I am getting queasier about some internet stuff as I age. Allow me to explain…

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
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In my younger days I was never shy about clicking on – or even seeking out – graphic, gory, gruesome, or vulgar images or videos on the internet. I remember visiting one site – it’s name mercifully escapes me at the moment – that was infamous for showing graphic and real photos and videos of suicides, industrial accidents, literal train wrecks, and anything else disgusting you can imagine.

I am different now. Just a short while ago, in fact, I clicked on a thread about a hockey player who died on the ice. His neck was cut by an opponent’s skate blade. There was a NSFW video link in the thread. When I saw the link, I muttered “hell no” to myself and got out of Dodge, and went searching for a thread about, I dunno, haikus.

Animals are the worst for me. If there is even a microscopic chance of an animal being insecure or discomfited, I am out. Even when I know there is a happy ending – a dog caught in the ice being rescued, for example, or a moose with his antlers tangled in a bush – I give it a wide berth.

It’s not simply that I’m not interested in such stuff anymore. It is more than that. I get a little uncomfortable even reading descriptions of such stuff.

Anyone else notice such a change as you get older?

mmm

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I’m with you but I’ve always been that way.

Watching operations? no problem. Horror films? not really a fan but again, not an issue, it’s fiction. Hell I helped out in a slaughterhouse when first out of school so factual instances of a gory nature for a practical purpose are fine.

However, I’ve never liked watching the real misfortune of others for any kind of entertainment. Even just the verbal description is enough for my very visual and vivid imagination to work overtime. It upsets me and I have to question the underlaying motivations of those who share such material.

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rotten . com ?

I agree with you btw.

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With age comes wisdom and an increased awareness of one’s mortality and the truly precious nature of life, so I think it is a natural progression over time.

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I was never interested in gore videos for their own sake but I’m also increasingly more selective in what news articles I read. I have friends in a Discord who’ll post links to “Five Year Old Boy Mauled By Pumas in Colorado Suburb” and it’s just… do I need to read this? Am I going to actually be better for it? Am I going to come away thinking “Gee, puma maulings are bad” any more than I currently believe? It’s not local to me, my kids aren’t in danger of pumas, there’s just no reason to read it aside from making my day a little darker.

I don’t want to read about tragedies unless it’s educating me in some way. Much less watch video of them occurring.

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I have never liked watching those videos, but now I jump to something else most of the time.
I can’t even stand to see funny cat videos, where you can see that the cat is terrified or get annoyed.
Age? I don’t know. I guess I am older so maybe?

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Hummmmph! For me it was those “bootleg”? ‘Faces Of Death’ vhs tapes.
Rottendotcom as mentioned is one that I looked at now and then also.

Yeah, don’t want or need that stuff these days. For me, in part anyway, the part that matters most to me, is the more deeply held realization that there is enough pain and misery in the world, I don’t want to add to or encourage others to make more in anyway.

I prefer to nurture things that are beneficial at the very least.

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Yeah, this isn’t about the “internet stuff” mentioned in the OP.
It’s about life experience, and , if not wisdom, then at least well, recognizing that gross stuff is gross, not funny.

Silly example: standup comedian Sara Silverman singing about old people pooping .in their pants Maybe she thought it was funny once, but she’s old enough and ought to know better. .
.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vFbcRNCXEXM

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For me, it’s the tone of the violence and gore depicted. I can watch slasher movies with cartoonish ‘buckets of blood’ style violence, no problem.

But years ago I checked out a DVD of the movie “Funny Games” from the library (version with Naomi Watts). I had a vague notion of the plot: (two preppy, clean-cut young men knock on the door of a suburban family under some pretense, then proceed to torture and kill them). But when I started watching the movie, seeing the happy family with a kid about the age of my kids at the time, and knowing what was to come, I was like “nope nope nope” and shut that shit right off.

Yes, well said.

When I was younger, I thought that as I got older, I’d lose my fear and ‘queasiness’ of everything. Because I got this far, I’ve cheated fate and had a good life, so why worry about anything? And this has been true for some things- for instance, I’ve almost completely lost any social anxiety I used to have.

But I find myself getting ‘queasier’ and more cautious and fearful of certain other things over time, not just internet-related stuff per the OP. For example, I’ve always had a slight fear of heights, but it’s only gotten worse as I get older.

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Yep, that’s it.

Oh, man, I forgot about those. Yep, I remember searching the video store for them.

Yeah, there are a boatload of cat videos in which the poor kitty is traumatized by, I think, a cucumber. My interest in watching that is <0.

mmm

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I know it is a cliché but certainly having kids made me much more wary of triggering stories and the depressing effect they would have. Dwelling on them would have no good outcome for me and certainly no educational benefit.

