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Confession



Estimated reading time — 11 minutes

All the names – except J.J.’s – are changed, for reasons that should be obvious.

I grew up in Royal Oak, Michigan, about twenty minutes from downtown Detroit. It’s one of those places where the people with money ran to after things in the city went shit-shaped.

I went to high school with this guy I’ll call Nick. We had a TV Production class together, and we both decided that was the kind of thing we wanted to do for a living, so we ended up in a lot of the same film classes in college.

We weren’t that close, and I didn’t hang out with him that much outside of school, but a year after graduation, he contacted me about this show he wanted to make. He said he really liked my camera work, and I was better with editing and effects programs than most of the other students – I’d been playing with them as a hobby since tenth grade – and he said he could use my knowledge for the production values.

Nick was never that great at the technical side of things. Even after film school, his stuff always looked kind of cheap and Youtube-y. But he was charming, the kind of guy who could do great voiceovers, come up with impressive-sounding “artistic visions” (he was great at putting on airs and convincing stupid people his shitty-looking films were actually high art with all kinds of symbolic metaphorical ironic subtext or whatever) and pitch the hell out of any idea, no matter how stupid. So he thought we’d make a good team.

His idea was for this “Real Stories of Detroit” type of show. I mean, That wasn’t what he called it, but it’s a pretty good summary of the premise. His explanation was that people on the outside know this place sucks, but besides all those dilapidated building photos (“ruin porn, ” they call it) and the crime reports no one cares about, they don’t know enough about the very real horror that happens here on a daily basis. In other words, they didn’t see us as human, man, just a big joke.

I agreed with some of his points, I wasn’t finding paying work at the time, and I wanted to help out an old sort-of-friend, so I agreed to do some camera work for him. If anything became of it, I’d get partial credit and we’d split the profits.

During the planning phase, Nick was always going on about how the show would have both artistic merit and social relevance, exposing the darker side of humanity as well as the conditions we overlook right here in America, and hopefully, encourage the complacent masses to wake up and do something about our poverty and urban blight.

It took me about a week to realize that was all bullshit.

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In the early days, the material that would make up the meat of our show was hard to find, so we spent hours every day combing through shock and gore sites for whatever we could find that might have come from around here in the last ten years. Over the next several months, my external drive filled up with camcorder videos of rotting corpses people stumbled across, security camera footage of cashiers getting shot in the face by robbers, leaked footage of blood-soaked crime scenes, and every type of forensic photo imaginable.

We called up and interviewed crack whores – the very few who had access to phones and could complete intelligible sentences, anyway – ex-cons, and people who’d confess to any depraved shit as long as we didn’t show their faces.

The “real stories” were never positive, always just the worst shit we could dig up. We never talked to people reading storybooks to kids or tending community gardens or anything.

According to Nick, that was “feel-good fluff” and didn’t “reflect the city’s brutal reality.”
According to Nick, what did “reflect the city’s brutal reality” was a freak show of poverty, misery, and suffering.

We added some dramatic public domain music and somber narration, but that was the only thing “artistic” about it.

Our first episode was too gory for any TV network to touch, or to post on any of the big video hosting sites without it getting pulled within the week. But we started our own site, and Nick posted links on a few of the sites where we’d found our source material.

It took a less than a month for me to start hating it, but when I make promises, I keep them.
I didn’t really want to quit until after what happened to J.J.

We did a lot of shooting on the streets – for both the interviews and for ruin porn – especially in the northeast and Highland Park. If you don’t know, Detroit’s west side is (mostly kind of almost) a normal city. Those parts of town where you hear about the forest reclaiming whole blocks and bears wandering the streets are up Northeast. And Highland Park is the worst of the many neighborhoods that make up crackland.

None of them are the kinds of places you want to walk into unarmed with a camera, so for security, we hired this big guy with tattoos on his face who always carried a 45. I have no idea how Nick met this guy.

One day, while we were out getting footage of the old Grande Ballroom to use as establishing shots for a nearby neighborhood where I think someone set his girlfriend on fire, we met this old homeless guy who went by “J.J.”

He was a drunk, but at least he wasn’t on anything harder, and for a drunk, he was surprisingly friendly, lucid and intelligent.

