videos get millions of views: people are fascinated by death.