Perhaps hell is the absoluteness of nothing. Perhaps it is fire and suffering for eternity. Perhaps it's being made to watch those who are in God's loving embrace and knowing that your praises fall onto deaf ears. Whatever hell truly is, it is. Pure and simple. No one really knows what hell is unless they've been there. And quite personally, I REALLY don't want to find out!
Take the descriptions like this, they are the visual examples of just how awful hell is given in the mode that we will best understand. It's given in that awful way so as to shock us into understanding what that eternal seperation really means. Thus the reactions like "God wouldn't really do that!" He is using illustration to get what would be otherwise incomprehensible across to our rather stubborn minds.