For a few dollars an hour and some hot food, he’d show us around his stomping grounds and point out some of the more interesting sights. There was one time when he showed us a house where whoever lived there had left their doll collection behind when they moved out, for example.

Whenever we were on set, Nick was really adamant that I not only turn off my phone, but leave it at home. He wanted to make sure I didn’t sneak and start texting or something while we were working.

I didn’t know why he was so paranoid about it at the time, I mean, it’s not like he was even paying me by the hour, but it started to make perfect sense about two weeks later.

One day we were filming on Robinwood St. – just getting some shots of garbage and burnt-out houses to fill some space between videos of murders – when J.J. told us he used to squat over here, and he knew an abandoned but still pretty solid two-story house where you could get to the roof through one of the upper story windows. From there, we could get a shot of most of the neighborhood. I didn’t think it was safe, even with my lightest camera, so he volunteered to go first just to show us nothing would collapse under his weight.

Well, he caught his foot on something, lost his balance, and fell right off the roof and landed in (what was left of) the concrete driveway. Both his legs snapped under him.

We both kind of panicked. Mostly because we couldn’t afford to pay any medical bills or risk having anyone sue us. Nick was very adamant about that.

So we left him there.

Actually, it’s a bit more complicated than that.

It quickly dawned on us that if anyone came around and found him, he’d talk to some kind of authorities as soon as he was back to civilization.

Or at least I think I think that’s why we decided to do it. It was hard to hear each other over all J.J.’s screaming and crying. I’d never heard a man make that much noise.

So Nick had our bodyguard hold the guy’s arms while he shoved a rag into his mouth.

We used a clean one. We’re not animals.

Then he duct taped it shut. Nick and I put on our gloves, so we wouldn’t leave fingerprints. When we’re out shooting, we carry thick work gloves everywhere we go. There’s no specific reason, just that when you work in abandoned buildings, and sometimes around human waste and dead bodies, gloves are always a good thing to have. I didn’t know why Nick had duct tape. Maybe it was in case he ever had to do something like that.

That muffled the screams were enough to the point where no one more than ten or twenty feet away would hear them, but Jesus, his eyes. I still have nightmares about his eyes. Bloodshot and wild with pain and terror, just begging us not to do that.

Then we bound his arms behind his back and wrapped his hands in cocoons of duct tape. Then we picked him up and moved him into a nearby abandoned house, and because he was still thrashing around, we “accidentally” let him fall down the basement stairs, so he couldn’t wriggle his way out to the street.

Then we left him there.

We’d thought about having our guard just shoot him, but we all agreed that would make too much noise, and we’re not murderers, we’re just… Refusing to take responsibility for J.J.’s reckless actions. Yeah, something like that.

“What if we get caught?” I asked Nick.

I imagined myself trying to explain this.

The duct tape was because he was drunk and trying to attack us, officer. Had to restrain him. We’re so sorry we forgot to call you, but we were just terrified.

He just looked at me like he couldn’t believe my stupidity and told me they’d never investigate this. As far as they’re concerned, a homeless guy just pissed off some thug who broke his legs. Happens all the time around here.

Being a human with a functioning soul, I was freaked out the entire time, and I told Nick I wanted to quit. He just shook his head.

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I looked behind him, and our bodyguard was just silently staring at me, with his shirt pulled up so you could see the gun and this look devoid of any recognizable emotions on his face. He just stared me down for thirty seconds straight without breaking eye contact before I just mumbled that maybe I’d keep working here, but I’d like the rest of the day off.

Would we actually have had to pay J.J.’s hospital bills or risk a lawsuit from this man who obviously couldn’t afford a lawyer? In hindsight, I don’t know, and I’m pretty sure Nick didn’t care.

When I got home and checked my phone, I found a text from Nick saying “SEE YOU TOMORROW.”

Caps his, not mine.

I knew what that meant. I wasn’t going anywhere. Nick and our bodyguard had voted down my decision, and they knew where I lived.

We’d come back a few times over the next few days just to… Check up on J.J. It took about three days for him to stop moving.

