

“Once that video became popular, and people’s reactions started being posted, I knew I had to see what hers would be. “Since as far back as I can remember, my grandmother had always had funny or crazy reactions to even the smallest things,” Leigh tells me in a Twitter DM. Jackie Leigh is the granddaughter behind this video, which went on to rack up more than 10 million views, cementing 2G1C’s status as indescribable filth. A year later, 2 Girls 1 Cup reactions became the new gold standard in reactions, propelled by viral hits like this: The first slew of reactions for their own sake arrived in 2006, when YouTubers produced footage of people freaking out over a “Scary Maze Game” that lulled players into deep concentration before abruptly replacing the screen with a ghoulish face, accompanied by a piercing scream. But these videos, sanitized for mass consumption and maximum shareability, have somewhat grimy origins. A sibling duo known as the Fine Brothers even tried to trademark the word “react” for their popular channel built around the concept and had to back down amid outcry. Today, the reaction genre is a staple of the YouTube economy we watch kids react to Michael Jackson and fantasy fans react to the fatal twists in Game of Thrones.

As my friend Jené put it in a Facebook thread where I invited people to reminisce on the phenomenon: “I was like, what could possibly make people react like this? I had to know. For those who weren’t baited, pressured or otherwise tricked into watching the clip, it was the deluge of reaction videos that prompted a nervous click.

At the time, there were only two paths to the video: deceit and curiosity. No discussion of 2G1C can get far without acknowledging this, the communal basis of its legend - which is, no doubt, what makes me assume that everyone has seen it. “And more than anything, I remember the reactions of other people in the group screening.” “There’s a weird appeal in volunteering a relatively benign traumatic experience as a group. This was back when videos were still going viral through word of mouth. Kim first saw the video in college, around his junior year at NYU, when one of his suitemates rallied up a crowd for a group screening. When you’re presented with something in a negative imperative, as in Don’t Google 2 Girls 1 Cup, “you almost feel challenged to do the opposite.” “I think there’s a bit of reverse psychology involved in it,” he writes over email. From disturbing flash cartoons like Salad Fingers to graphic sites like Goatse (which hosts an image of a man’s gaping asshole, circulated since 1997), we delighted in forcing ourselves to bear witness to humankind’s depravity.īrad Kim, the founder and editor-in-chief of Know Your Meme - a singular resource on the history of web ephemera - recalled exactly this response to 2 Girls 1 Cup. We logged on just to collectively recoil at the very worst of what we found. In 2007, the web was at an inflection point - where streaming content met social media - and the frontiers of this new world were strange, gross and exhilarating. And perhaps more surprisingly, it brought us together. That the two of them go on to make out, rubbing their shit-smeared faces together, finally taking turns vomiting the shit back into the cup as well as into each other’s mouths.Īnd that, oh right, there’s no good reason for anybody to watch that shit.īut watch it we did. That this woman then messily licks and sucks on her own whipped shit with another woman. That the video itself depicts one woman defecating into a cup, in a manner frequently compared to that of a soft-serve ice cream machine. That even among jaded millennials my age, some managed to avoid it. I have to remind myself that this extreme fetish video went viral a decade ago, when phones were dumb, Myspace had more users than Facebook and Generation Z was about to plug in. What shocks me most about the scatological porn known as 2 Girls 1 Cup in the cruel year of our lord 2017 is that not everyone on the internet has seen it.

Traumatized Victim (shaking): "Where am I? Its sooo cold in here. the two women, apparently fed-up (hah! pun intended) with eating each other poop, wash their fecal-feast down with a generous helping of each other's vomit could there by a more fitting denouement?. Are they really, IS SHE EATING THE OTHER CHICK'S POO! AND, OH NO, SQUIRTING IT INTO THE OTHER CHICK'S MOUTH! PLEASE, I CAN'T WATCH ANYMORE!" Sadistic Asshole: "Oh it gets better. Traumatized Victim (horrified and at the brink of nausea): "Are they. Said Asshole's victim plays the video " Two Girls One Cup": Idyllic music plays. check out this video of these two hot chicks 'making out'. (Spoiler Alert! The following reveals elements of the video's "plot") Sadistic Asshole: "Dude.
