Ecch-Rated Videos

Gene reviews some real dreck

(Eric Shansby)

One criticism of the so-called Mainstream Media is that we are not "hip." (Or whatever expression the youngsters are using these days.) The thinking goes that even though public tastes have been loosened by the anarchy of the Internet and the coarseness of prime-time cable TV, the Mainstream Media remain hopelessly out of it, still bundled and corseted into Victorian sensibilities.

This is nonsense, and I am going to prove it is nonsense right now. In this column, I will fearlessly describe the latest Internet sensation, which is so edgy -- so disgusting and subversive of societal norms -- that even the Internet is leery of it.

The only constraint I will be under is that my editor, Tom the Butcher, has insisted that he edit the column as I write it, just to be safe. Tom will be the guy in boldface.

This is about a viral video that in the last month has been furtively viewed by tens of thousands of people. The video depicts two young women engaged in STOP

There is actually a Greek term for what happens in this video, and it is STOP

At issue is a certain common bathroom function, which STOP

En este video, dos mujeres jóvenes están STOP

You don't even know Spanish!

No, but I know YOU.

Okay, there's this video out on the Web. And the thing about it is that it's so phenomenally repulsive that you can't find it on YouTube, a venue that is not exactly famous for exercising good taste. (I, for example, have personally encountered on YouTube a version of Nirvana's "Smells Like Teen Spirit" sung by Paul Anka. He snaps his fingers to the backbeat, lounge-lizard style.)

But here's the interesting part: Although you cannot find this disgusting video on YouTube, you can find on YouTube dozens and dozens of giggly home videos of people watching the disgusting video for the first time. You don't see the video itself, just people's reactions. These reactions include gagging, retching, covering their eyes with their hands and peeking through steepled fingers, and then gagging and retching, etc.

For illustrative purposes only, I am going to call what these two women are doing in the video STOP