It’s time for a moment of silence. Legendary shock site Meatspin.com expired over the weekend.
Since its founding in 2005, Meatspin was a rite of passage for unwitting message-board dupes, college roommates, and younger siblings. Many are the Millennials who recall clicking on a link from a friend, expecting a far different Web browsing experience.
Instead, these hapless victims would encounter an animated GIF of two men engaged in intercourse while one man’s penis revolves like a helicopter’s propeller. In the background, Dead or Alive’s hit “You Spin Me Round (Like a Record)” added insult to injury.
Now that the site has expired, pranksters will have to visit one of the Web’s other notorious shock sites in order to traumatize their friends and create funny reaction videos.
For reliable vomit-induction, there’s Lemon Party and Goatse, two of the oldest and most well-known shock sites comparable to Meatspin. (The Daily Dot cares about your eyeballs and would caution you not to Google these terms. We did not link them for a reason.)
According to the Internet Wayback Machine, these sites were founded in 2002 and 2003, respectively, but are still going strong. Lemon Party has even made its way into popular culture, earning a reference on NBC sitcom 30 Rock. Meatspin never went equally mainstream but is nevertheless the subject of hundreds of reaction videos on YouTube.
Mourners have taken to Twitter not so much to eulogize the shock site itself, but the many pranks for which they’d harnessed its powers.
“You guys, Meatspin.com no longer exists. End of a ridiculous era of laptop pranks,” tweeted @TomMartin4.
“Can we please have a moment of silence for MeatSpin.com? I pranked many an unsuspecting floor mate with that horrible NSFW website,” wrote @Sta7ic.
User @KoryBing bade farewell with the good riddance only a Meatspin victim could have.
“RIP Meatspin,” he tweeted. “You will not be missed.”
Update: One day later, it appears that Meatspin has returned. Please spare yourself and take our word for it.
Photo by mezzoblue