I recall one story that brought it home to me. When my kids were still young I recall reading the story of a double suicide in the UK. A couple were found dead at the foot of a cliff along with two backpacks. In one backpack was the body of their severely disabled child (who had died of natural causes) and in the other backpack was a selection of his toys. When I read that last part I couldn’t go on and had to go and take a quiet break in a toilet cubicle.

It effected me deeply and probably was the point at which I fully realised that I couldn’t even read those stories any more. Even just typing that out now made me choke up. I should know better.

I will say though that fictional stories of that nature I can handle, even if I am emotionally effected. Perhaps that’s just a healthy safety valve.

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Dan’s Gallery of the Grotesque. I think it’s safe to say the name since the site itself is long gone.

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At one point I was curious about how they film hospital scenes, operations, in TV shows. I found out little, seems to be a trade secret. I could have just read about it, no pictures, but not even that was available. I did find the term for movie set people that stage bloody accidents and such, but have forgotten it.

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Animal abuse stories, let alone photos, are a no-go for me.

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Just in case anyone was wondering, there was nothing NSFW shown in that video, if you didn’t know the person died it’d look like any other blurry sports video where someone is knocked down.

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Being a sufferer of vasovagal syncope (VVS), I am unable to watch anything gory or shocking such as someone or an animal being tortured without passing out cold. It’s the condition where someone “can’t stand the sight of blood,” but it’s much more than that. The blood drains from my head, and I lose consciousness within a few moments. The only treatment is taking salt tablets or wearing compression socks, neither of which work for me.

If I watch TV show or a movie, and it shows someone being tortured, or having a part of their body cut off, I start to get a strange feeling (syncopal prodrome) and within a few seconds wake up on the floor, in a fog. Those precious few seconds of warning give me time to get down on the ground, and if I can elevate my legs and get blood flowing back to my head, I can sometimes stop from passing out. If it does happen, I wake up after a few minutes, and then after laying on the ground for 5 or 10 minutes, I will feel mostly fine, but falling usually causes injury. People who have seen this happen to me say I sometimes convulse when I am on the ground and that my eyes are wide open during the entire experience.

I’m in a strange dream-like state while it is happening. Sometimes, I get physically ill and throw up, but I usually just pass out. As a child, it happened every time I saw something gory or shocking, but as an adult, it’s rare since I am quite aware of what triggers it. It still happens once every 8-10 years. I was ill a few years ago while in the ER, and it happened there. I don’t know what the trigger was in that instance. I felt it coming on and told the nurse I was going to pass out, and they caught me before I hit the floor. You go from conscious to unconscious in just a few seconds, so there’s not a lot of time for someone beside you to react. I wear a watchband that says I have VVS in case it happens and someone nearby calls 911, but I would probably wake up before they did.

VVS impacts a significant percentage (>35%) of the population at one time or another, and it mainly affects men. Strangely, I haven’t met anyone else with this issue. My mother had it as a child, so perhaps it’s inherited, but my brother doesn’t have it. As a result of having VVS, I can’t sit through a horror movie since seeing something shocking, like someone getting a body part cut off, would trigger a VVS event. I CAN watch a film like Jaws, which has off-screen gore since that doesn’t seem to bother me. As another example, if I came upon an automobile accident and someone was severely injured, I would likely pass out on the spot, so I wouldn’t be much help. It’s never happened to me while I was driving, and if I had the feeling it was coming on, I would have a few seconds to pull off the road.

I’ve learned to live with VVS and have adapted to it as best I can, but it never really goes away. I have to deal with it every day for the rest of my life.

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Yeah, I’ve generally always avoided those sort of gruesome war footage and terrorist beheadings and whatnot. On the infrequent chance that I come across one of them or morbid curiosity gets the better of me, I generally find them not so much “queasy” as disturbing and unsettling. Like the sort of thing you want to un-see.

I feel like long term it’s probably not great for people to view a lot of that sort of material.

Violent movies and TV shows don’t bother me. Although I have zero interest in watching torture-horror films like the Saw or Hostel franchises.

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In the 90s I visited both rotten and goreish (I think that’s how it was spelled) sites, but as the years went on, I liked less and less gore. I also liked reading about serial killers, but when I read (and saw) details about Albert Fish and Ed Gein, I changed.

Now, at 62, I avoid all that. Although I keep up with the news on a constant basis, I stay away from anything graphic. I don’t even like too many modern movies…my tastes run more to old classics (I just watched “Double Indemnity” for the first time).

Another thing that’s changed with me is language – I’m no prude, but I don’t like how “fuck” is so casually thrown around…so much as to lose any meaning. It’s just not necessary, and I think it’s lazy.

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I knew I was getting old when I only went to the website alluded to above just to click the link to Notable Names Database (NNDB.com) SFW

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One of my favorites - did you like it?

I didn’t know about this site, thanks for sharing.

Still not gonna click on the hockey injury link.

mmm