By Justin Kozloski, Co-Editor-in-Chief
So we have all been there before. You know what I am talking about, that dark part of the Internet where the weirdest things, the most WTF things in the world reside. But what none of us know is how you get there.
One minute you are casually perusing videos of dogs raising tiger puppies and the next you are on a 30-minute documentary about the infamous suicide forest in Japan where thousands of people have committed suicide over the past few decades.
With this question in mind, I set out to find out how one gets to the dark side of the internet in 10 videos. Here is my journey:
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XStxajua9SU]
My expedition began with “The Best of Family Guy ‘50 Shades of Griffin.’” This was chosen because it has the high probability of getting me to the dark side while at the same time being extremely entertaining. Take fifty of the most sexually suggestive scenes from the show Family Guy, and you are guaranteed to have a good laugh.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-dAuXlbhCdI]
From this seemingly mundane video I moved on to a video I knew would yield a good potential of suggested links. This video, “Family Guy – Meg Griffin’s Sex Tape,” while itself boring, is part of a journey for the deepest parts of the Internet, and sacrifices must be made for the sake of science.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A_a6RjR_AHY]
Sure enough, instead of the 10 videos I thought it would take, I have already found a very odd and disturbing part of the Internet in a video called “If Man Obeyed God,” which portrays the story of Genesis and the Fall of Man as poorly constructed cartoons and displays God as an ill-informed trickster trying to get man to sin due to his own mistakes.
Here is where I will end my journey as I was so freaked out by the crass humor and odd nature of the video that I have no desire to set out any further.
However, this journey did teach me something. The Internet is a strange and terrible place, but one in which anyone can express whatever they want. Personally I think it is a wonderful thing that anyone can find and post anything they want, as that is the premise of free speech and freedom of expression.
While the video I found disturbed me and was something I did not watch to the end, I can appreciate that the person who created it and posted it took the initiative to express his or her opinion.
People have to realize that not everything out there is going to be something they will enjoy or agree with but that there are people who do share or appreciate a certain opinion.
However, this concept applies to all forms of expression from opinion pieces to questions of sexual identification.
Senior joint English-business major Justin Kozloski is the Co-Editor-in-Chief of The College Reporter. Email him at jkozlosk@fandm.edu.