Hi, I'm Alex Kirtoski and this is the Digital Human for the documentary on the BBC World Service.

First broadcast on BBC Radio 4, but specially curated for you.

Today, in Gool, we want to know what it is that draws people to the darkest

corners of the web.

Do you just want to get warmed up by reading that first little bit and we'll take it from there?

All right, you just want that bit?

Yep, just in your own time.

Devon Chaterris, Tuesday, 13th of November, 1849.

Sir, I was a witness of the execution at Horsemonger Lane this morning.

I went there with the intention of observing the crowd gathered to behold it.

When the sun rose brightly, as it did, it gilded thousands upon thousands of upturned faces, so inexpressibly odious in their brutal mirth or callousness

that a man had caused to feel ashamed of the shape he wore and to shrink from himself

as fashioned in the image of the devil.

I am, sir, your faithful servant, Charles Dickens.

Dickens took the London underground to that hanging. Our morbid past may not be as distant from modern civilized society as you might think. A couple years ago we made an episode about the people

responsible for sifting all the horrible content out of the web. We called it

Sineaters and it left us with a nagging question.

Who is it that wants to see images of real violence and death?

People who don't have an agenda, people who aren't on the path of radicalization.

The news is full of criticism of content providers not doing enough to stop this stuff that's

polluting our feeds, but while we can try and throttle the supply, we just can't ignore the demand.

What draws some people to watching others die, and what does exposing yourself to it do to you.

...