Death News

Bet you didn't know that death has a price tag. Now, I like a good gorefest as much as the next death worshipper, but paying ten dollars for a static web-version of perverse pleasure is a little too sick for even my tastes. Geez, I'd sooner get a month of AOL for that price and fulfill my weirdest desires one-on-one in their chat rooms! Death News is at once philosophical about mortality ("Mankind ascribes much more to death than just the final demise itself") and crassly commercial ("We believe that at $9.99 per month Death News provides incomparable value"). The design is attractive, even seductive in places, but the content feels recycled and stale, like it was cribbed from encyclopedias and jazzed up with a thesaurus. Come on, what self-respecting death fan hasn't heard all about Elizabeth Bathory (coyly renamed Erzsebet, from the original Chezcholslovakian), and by now everybody expects the Spanish Inquisition in a list of historical torturers! Perhaps for those with only a casual interest these "Death Files" might be entertaining, but I've seen similar tales available for free on net.goths' homepages. One potential draw (which Death News has hyped ad nasueum) is their "Death Loops." These are miniscule Quicktime movies of executions, mutilations and other suitablely horrific events. Unfortunately, the three different movies I downloaded were blurry and vague, making me question whether or not the events were faked (Death News swears the movies are real, although they don't include any annotation or even the name of the photographers). Plus, the file size is enormous and anyone on less than a T1 line will have to be pretty darn patient. Some may argue that sites like this commodify death, much like porn does to sex. Actually, I have no beef with that goal -- I just wish the commodity were of better quality for the price. In my opinion, Death News is the morbid equivalent of Playboy magazine. It's slick, shallow and ultimately interested in making a buck. (TLB)

[ AlterNodes | CyberScape | MetroActive ]