What We Do in the Digital Shadows

Don’t throw shade, we’ve all been to the dark side. Maxim Boon takes a close look at some never-unseeable online trends.

I have to admit, I never actually saw the infamous 2007 viral video popularly known as Two Girls One Cup. Not first hand, at least. That might not put me in the minority today — and if you’re not familiar with it, let’s just say, don’t google it at work. But just over a decade ago, when this poopporn freak show first boom-boomed its way onto the internet, it was arguably the most dominant pop-culture touchstone of the digital age to date.

Objectively, it was one seriously fucked-up, not to mention stomach-churning, piece of scatological erotica, in which two women get frisky over a whipped-shit smoothie (like I said, don’t google it at work). But it nonetheless became a bizarrely galvanising shared experience. People around the world collectively subjected themselves to this never-unseeable faecal fiesta, and were more than happy to swap notes on it. Somehow, a piece of extreme kink became a handy social icebreaker, a witty punchline, and a piece of common ground on a scale few pieces of online ephemera had ever achieved before it.

And while I never had the dubious pleasure of witnessing 2G1C for myself, I still kind of feel as if I did. Because if anything could be said to have surpassed the shit-smeared reach of those two poor girls and their one terrifying cup, it would arguably be the genre of digital media that this inglorious porno gave birth to: the reaction video. Purists will say the first true examples — the Scary Maze Game reactions — predate the Two Girls One Cup variety by a year. But the sheer volume of Two Girl reaction vids makes them a watershed phenomenon in their own right. And there’s something remarkable — dare I even say, scientifically so — about the emotional vector replicated, almost verbatim, video after video, as people documented the knee-jerk responses to this minute of hardcore horror.

It begins with an incredulous gasp, followed by a few seconds of slack-jawed incomprehension. Then the revulsion builds and the pupils dilate, until the harrowing scene sends the viewer into a scrambling, near-hysterical panic.

And there’s a good reason why these reaction videos are so strikingly similar, which also reveals why the global ascendancy of this shock porn filth-fest isn’t as inexplicable as it first appears. According to forensic psychologist Maycon Merlo, videos like Two Girls One Cup can highjack the brain’s most primitive responses.

“It triggers something known as the ‘Three Fs’: Fight, Flight and Freeze,” Merlo explains. “And this is controlled by one of the main compositions of the brain, the amygdala. This part of the brain controls sensations of fear, anxiety, pleasure and other important instincts for survival. All mammals have these same responses hardwired into the nervous system, which activate the release of neurotransmitters such as dopamine.”

These naturally occurring substances can quicken the pulse, sharpen the senses, and create feelings of exhilaration. But whereas our tree-dwelling ancestors used these chemical cues to avoid danger, modern humans process these responses in an altogether different way. Much like the rush we get from a roller-coaster or a scary movie, in the absence of genuine threat, these survival reactions can give us an appealing high. “We have a highly evolved prefrontal cortex, so we are able to intelligently rationalise these responses. And we also have empathy — we can mirror and engage with the emotional responses of others in highly imaginative ways,” Merlo adds.

In the decade since Two Girls One Cup first shook unsuspecting viewers into a giddy, adrenaline-fuelled frenzy, many similar memes have followed in its smutty footsteps, including seminal classic Blue Waffle (google at your own peril). But back when smartphones were dumb Blackberrys, social media was MySpace, and early adopters were only just figuring out how their online personas intersected with their day to day reality, exploring this type of media was an oddly social affair, and even digital content only went viral by word of mouth. Today, hacking our amygdala is a more private activity, and to that end, behind closed doors there’s a veritable smorgasbord of digital media geared towards hotwiring our neurochemistry.

And not always to give us a creeped-out buzz. Some types of content have been found to instil a sense of satisfying calm, in particular videos involving cyst extractions and similar dermatological procedures. The popularity of these clips is mind-boggling: the videos on Dr Sandra Lee’s Dr Pimple Popper channel, one of YouTube’s most popular in this genre, have been viewed more than a billion times. There’s a similarly ferocious demand for ASMR content, which activates the brain’s Autonomous Sensory Meridian Response, characterised by tingly, deeply relaxing sensations in the scalp, neck and face. These sound driven vids, of which there are more than 13 million on YouTube, feature the soothing tones of whispering, stroked surfaces, and other subtle noises like towels being folded, paper being crumpled, hair being brushed, and even microphones being licked. Several studies have explored the effects of these videos and found them to have measurable therapeutic results including reduced stress and insomnia, and even lowered blood pressure. (Having test driven a fair few of these clips during the research for this article, I can confirm that they really do chill you the fuck out!)

But as with all human pursuits, there is a dark side. As far back as the mid-1990s, websites began emerging, most notably the now-defunct rotten.com, which catered to an underground yet thriving community of people seeking the macabre and disturbing. Most of these early sites, constrained by the limits of dial-up modems, simply featured images of gruesome crime scenes, including murders, suicides and fatal accidents. However, in recent years, as super-fast broadband has made accessing videos effortless, the scope of media available on shock sites has grown, and with it the scale of the taboo surrounding this controversial and divisive content. Perhaps the most disturbing examples being widely distributed online today are of jihadi prisoner executions, commonly by beheading, stoning, or being thrown from tall buildings.

It’s not a stretch to grasp why a penchant for such graphic viewing isn’t something many people are prepared to admit to, although the colossal traffic these sites attract means that, if you’re not watching yourself, it’s highly likely you know someone who is. But is this fascination with death and depravity really such an anathema? Throughout human history, from the Romans’ gladiatorial battles, to the public executions of the Middle Ages, to the scandalising illustrations of Victorian London’s Penny Dreadfuls, our past is littered with examples of morbid curiosity and gore-fuelled entertainment. And in a similar vein to Two Girls One Cup, the appeal stemmed from the yummy rush of stimulants provided by the brain’s instinctual reactions.

It might well be an innate fascination, indeed a part of our anatomy, but fear of judgment has driven these online habits into the shadows, not least because of the dangerous intent an interest in such horrific viewing implies. However, as Maycon Merlo explains, deranged psychopaths are unlikely to be tuning in. “Psychopathic and sociopathic behaviours are the result of an absence of emotion and empathy, so the empathetic relationship that triggers the Three Fs response just isn’t there. For a psychopath, watching a video of a public execution would be as affecting as watching someone brush thei teeth.”