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"Jason Scott, of the internet newsletter rotten.com, said he had searched the internet for the phrases used in the documents, which were in English, and found they were the same as a well known 1979 spoof article." (Submitted by Soylent)

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"Osama bin Laden, head of al Qaeda, is a very clever fellow, but he's always struck us as somewhat unworldly. You know what we mean--the sort of guy who has a lot of book learning but is short on street smarts. Well, it appears he has fallen for an obvious hoax. A Web site called Rotten.com notes that a Times of London report from last week, about bin Laden's purported nuclear plans, includes the following description of a document the Times reporter found in a Kabul house apparently used by al Qaeda..." (Submitted by Soylent)

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"The sharp-eyed publisher of the rotten.com Web site first noted the correlation between language in the Kabul documents -- which were shown in BBC footage and quoted in the London Times -- and the parody." (Submitted by Soylent)

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"In fact, after assembling a collection of over 100,000 text files, Rotten.com contributor Jason Scott has concluded that the scope of the misunderstanding may stretch even further. 'If somebody thought they saw nuclear bomb plans on the Internet, they probably saw this one.'" (Submitted by David Cassel)

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"But according to Jason Scott, a reporter for a Web newsletter, rotten.com, the document was not quite so chilling a display of nuclear knowledge as The Times might have believed. Mr. Scott searched the Web for phrases visible in a film of The Times's document broadcast by the BBC and discovered its source, a spoof published in 1979 in a takeoff on scientific journals known as The Journal of Irreproducible Results." (Submitted by Soylent)

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"Now the online Daily Rotten says at least part of those documents photographed by the Times are taken verbatim from a "semi-famous" pseudo-document that has been circulating on the Internet for years. It's a reprint of a scientific parody called "How to Build an Atom Bomb," from the geek-humor newsletter Annals of Improbable Research, originally known as the Journal of Irreproducible Results." (Submitted by Soylent)

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"The difficulty in determining what are legitimate Internet news sites and which online publishers do not have sufficiently high journalistic standards to qualify will doom ICRA, civil libertarians predict. After all, even rotten.com now features a news section, though the headlines do tend to run along the lines of Postal worker jailed for flinging feces. (Submitted by Soylent)

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Legal authorities in in Dusseldorf have required that all ISP's the German state of Nordrhein-Westfalen block access to rotten.com under a controversial new censorship law. Text in German. (Submitted by Frank Rieger)

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We aren't even sure what this article is about, though it seems to ask, "Is the objective of the Internet to spread disinformation?" Czech isn't widely spoken on the Rotten Staff, can someone from Czechia send a translation? [We don't know if this is bad or good, but being mentioned alongside Debka, an extremely scary and badass Israeli intelligence website, can't all be bad.] (Submitted by Soylent)

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"In looking at district printouts of computer activity, Brooks said his office could only pinpoint one site that might be deemed inappropriate: www.rotten.com. That Web site includes sexual content and graphic violent images including autopsy photographs, but Mulhearn's attorney points out that records show that site had been viewed for only seconds." (Submitted by TTF)

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From FHM, a men's magazine. (Submitted from New Zealand)

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This is from an irregularly published slick called Forbidden Internet, and it is rather strange that rotten was not in their first issue, as it is by far the most popular and most unique of any "forbidden" site. (Submitted by Lady C)

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A glowing review of rotten.com: They show pictures of almost everything--everything sick and groan inducing, that is. In the few minutes we surfed, we saw photos of a person run over by a train, a dead bunny, shark attack victims, suicide victims, a man who burned to death on an electric post and numerous other corpses. There were also pictures of people eating babies. I am not normally weak-hearted. But I have to draw the line somewhere. And Rotten.com definitely crossed that line. [June 5, 2001, page 2] (Submitted by Soylent)