After that, we went right back to making the episode, and many more after that, like nothing happened.
We developed a cult following. Teens loved what we were doing. They passed it around on Facebook, used it to gross each other out. So did that specific set of gorehounds for who slasher movies are just a little too fictional to be scary. And violence fetishists. We got a lot of comments about people jacking off to parts of our shows I never wanted to know anyone could possibly jack off to. …And even more from people who just thought this kind of stuff was “what those ****** deserve.”

This went on for almost a year without incident.

…Until, a few weeks ago, I finally admitted one of my friends in private that I’d never wanted any of this shit and part of me had always thought just moving to another state and being done with it. I’m assuming she told someone who told someone else until Nick caught wind of it somehow, because two days later, he told me we’d be filming something special.

He took me into this abandoned school in one of those neighborhoods with like one building left per block. Our bodyguard was waiting there for us, as well as about ten of his friends. They were all wearing matching colors and bandanas that covered their faces.

When I came in, Nick had set up a tripod for me, about ten feet in front of something under a filthy sheet that squirmed from time to time.

Our bodyguard pulled off the sheet, and there was this terrified kid bound, gagged, and tied to a chair. Looked like he was in his mid teens, definitely not older than twenty. He looked kind of like my little brother, and maybe that’s why Nick was so enthusiastic about making me film this.

This boy, our bodyguard told us, had been talking too much, and these guys wanted to make sure the world knew just what happens to people like that. The whole time, Nick was just staring vacantly at me with this empty half-smile on his face.

I pointed the camera at the kid, turned it on, and just watched. I knew what was going to happen, but for some reason, the part of me that usually triggers fear just didn’t go off.

One of the bandanas was slowly circling him, tapping a baseball bat on the floor. I think he was the leader, so he got to go first. With every tap, the kid would almost shit himself, which was the point.

Finally, after about three or four minutes of that, he swung it right into the kid’s gut. They started low so he wouldn’t pass out.

After they’d worked over every part of the kid’s body besides his head, they finally handed it back to the leader, and he took one hard, climactic swing that splattered red and bits of meat across the walls. Then several more, just to drive the point home.

By the time they were done, his face wasn’t recognizable as human, I could see the white of the inside of his skull, his brain was lying on the floor looking like a raw hamburger dropped off a building, and there was a river of blood running across the floor.

The strangest part was that I didn’t cry or anything. I guess that by that point, I’d just kind of checked out mentally. That was probably the moment I learned where Nick and our bodyguard got those weird stares.

When we put the footage in our show, we told everyone a gang member had anonymously dropped it in our mail slot after he heard about the kind of show we were doing.

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“The following video is real, and extremely graphic. Viewer discretion is advised.”

Everyone knows that just makes you want to watch it more.

As soon as I got home, I opened my email to find one from Nick saying “SEE YOU TOMORROW.” That’s just his way of rubbing it in.

But he didn’t need to, because I wasn’t really planning to quit anymore. It’s just something I bitch about sometimes.

See, Nick might not have a conscience, but at least he’s been unusually honest through this whole thing. He made good on his promise about the money and the credit. I’m now half-owner of what looks like it’s going to be an online empire. Nick knows a lot of people, and these days, I’ve started to, too. Through these people, we get material.

A lot of the things it used to take us hours to dig off the internet, now… I’ll get an anonymous phone call, drive out to some abandoned building where guys in masks or bandanas are waiting for me, and film, silently and without empathy, myself.

People send us even more, too, from grainy cell phone videos to almost professional-level Canon TSi work. Beatings, rape, stabbings, execution-style shootings, and some things much more creative.

It’s not hard to find our site on your own, if you haven’t already, but I can’t link you to it. I can’t even tell you its name. Nick’s kind of a narcissist, and he Googles it all the time to see what people are saying about us. The site is down right now anyway. We’re moving to a bigger server. All the views keep crashing it.

Local newspapers slam us and the tourist board clucks their tongues, but we bring in enough ad revenue to pay for a middle-class lifestyle for us both. One night while we were out drinking, Nick started raving about “This is what the news was talking about, the ‘user-created content revolution.’ We’re a fuckin’ Alger story, and watch, people like us are going to run the media in the future.”

And it’s true.

People like us will bend public opinion to our will, tell you who to vote for, and train you to love watching what we want you to see.

We’ll raise your kids.

