When browsing Google Images, or nearly any other image-based search engine, it’s almost too easy to fall off your intended route and vehemently veer down a path of nasty, insensitive and deplorably awesome photos. I, for one, embrace these wrong turns. Fact is, there’s nothing easier to get caught up in than highly objectionable images that the average person would call you a freak for viewing.
You enter a medical question, you see an image of untreated herpes. You search “kitten”, it autocorrects to “kittens with guns”. Finally, you’re innocently seeking some good ol’ conversation and before you can look away you’re staring straight into the eyes of some dude on Chat Alternative—the latest version of Chat Roulette—getting ready to do, well, I think you already know.
Simply put, a good portion of internet imagery is consumed with debauchery and obscenity. It’s truly a k-hole of unruly content. With the exception of those freaks who use filters like SafeSearch, it’s nearly impossible to avoid an NSFW image, one way or another.
We see it in the news: parents losing their shit over their child’s raunchy Facebook pics. We see it in advertising: “Hot Local Singles In Your Area!” [insert photo of your neighbors’s little sister]. There’s little you can do to escape it. That is, unless, you’re someone who spends your time clicking through the Flickr Creative Commons section.
The Flickr Creative Commons is a division of the site where users can upload their photos to be shared with nearly anyone, depending on the licensing properties the publisher chooses. These photos are frequently used by publications and blogs to avoid paying for expensive stock photos to accompany their content. Currently, there are over 200 million images in the Creative Commons library, according to the Flickr blog, and they’re free to use as long as you attribute them properly.
Originally, I set out to write the 30 of the Most Disturbing Creative Commons Images and I’m here to admit defeat. For hours, I attempted to find at least 10 shocking images from the Commons but was met with nothing more than PG-13 quality snapshots at best. Sure, my mind may be a bit more, well, sick than the average person. Or maybe I just read too much Vice (you ever seen a rosebud)? Bottom line is, I had trouble locating a single image that made me gasp, which to me is more shocking than the actual images I was searching for.
I started off slow; I searched “poop” and found an image of an adorable child. I stepped up my game; I searched “pussy” and saw nothing but fields of flowers. Finally, I searched for things like dubstep, roadkill, crack head, dreadlock and New Jersey; I began to feel sick. Not from what I saw, but from what I didn’t. For one of the the first times in my life I was unable to find disturbing content on the internet, at least in my opinion.
After my computer died I laid in bed, struggling to get a signal on my iPhone 4 from my windowless Brooklyn room. I had forgotten my charger in the office, and knew the T.V. could never give me what I need. I thought about my parents, their lives and how they grew up without any of this. I wondered what life would be like if the internet was limited searches like the one on the Flickr Creative Commons section.
‘Is it possible it would all be better? Would we be free from things like school shootings and child porn? Maybe, just maybe, Teen Mom would never have aired and we would never have seen Jennifer Lawrence nude. Could it be? Have distasteful photos, videos and content catapulted the world into a sadistic onslaught of filth?’ This was what I thought just before my shitty Sprint 3G kicked in. I then went on to browse Imgur’s r/imgoingtohellforthis, just one last time. I promise.
Billy is the managing editor of Resource Magazine and lives in a windowless room in Brooklyn. Follow him on Twitter.