By Leslie Liu

The scene is all too familiar, the gestures rehearsed. It begins with the innocence of casual browsing, the wide-eyed wonder as you click and scroll, traipsing around some mildly interesting news article. Then it leers at you, inevitable and horrible. Chumbox ads upset the assumed comfort that comes with browsing. Pairing disturbing imagery with sensationalist captions, these advertisements lurk below news articles, disrupting the nimbleness and gracefulness of the online. Unsightly images of celebrities and skin—writhing masses of flesh and tissues—known as chum, dot the internet. Targeting the subconscious, chumboxes are an unfiltered expression of misdirection and clickbait—body horror made visually tactile.

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