People love us. They’re imitating our format all over the place. First just in this country, in places like Newark, New Orleans, and Chicago, but I’m seeing it from other ones, too. They send me all the links. Today, I watched a bunch of Zetas pick up machetes and lay into a housewife as some kid imitated Nick’s narration style in Spanish.

But none of this matters. The only reason I can confess it all here is because you’ll never take it seriously. Even if you’ve seen our site, you think it’s just a spooky story to tell on the internet, and you’ll assume there’s no way I’m not really who I am. People have pretended to be me on the internet before. We’re a legitimate company, you’ll say. We’d never do things like this.

Police have questioned us a few times about stuff we may have seen, but we just tell them we find it on the internet, or it gets sent anonymously to us. No idea where this stuff comes from. Fucked-up place, this city. We have part of our budget set aside to pay off the ones who ask too many questions, and that deals with the problem. They are, after all, Detroit cops.

I don’t care anymore.

DISCLAIMER:

This is a rework of this creepypasta by TvTropes forumgoer Porcelain Swallow, so credit for the premise and some of the ideas go to him.

Credit To – C.S. Jones

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Copyright Statement: Unless explicitly stated, all stories published on Creepypasta.com are the property of (and under copyright to) their respective authors, and may not be narrated or performed under any circumstance.

34 thoughts on “Confession”

  1. I seriously don’t get the comments in these posts.
    This is a gorefest? Seriously?
    I probably listen to a shit ton of death metal so my idea of a gorefest might be much higher, but this story was rather bland.
    Certainly not a gorefest. Jesus, there wasn’t even any considerable gore in this, what a waste.

  2. I know this is a rather old post, and there is a likelihood that my comment will largely go unnoticed, But I’ll try and relay what I gathered from both the story, and the ensuing comments anyway. I honestly think that many missed the point. And actually, I’m glad about that. Because it shows that the writer’s focal point of depravity running absolutely rampant throughout society is in fact NOT absolute, and not so prevalent throughout the entire world as to be all encompassing as this story might lead us to believe in the end. Yes, admittedly, there were parts of the story that were rapt with “gore”, but IMO that wasn’t the point of the story. It was never the gore that was meant to horrify. It was the reality of the ever-expanding apathy towards the pain and plight of others that was portrayed , fairly well I’d say, as slowly becoming exponential throughout the human race and mass media as a whole. Or perhaps I’m just one of those children who has grown up too desensitized and I’m reading too much into the wrong part of the story. Either way, I disagree that this pasta is just glamorized gore, but it should instead be viewed as merely a horrifying reality pasta. Because sadly, and someone else noted this in an earlier comment and I still believe it to hold true: there is nothing scarier in this world than the monsters we ourselves have allowed to be created within it. ;~}

  3. derpbutt:
    Admittedly, I was interested in seeing how this would be received as I’ve gotten a lot of heat for being “too strict” on what I reject. We’ll see how it pans out.

    I’m not really one for gorepasta, so I second-guess myself a lot – especially when I get people telling me I’m too conservative about some of the stuff I don’t let through.

    So with that said, I look forward to hearing people’s opinions on this matter as long as they can deliver it without making it personally insulting to myself or the author. When you make it personal, I generally write you off as a troll incapable of expressing your opinion without acting like a child. Thanks, everyone!

    Edit to clarify: I’m not implying that the person I’m replying to here is guilty of the above, just making a pre-emptive statement. I’ve been here for a year now and know that many of you like to call for my head on a platter when you dislike anything, and I want to make the distinction that while I will listen to criticism, I don’t feel that I need to listen to *insults* disguised as criticism. There is a difference, and I wanted to remind everyone since this will most likely be a controversial pasta.

    I wanted to comment on your little note. Yes, there is something known as being too strict, but in my opinion, and apparently according to the thoughts of other readers, this was being too lax. I understand hwo hard it is to choose which pastas are accepted or rejected on your site, but this pasta really should not have been here. The part with the young boy made me sick to my stomach, and believe me when I say I have heard many sickening tales prior to reading this. The story was just… off. I cannot figure out how to describe it. I became bored easily, skipping through parts of the story simply because they seemed irrelevant. This was incredibly gory, too much so to make it “creepy”. Creepy is what, as someone stated earlier on, makes one think, or makes them paranoid, afraid to sleep at night. This is sick. Just twisted. I recognize creepypasta as a (mostly) well-thought out story, something to give you chills. This does not fit that description at all.

