Begotten, Tumblr and Gore: 30 Years Later, Merhige's Movie Remains One of the Most Disturbing …

Apologies in advance for eliciting an image that is best relegated to a collective amnesia, but who remembers the map of Tumblr? A crude drawing of a series of connecting islands, its borders are largely designated by fandom or cultural affiliation. Regions labeled in Comic Sans vary wildly from “Cats” and “Nutella” to Harry Potter and Doctor Who, with only a small sliver of “Fandom Island” relegated to “Other.” When recently asked by a former fandom blogger which territory I had occupied in this fictional landscape, I winced. “I, uh, actually ran a gore blog, so I guess ‘Other,’” I admitted to the woman who had once undoubtedly found herself marooned on the coast of “Shipper Lake.” Long before Tumblr went through a mass purification, the blogging platform was an effective outlet for teens to examine the seedy underbelly of culture with a guise of relative anonymity. Hardcore porn, violent imagery and grisly details from cold cases were reblogged on a continuous cycle, with fringe bloggers often scouring the internet for shocking images to proliferate the stream of content. When resources seemed to be exhausted where real-life crime and autopsy photos were concerned, it became a morbid pastime to scour…
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