Remembering Rotten.com, Gene Simmons or Marc Andreessen? and More #Mustreads.

Happy Monday!

Here are some links for your consideration, brought to you by Re/code:

1. In the late 1990s and early 2000s, there was no better place to get your fix of terrifying and gross stuff on the Internet than Rotten.com. Whether it was gore, decapitations, rotted-out bodies or anything else to satisfy your inner shock enthusiast/weirdo, you could find it there. Here’s a reflection in The Daily Dot’s Kernel Mag on the Rotten.com era, when life was simpler and you couldn’t just search for your Serbian decapitation videos on YouTube.
2. There are many unfunny and bad Buzzfeed quizzes. In fact, Clickhole has created a entire genre of quizzes parodying the whole format. But this Buzzfeed quiz is on a whole other level of uncanny. It’s “Who Said It: Gene Simmons From Kiss or Tech Luminary Marc Andreessen?” This intrepid tech writer scored 11 out of 15, which was probably a sign of good luck on my part.
3. Keanu Reeves hasn’t been in many good movies lately. Poor Keanu. His latest film, argues a critic in the Atlantic, is so bad that it actually might be great. The movie is called “John Wick,” and it’s about a retired hitman who’s forced to get back into the game because someone killed the puppy he got as a gift from his late wife. The trailer looks pretty fun.
4. Twenty years ago, Internet advertising changed forever. Sort of. Well, today is the anniversary of when the first banner ads began appearing on websites. In the form of an oral history, Brian McCullough at the Internet History Podcast takes a fun trip down memory lane with the people who were at ground zero of the commercialization of the Internet.
5. So is Gamergate about ethics in gaming journalism or about an angry mob of largely white and male Internet users who are harassing women? Survey says … it’s about the misogyny. Newsweek’s Taylor Wofford got a social analytics company to run the numbers, and it turns out that most of the Twitter energy devoted to Gamergate is spent demonizing women in gaming, not discussing “media ethics.”
6. For 15 years, William and Patricia Wycherley of London were dead, and no one noticed. Their daughter and son-in-law murdered them and buried the couple in the yard as part of a scheme to steal money, and the neighbors didn’t have a clue until the government started inquiring about William’s 100th birthday. Here’s a feature from he Guardian about this weird, and ultimately very sad, case.

If you see any stories you’d like to send our way (or have any questions/comments about stories we’ve recommended), feel free to shoot an email to noah@recode.net.

This article originally appeared on Recode.net.

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