    Sorry for my rant, but I had to say it. -1/10

    1. Thanks! I tend to agree (thus the issue presenting itself in the first place), so please don’t apologize. I don’t take offense to comments like yours by any means!

  4. Pasta Connoisseur

    A nice gory pasta, but the way it turned disappointed me at first, but it grew on me as i realised it showed how people could change. I would have made the narrator try to escape nick, and then lead on to an alternate ending as such. I liked it though. 9/10

  5. This is amazing! Best I’ve read yet. And I like how instead of being like a ghost story it has more of a “people can be sick and cruel” vibe. Absolutely love this! 10/10

  6. This is not gory this shows people what the human race has become and I seen a lot of horror movies but this scared me because people actually do this sort of stuff. today there was a masacere in a school

  7. What the hell? I’m going to agree. The describing of a minor being beat to death with a bat because of your filming and a stupid gang isn’t “creepy” it’s disgusting and sad. Whoever wrote this is one sick person and just keep this awful crap to yourself where you can masturbate to teenagers getting killed while crying to yourself. asshole.

  8. Why do stories like this remind me of ancient Rome? The idea of using gore for entertainment has been used by playwrights and writers for centuries so there really isnt anything new to this. The idea that we can get used to gore is pretty far fetched because if you get off on this stuff I suggest you go to work at a slaughterhouse.

    You will be sick of it soon enough.

  9. I wasn’t going to read this due to the poor ratings, I felt compelled to after reading the comments.

    I didn’t find this overly gory (it does take a lot to shock me). I thought it was quite an interesting idea, I have seen websites that are similar to this.

    The internet is very effective at making the downright disgusting appear to be normal. A quick google search can draw up thousands of sickening images and websites that can be accessed by anyone of any age.

    It horrifies me to think that children can have access to this. I first saw truly shocking images at the age of 11, I suppose this is the reason it takes a lot to shock me. I think to take this from the site because some people find it too much would be shying away from the reality that this actually goes on. We can’t censor everything that goes on in this world just because we find certain things disturbing.

    This story does in some ways does glorify the acts depicted within it. It also shows a very gritty reality where even the protagonist becomes desensitised.

    I think human curiosity will always out weigh morals. I have looked at some very disturbing images and websites, I don’t feel compelled to do the things I have seen but curiosity will always get the better of me. I think seeing this kind of thing can help to gain more respect for the world in which you live. It can also help you to be more wary of who might be out there. Whether you have enemies or not, there might always be someone who wants to harm you, just for kicks and for a high “hit” count on their website.

  10. This is insane. How can this story get so much hate? It has been one of my favorites so far. How is this not creepy? Just because it has gore doesn’t mean that it’s in bad taste. I didn’t realize horror was supposed to be rainbows and unicorns. Oh wait I forgot, it’s only a creepypasta if the monsters do nothing but hide in a corner and stare right?

  11. This has a 4.6 right now? Well, if the rating system were working for me right now, I’d give it a 10/10.

    This story was so fucked up and saddening. It gave me a real downer. The creepiest thing about it is that it could definitely happen in this world…which sickens me more. I don’t know about others, but a human’s descent into pure ,uncaring evil is frightening to me. I sure hope that I never end up like that.

    I know there are people like “Nick” out there
    (Nick isn’t just “kind of” a narcissist, he’s that and more: a psychopath!), and the kinds of things they filmed also happen on a daily basis.

    All I can say is, I hope Detroit isn’t that terrible.

  12. mrspatrickbateman

    As gory and ‘disgusting’ as this pasta was, I think it deserves to be on this site. There are so many stories on this site that leave me feeling scared or afraid to turn of the lights. This one made me feel too, it made me feel physically ill but scared as well. It is scary because those people are real and while some stories here are based on true events, for the most part they are not real. To read something so shocking and disturbing is absolutely petrifying because this could happen any where. The narrator even says Nick is a fairly normal guy, someone you would probably never think capable of doing such heinous acts. It should cause a reaction in you and make you upset but it’s also a wake up call because this is all too real.