Two female employees filed a lawsuit against monster.com, an online jobs marketing site: Sarno said Miner and other co-workers routinely viewed Web sites showing naked women and posted graphic images as screen savers on their computers, creating a hostile environment in the office of 25 people. They also say Miner frequently visited a Web site that displays photographs of accident and murder victims - a site that touts itself as pure evil since 1996 and an archive of disturbing illustration. "It was just disgusting," said Sarno, an MBA who quit a management job at another company to go to work for a dot-com because she thought it held greater opportunities. "It was painful to even get up in the morning and go in there." Sarno and Kitsis both said they complained repeatedly to Miner about offensive and unprofessional conduct and were fired without any notice. [May 24, 2001, Thursday, THIRD EDITION] (Submitted by Soylent)

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"If the Net is a library of the collective consciousness -- a vast collection of humans' fantasies, fears and obsessions -- then Rotten.com represents the darkest, deepest, most sordid side of human nature. There is absolutely nothing nice about Rotten.com; this site is simply foul." (The front page of Salon.com) (Submitted by Salon)

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"I scrolled down to 'motorcycle', clicked, and was rewarded with a terrifying image: an emergency room photograph of a man who had split his face wide open -- it looked like an exploded cigar, except with bloody pulp and smahshed teeth instead of tobacco." Another journalist forever tainted. (Submitted by Micahel Yeluashvili)

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The German variant of Hustler is kind enough to have us on page 22. Incidentally this Hustler has quite a different feel than the American one, although sometimes the umlauts get in the way of the porn. (Submitted by Hustler)

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Maxim Magazine, "For Men", always fun. (Submitted by Stile)

According to Nielsen/Netratings surveys, in the Australian 18 to 34 age bracket, rotten.com is the 8th most popular website down under. Yes, eighth. This is simply astonishing. Reported in the Sydney Morning Herald, 12 December 2000. (Submitted by Soylent)

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Instinct Magazine, a publication catering to gay homosexuals, has been described to us as "trashy but nice", featured us in their latest issue. (This is one of those things we wouldn't notice unless someone notifies us, so please keep us posted.) (Submitted by Number-6)

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Again, we aren't mentioned directly because KPRC is too chickenshit to give our URL, but this is about rotten.com's "Burnt Crispy Person" exhibit. This was on Houston television as well. (Submitted by Ron Jenson)

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Two of our sites, phallic.org and celebritymorgue.com, were featured in this article on Internet extremism appearing in Magyar Hirlap, one of Hungary's main national newspapers. Text is in Hungarian, which is nearly impossible to understand. (Submitted by Soylent)

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Hustler don't mention us directly, but instead their competitor Playboy (see below), who apparently didn't realize that this image has been floating around for fifteen years. God bless America and God bless Larry Flynt, heroic fighter for our rights and liberty.

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We were awarded "Best Inspirational Website, Manhattan 2000" by New York Press. It even came with a nice plastic award suitable for framing, as if it were a Chamber of Commerce award. Nice! And dammit, we are the best. (Submitted by publisher)

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We made page 22 of Playboy.

During a time when Microsoft, Yahoo, and eBay were suffering distributed denial of service attacks, suspicion came upon a hacker known as Coolio. It's not likely he was responsible for the attacks, but he did deface the "DARE" antidrug site. And it is that defacement for which the "feds" charged him. While this was widely reported in the media, what was not reported was that he defaced it with images obtained from rotten.com, and linked the DARE site to rotten. From the New Hampshire Sunday News, 12 March 2000: On Nov. 14 and again on Nov. 17, www.DARE.com, which promotes anti-drug and anti-violence messages to young people, was transformed by Moran with messages of his own. "Reagan lost the war on drugs -- end it now" it reads under a picture of a fat rat sitting on its backside. The photo captions says "This rat is HIGH on MARIJUANA." Links also are provided to pro-drug Web sites, including www.rotten.com Why wasn't this widely reported? It's our conjecture that mainstream media does not really like to link to, or publicize rotten.com. In fact this is the only instance of the media mentioning our site in relation to this incident, even though the charges against Coolio were front page news. (Lexis Nexis Database)

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The San Francisco Bay Guardian, weekly rag for the city by the bay, has these nice things to say about our site. The day this came out all my friends in SF called to ask "Did you realize..?" (Submitted by The Deth Vegetable)

In a segment on "Death Culture", our Celebrity Morgue site is featured on CNN's Headline News channel, February 26. Oddly we don't find out about this until a year later. (Lexis Nexis Database)

