"One: How is that physically possible? How is he not dead?" Stile told me. Jay Stile, the pseudonymous founder of the infamous shock site Stile Project and a person who has seen more than his share of gross things, clearly remembers his first thoughts upon seeing Goatse. Your first Goatse hits you in waves, rocking between confusion and disgust as the physiological reality of the picture resolves gradually, magic-eye style. I recommend exercising similar caution in following the links throughout this article.) But if you sincerely feel your time has come, here's Goatse. (Oh, just go see it for yourself, if you must, but be warned: It is as awful as its reputation claims. The photo is cropped at the man's neck the one tantalizing clue to his identity, besides his obvious talent, is what appears to be a gold wedding band on his left hand. It's a flash photo taken very close and the man's gaping ass is lit a queasy red against a nondescript dark room, everything else dangling where it should be. He's reaching back with both hands, four-fingers deep, stretching his asshole to the diameter of a cantaloupe. I'm not sure the exact circumstances of my first, but I do recall the weightless horror after clicking on the link as a greasy teenager, screwing around online between rounds of the first-person shooter Counter-Strike, that directed me to the now-defunct Goatse shock site: This is what I saw at Goatse.cx: a picture of a skinny naked man with his back to the camera, bent over at a 45 degree angle. They match.Įveryone remembers their first Goatse (pronounced Goat-see). For years, Johnson has been rumored to be the Goatse man, based on their similar frame, skills, and matching moles on both Goatse's and Johnson's ass. The story of Goatse begins with a mustachioed, wiry man in his late forties who goes by the name "Kirk Johnson." Johnson is a prominent practitioner of extreme penetration, which is the extreme penetration community's term of art for sticking huge objects up your ass. Who is this man, and how did his ass take over the internet? Eventually that picture, known as Goatse, became one of the most venerable memes in internet history. Sometime in the late 20th century a naked man bent over, spread his ass and took a picture.