It’s well known that Marshmallow Peeps can be eaten in any number of ways: fresh out of the box, frozen, desiccated for months until their skin hardens into a chewy carapace, even microwaved or flame roasted. The Peeps know this, and they are prepared to sacrifice their bodies for our enjoyment. But the wanton, gratuitous cruelty exhibited in videos being posted on YouTube and Google Video is shocking beyond belief.

Consider this your introduction to a seamy cinematic underworld where horrific and unspeakable things are being done to Marshmallow Peeps: Peeps pornography, Peeps cockfights, and even Peeps snuff films.

If your morbid curiosity outweighs your natural revulsion to the suffering of puffy, multicolored creatures made of marshmallow, sugar, gelatin, and carnauba, log on (links provided at thephoenix.com) and watch.

Peeps, by nature, are gentle, nonviolent creatures. Which is why it’s unsettling on such a primal level to learn of something called “Peep jousting,” in which the birds are affixed with toothpick lances, then thrown into a microwave arena and forced to face off, as they swell into grotesque, ballooning shapes, until one of them pierces and deflates the other. In YouTube’s War of the Peeps and Peep Wars x2 w/ Apollo Peep, the slaughter is all the more senseless, with onlookers cheering and taking bets on which victim will expand, explode, and expire first.

Go to Google Video and find one woman firing up a blowtorch. “Peeps, you have been sentenced to the crime of being food,” she cackles, “and you will be ... br û léed!” As five helpless birds are scorched into unrecognizable brown husks, an onlooker chortles with mock regret, “Aw, man, cruel and unusual punishment!” Clearly, he cares not a whit for their pain.

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Back on YouTube, you’ll find a young, shaggy-haired man sitting at a kitchen table before 20 boxes of yellow chicks, accepting a challenge to scarf 100 of them in an hour. The camera wobbles and the “Chicken Dance” blares as he shovels them into his gob.

But perhaps most troubling of all is the lascivious subculture of Peeps porn, where these guileless creatures are subjected to the lewd depredations of the filmmakers. In YouTube’s Peep Show Part 1, which sensationally flogs its “Peep Lesbianism Bestiality,” the grainy, sex-tape-quality clip shows a half-glimpsed woman using her lips and tongue for acts that hit, um, below the belt. And in Peep Porno, pink bunnies and yellow chicks are forced into interspecies couplings in ungodly positions.

But to these soulless cineastes, it’s all a big laugh.

“So, Zach, where did you come up with this idea?” asks one off-camera voice.

“I dunno. Somewhere deep in my subconscious,” he replies.

“You have a twisted subconscious,” the voice says.