Inmate Allen Lee Davis was executed in Florida's "Old Sparky" electric chair, creating a bloody spectacle that horrified witnesses. Because of the publicity surrounding the "cruel and unusual" execution, a judge ordered the photos released. From the front page of the Palm Beach Post, 3 January 2000: On July 8, 1999, blood spurted from the nose and mouth of Allen Lee "Tiny" Davis during his execution and ghastly pictures of his corpse, still seated and strapped into the chair, have found their way onto the Internet, where they can be seen at a site appropriately named awful.rotten.com/chair/davis.html. Since that article appeared, "Old Sparky" was sold to the Ripley Museum for $25,000. (Lexis Nexis Database)

https://rottendotcom.neocities.org/today/ From their "Smart Living" section, page E3: There's not much to this site - just a daily listing of oddball events occurring on the date in question. As promised, the chosen happenings are not the smiley kind, although many are good for a laugh. (Example: "Jan. 12, 1971: The first episode of All in the Family made television history by broadcasting the sound of a toilet flushing.") (They review our "Rotten History" site only) (Lexis Nexis Database)

Three of the Rotten family of websites were featured in the November 1999 issue of .net Magazine, which is quite a decent UK publication. (Page 54 and 56). The other two featured were Celebrity Morgue and Phallic.org. (Submitted by Lady Carolin)

The Justice Minister of Belgium, Tony van Parys, denounced both Rotten and our educational Celebrity Morgue site on VTM (commercial Belgian television) as well as their public station. Screen shots were shown, and Parys stated his intention to cause the Ministry to investigate whether or not they could have the site shut down, or whether Belgian internet providers could be forced to block access to Rotten. With the Belgian elections less than a month away, this is definitely odd timing. The man could clearly use an ass buggering. (Submitted by numerous Belgians)

In testimony for the House Judiciary Committee, Donna Rice (now Donna Rice Hughes) was giving a little slide show: This next slide is rotten.com. And it is a very violent and bloody web site. Now let me just say all the images I am showing you are free. OK, they are free pictures. I clicked on the third click down and you see mayhem 3, I clicked there and here it says they offer a series of dismemberments and brutalities. When I clicked there, I got to the next site. This is just one of over a dozen pictures that were offered under mayhem. This slide depicts one of three corpses with severe head wounds. And I cannot even make out a head here. Okay, so Donna Rice became famous for derailing Gary Hart's presidential candidacy by sucking his dick. Does this make her the moral arbiter for the rest of us? Sure! (Lexis Nexis Database)

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Reuters, reporting on the Diana photo. Story via Nando.

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c|Net, technical news source, reporting on the Diana photo.

What flew in Raleigh, September 9, 1997: [Offline, the] angry backlash against the media [..] wouldn't hit newsprint for a day or so, and a variety of obnoxious sites. Rotten.com - which proudly posts photos of men copulating with chickens and bloody shots of O.J. Simpson's murdered wife - dedicated a Diana link: There was Di at a nude beach, Di showing a lot of thigh in a very short dress, Di with a wedgie - and promises of more. "When at such time we receive accident photos, they will appear at this spot immediately," the site's proprietors wrote. Since we're still waiting on the real accident photos, y'all will have to content yourselves with a picture of some royal ass. As for the chicken, we have plans for it. (Lexis Nexis Database)

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Verlag Heise, reporting on the Diana photo. (Text in German)

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Agence France-Presse, the French news agency, reporting that we have a photo of Princess Diana after her accident. This is prior to our revelaing the photo to be another accident.

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El Mundo is the largest newspaper in Spain, here reporting that the Diana photo is fake. (Text is in Spanish)

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When the Princess Diana stunt we pulled was still raging, we granted an interview with a New York Times reporter. Surprising to us, the article was favorable, and all was well. (Submitted by publisher)

On national radio, morning host and troublemaker Howard Stern surfed rotten.com live, something our little site was totally unprepared for. Traffic jumped in one day from 4,500 people a day to 50,000. We had to shut the site down temporarily. Three years later now, we get about 200,000 people a day. (Submitted by Soylent)