  13. Happy Taco Penguin

    Hm. Interesting, but not creepy. A little bit too much gore to be believable, really. Otherwise it would be acceptable. The concept of the mind being manipulated by another is interesting, and maybe that could have been hit on a bit more. Overall, good idea but poor execution.

    The “GD Star rating” function isn’t working on my phone currently, but I’d give it a 4/10.

  14. … This made me cry. And, honestly that’s a dang good thing.
    My generation has become so desensitized that we don’t get disturbed or disgusted.

    Honestly, I’ve seen some, heard about more than some, and seen/ listened to things just like this story. Only they are complete truth. Robberies and stabbings, rapes and murders, cannibals and serial killers. 9/11, mass school shootings, so many innocents dead.

    I cried not because I’m weak, but because this moved me to the point of tears. This gave me disgust, sadness and then rage.

    I must thank you C.S.Jones, for reminding me of this one fact.

    Humans can be the worst type of monster, and that is the scariest thing you ever have to come to terms with.

  15. I know it’s just pasta, but what you did to J.J was horrible. No money for medical expenses, yet enough for a bodyguard and a whole equipment for filming? Laughable.

  16. It wasn’t intended to be gore porn, or to titillate.

    The two people who’ve criticized it so far have made some very valid points, and I’ll take them into consideration when I write in the future. This being my first submission, I didn’t know how much gore would be too much for this site.

    However, addressing Reader’s comment, it’s supposed to be “sad and disgusting.” That’s intentional.

    Mrs. Bateman got my intentions in writing this right. It’s supposed to be a portrait of a kind of exploitation of poverty and human misery that I see a lot in certain types of media (especially on the internet), and it repulses me as much as you.

    However, maybe I did accidentally fall into the trap of making the subject accidentally look cool. After all, they say there’s no such thing as an anti-war movie. If that’s the case, then my bad.

    1. (Also, yes, I did catch the double “accidentally,” but too late, and now it’s bothering me.)

  17. This is just disgusting. I honestly do not not know how crap like this got posted on the site. The admin(s) must have been high when they read this. Honestly? Describing the graphic beating and killing of a minor is not “creepy.” It’s sad and disgusting. If I could give this negative stars, I would. Take yourself and your vile writing to some obscure corner of the internet where nobody will be able to find it. At least leave it off of here.

    1. Admittedly, I was interested in seeing how this would be received as I’ve gotten a lot of heat for being “too strict” on what I reject. We’ll see how it pans out.

      I’m not really one for gorepasta, so I second-guess myself a lot – especially when I get people telling me I’m too conservative about some of the stuff I don’t let through.

      So with that said, I look forward to hearing people’s opinions on this matter as long as they can deliver it without making it personally insulting to myself or the author. When you make it personal, I generally write you off as a troll incapable of expressing your opinion without acting like a child. Thanks, everyone!

      Edit to clarify: I’m not implying that the person I’m replying to here is guilty of the above, just making a pre-emptive statement. I’ve been here for a year now and know that many of you like to call for my head on a platter when you dislike anything, and I want to make the distinction that while I will listen to criticism, I don’t feel that I need to listen to *insults* disguised as criticism. There is a difference, and I wanted to remind everyone since this will most likely be a controversial pasta.

      1. Yes, but those people tend not to think about the sheer quantity of writers and pasta out there. Criticism is easy, actually managing things is difficult. I think the current standard – even if it makes it harder for authors to get things posted – is advantageous, as it means that authors are more likely to mull their work over and reflect on what – or what didn’t – click.

        High admission standards can be a good thing, and whether or not people enjoyed this pasta, I feel that keeping the advantage to writers pushing themselves outweighs the validity of any critics. One can find pasta in a great many places, and I feel the structure here is admirable and something of a rarity – something to consider when feeling doubts about giving stories a ‘fair shake’.

        1. I appreciate this. I do run into issues wondering if I’m being too biased or harsh quite often, especially with niches that I know have audiences/fans but that I personally don’t find particularly interesting.

          I was also referring to my policy of rejecting some pastas based on being “too objectionable” – most that get that label don’t see the light of creepy nor crappy, but we do end up with people who read the bit in the FAQ or have their own pasta rejected for that reason who then kick up a fuss in the comments because they disagree with that policy and/or my personal line in the sand.

