THIS POST IS WORK-SAFE, despite the LINKBAIT title. I emphasize that if you already know what Goatse is, and if you don't, Google AT YOUR EXTREME DISCRETION.

That being said, it's funny how much attention Internet memes can get, and how you can ride the wave of traffic if you're at the right place at the right time, with the right thing to show off. I've done social media experiments on several occasions, like my anime hair embellishment, and yesterday, I was doing casual social network browsing.

As luck (or some other factor) would have it, I ended up on Bebo, and to the right was a WalletPop ad which remarkably resembled Goatse (or the "G picture", as my toilet humor-hating wife puts it). Even better, after refreshing the page, I saw another ad referencing the possibility of an embarrassing health problem.

Put the 2 together — it would've been 3, there was this Above The Influence ad which showed hands tugging at a naive teen's head… you know how the story goes — and I uploaded to Flickr in a few min.

Several moments later, I submitted the picture to Reddit and Digg. A grand total of 5 min. invested. As shown here, I got the most referrers from Reddit. I've seen similar effects before. As it stands presently, my Goatse Reddit submission has an equalized total of "0" votes, with 15 up and 19 down. And still, it continues to draw in a trickle of hits from various Reddit pages. It may help that my scrawled pink "wtf" is visible in the thumbnail.

Observations:

• Morbid curiosity gets the better of human nature. (As obvious as water is wet, but well-worth repeating because some wonder, "Do people actually go for that?" And yes, yes they do.)
• Reddit can easily be used to get moderate traffic in a matter of minutes — more effectively than Digg, which is more dependent on high votes. Even if there aren't a great # of votes, you can still attain a spike. Your results may vary depending on specific context, so let me know your findings.
• I wonder if the ad creator knew and constructed the ad to be Goatsesque in hopes of someone like me falling for it? If so, hats off to them.
• Next steps may be to apply this to more media which isn't based on a shock site, and perhaps link to a blog post instead of my Flickr stream so the traffic's more direct.
• Followup is always key: I submitted this pic to GoatseSighting in hopes they'll enjoy it, too. Furthermore, I submitted this post to Reddit. Let's see how recursive we can get!