Reddit is a great example place. Basically Reddit is a user operated Web news service. People upload links to anything and set it under the multiple subcategories, known as subreddits, and then they are free to view by anyone. There are comment sections on everything and people can upvote each others posts and gain Karma points which are relatively meaningless except to rate your popularity on the site.
Certain subreddits are dedicated to the weird and horrible. A popular one is r/WTF where people will post pictures/gifs/videos that literally make you say what the fuck? but more often than not they are just there as a shock factor in hopes of getting points.
A memorable one I drew was this man who had been in some kind of car accident which has split his hips and below from the rest of his torso. It was a gif and in it the man was still conscious and feeling his spilling out entrails in horror.
This is some frames from a gif that I found so horrific I gagged. Its a deer being shot in the face but played in slow motion so you can see its eyes bulge and burst out from the pressure of the bullet. I think one of the reasons this is more horrific though is because its an animal. Even in horror movies it tends to be taboo to hurt the animals and only saved to be truly soul destroying. This shows we feel a lot of attachment towards animals, the question is do we feel it towards them more so than we do other humans?
These are some of the examples of links found on r/wtf. I think one of the reasons that it works on the site is because the viewer is at first only faced with a caption before they see the source and sometimes the unexpectedness of the image is what makes it popular and funny.
It seems a lot of being popular on this subreddit is to deliver the biggest shock. Its like competing for who can look at the worst thing.
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