          It’s been said before that “negative voices are the loudest” and that does seem to ring true. Sometimes it’s hard to figure out the line between critics simply being loud yet still being in the minority because people who like the status quo don’t speak up VS. critics being the loudest because they truly represent the wishes of the masses. Since I do legitimately want to make as much of the community satisfied as is possible, it’s something that I worry about.

  18. I’m really not sure what this pasta was supposed to be. Social commentary on our addiction to violence? ‘What really happens in the streets’? An expose on perverse filmmakers? A gorefest?

    What’s clear to me is that it had lots of unnecessary and gratuitous violence. The pasta tries so hard to be hardbittenly cynical and edgy, but the delivery and the subject matter edges towards crass and cheap; the equivalent of a Z-movie (complete with one-liners), or perhaps a badly executed ‘too soon’ joke. The torture and gore were ends unto themselves.

    This pasta’s main, unfettered focus was on the gore. There were IMO some interesting scraps on the accomplice’s descent into psychopathy, but ultimately I felt that this was a side-thought; the commentary felt like shiny wrappers compared to the loving descriptions of eviscerated brains and torture sequences (and how to execute them). It’s not creepy; it’s snuff, borderline porn – like one of those ‘cautionary tales’ about hippies or marijuana that end up glorifying their contraband, or are mere masks for titillation. No balance between the substance of the message and the delivery.

    Overall, a disaster. The remake was appreciated, but the content was already damaged goods. 4.3/10

    1. I can’t help but second your comments, although I’d like to be a little harsher. Normally I like to find something positive to say when I have to say something; I figure there’s too little encouragement in the world, the last thing we need is less of it.

      This though, well… When I think creepy, I think something that stops and makes me think. Something that, halfway through the night, catches me and makes my uncontrollably paranoid, frightened just of being alive and conscious and aware. Sometimes, gore and shock value can do that, and do so lastingly.

      But I was not once scared, or even really disgusted by this. The violence is portrayed in such a manner I feel as if I’m reading an over-excited fan of a more stale Chuck Palahniuk recount it, while accentuating the parts they thought were the ‘coolest’. In short, this feels like a marketed attempt to be frightening without any understanding of what that means.

      The story structure is weak, building towards an ending where the reader, like the unremarkable narrator, simply doesn’t care. Perhaps every city truly is filled with amateur snuff films paying off cops and I’m just very blind – but as horrible as this sounds, if we have no reason to care for the narrator or the subjects of the story, just attempting to shock us into feeling empathy won’t have much effect. One of the reasons Romero is so well-regarded, especially for his earlier work, is his ability to create emotional investment.

      What we’ve got here is a mess, plain and simple. A lot of people’ll talk about how it was bad because they were offended or grossed out. I’m not one of those people – I’m here to tell you it was an unambiguous wreck, and no amount of shining the coat is going to change that.

    2. SlayinSeithan36

      The pasta is basically trying to say that the website has evolved into a really popular and powerful snuff film network where some of the sickest people in the world can send images or films of them committing horrible acts, such as murder. The site has become very powerful and hard to track and the corrupted police of detroit can be easily paid into not talking. When he says “We’ll raise your kids” he means that many youngsters that might have a sick sense of humor, trying to impress their friends, etc. May go on this sight and grow to be horrible people after viewing the extremely morbid and gruesome content portrayed that you couldn’t easily find anywhere else. Basically the story is trying to say that they have successfully created a very popular site that exposes the dark side of humanity and has prove impossible to shut down or investigate. Obviously this story was very cheesy and unrealistic but it was still very well written and creative. 7 out of 10 in my personaly opinion. Hope this made it easier to understand>

      1. I’ve been (mostly) avoiding commenting in this thread so as not to turn it into an argument, but I wanted to point out that this is exactly the meaning I intended.

        The power and influence what they did gives them is supposed to be the scary part, not the gore.

  19. mrspatrickbateman

    TMZ does have some pretty crappy stuff…
    Good pasta, it was very detailed and the JJ part and the kid were almost too much to take. What makes it so scary is there are those types of people in the world.

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