The Rise And Fall Of Slenderman

Forgot to add the timestamp on screen at around 26:00!! If you want to skip that content go to 28:50 :}

I find the whole "Slenderman and the other Creepypastas all hang out in a mansion and are friends" trope fascinating. With old horror, it took more than half a century to go from Dracula to The Munsters, but in internet time, we can do the same thing to our modern horror icons in barely a year!

Back in the Marble Hornets days, I gave a 30 minute school presentation about SlenderMan for an English Writing class. It thoroughly terrified everyone in the class along with the teacher, But whilst it went really well I actually gave the presentation feeling horrendously ill and shortly after I had to go home and didn't show up to school for the next 3 days. From everyone else's perspective, I had told them all about this spooky internet legend that steals or kills children and then vanished with no trace. Easiest A of my school years x

The little girl that survived 19 stabs is absolutely a badass. I can't even begin to imagine the horror she went through, but to persevere and survive is incredible

The funny thing is, the meme-ification of Slenderman and the watering down of his mythos to this easily digestible jumpscare bait with tons of low effort games, memes, and lore written by 10 year olds filling it with their OCs is EXACTLY what is happening to The Backrooms right now. History truly DOES repeat itself

As a parent, I don't understand those other parents trying to shut down the creepypasta community "to protect the kids". I grew up reading the scary stories to read in the dark series and R.L. Stine which were pretty dark looking back. They shaped my entire childhood in a way I imagine creepypastas have done for kids today. Let kids enjoy their innocent spooks before they gotta deal with the real ones.

Slight correction: the Marble Hornets series wrapped up seamlessly. The even did a few retrospectives about the show immediately afterwards. It was during their next project that the three founders of that production company had a falling out and left that new series unfinished. Troy works solo on a new project now, and the others have largely stepped back from online content creation

The fanart of Jeff the Killer kissing Slenderman is everything, I’m losing it. What a masterpiece. I hope that artist is doing great now, wherever they are

On top of 'the child assailant had schizophrenia' she had hallucinations of a figure like slenderman before knowing he was a thing. Seeing media on the figure 'confirmed' it for her. It was just a perfect storm of tragedy, though I can't say what her accomplice was thinking.

One thing I wanted to mention about the stabbing case: it was actually found that one of the perpetrators was literally hallucinating Slenderman IRL. She had undiagnosed schizophrenia, a disorder that her dad had been diagnosed with for years. I'm not defending her AT ALL bc plenty of people have mental illnesses and hallucinations and don't kill people, but it just adds a bit more context as to why she believed so hard that he was real. Because she literally thought she was seeing him. This is a great video btw!! Taught me stuff I didn't know abt Slenderman's history, even though I was like 15 at the height of the popularity and played The Eight Pages! That's what I love abt your vids; even if I'm knowledgeable on the topic, I'll still learn a thing or two from you! 😊

I was just entering film school when Marble Hornets was at the peak of its popularity, and EVERYONE wanted to make their own found footage horror. Some of the projects my classmates and I made were pretty silly, but overall I think it's amazing that filmmaking is so accessible to everyone these days. You don't need expensive equipment to tell a good story. Creepypasta influenced a generation of creators, and I think that's pretty cool.

At the time of the infamous stabbing, I was actually writing creepypastas pretty regularly (and had a tumblr roleplay blog for my own character). I had a couple of my stories narrated, even by MrCreepyPasta so I felt I was deep in the fandom. I remember my little eighth grade brain being furious at the accusations against the fandom.

As someone that's been in the creepypasta community for years, almost seven now jeez- it's kind of amazing how this fandom just REFUSES to die- It is still somehow incredibly popular, not as much as it was before as the idea of fandom itself seems to be dying, but it's still very prominent if you know where to look

What bothers me about the backlash against reality vs fiction followingnthe stabbing is how quickly so many were to judge the girls stupid. I'm not going to use their names, but the girl essentially leading the charge between the two was diagnosed with schizophrenia and received treatment. Her family noticed some signs as she was growing up and were doing their best to both support her interests but also diagnose and treat her. She has a disorder that literally made it real. That's why this was the exception. Thought it might be partially because I had a friend who had a similar obsession turn reality. He was abused and severely mentally ill, latched onto the IP because what goes better than mental anguish than a popular horror character? He started seeing the figure when we went out on hikes, walked past the farmland out where we lived, etc. I and my other friend had to stop him regularly from just wandering out into the woods several times. Horror and dark concepts can be good for kids and help them develop healthy anxiety coping skills, age appropriate presentation of it anyways. After all, kids are far more resilient, resourceful, and clever than a lot of adults give them credit for. But the kids like my friend and that girl who were suffering and not diagnosed, not receiving treatment or help, are getting exposed to it before they can be diagnosed or before they present symptoms. It can have devastating consequences, as we can see in that case. It feels like a discussion that needs to be happening. Rather than infantilizing the kids and crying that kids horror will turn them into killers, we should focus more on awareness and mental health education, particularly in regards to presentation in children.

I believe that one of the girls involved in the stabbing incident was later diagnosed with schizophrenia, and found to be having audio and visual hallucinations of slenderman. this wasn't a case of "two girls get a little too into internet lore and decide to stab their friend for fun" but of two children whose perception of the world literally confirmed their belief in slenderman. it's somewhat understandable that they would believe that committing the crime they did was their only option (not that there is ever a way to justify a crime like this). i think as adults we hear about this story and go "oh children are ridiculous to believe in things like this, it's clearly fake" but as a child who grew up on the internet, i believed in creepypastas even without having a mental illness that confirmed it. so when considering that she saw slenderman in her everyday life, of course she would believe it was real. those girls needed serious help and it was just heartbreakingly unfortunate that no one knew until after something like that happened.

To be honest i think the Creepypasta fandom as a whole deserves a video on its own, back in the day there was so much wild stuff going on

there was a huge part after the stabbing case with kids on the internet turning the victim into a creepypasta and drawing her covered in blood and stab wounds, as well. it made me so ANGRY. i was in a creepypasta group on deviantart and they were allowing these images to be uploaded to the group, basically glorifying her injuries and being generally unempathetic to her situation. i spent a good 2 weeks having to explain to literal CHILDREN how it was so wrong of them to be doing this and it wasn't helping the fandom OR the victim and her family, and how it was so offensive. i was constantly linking them to her gofundme page for her medical care, and they were convinced i created the page as a money scam. actual nightmare, 0/10. this is why i cant look at the creepypasta fandom anymore. they showed no empathy or sympathy for her and just wanted an excuse to make more content and ultimately made themselves look more like monsters.

i lived in the town where the slenderman stabbing happened. it was so, so heartbreaking. i was in high school at the time, and it tainted the world around us. all my memories of playing 8 pages at sleepovers with my friends were replaced with absolute horror in my community. i felt responsible -- maybe if i'd indulged in and talked about this stupid game less, it wouldn't have happened. it was like overnight, no one was able to speak about slenderman anymore and he became as horrific as we'd all first remembered him as. to this day, i can't see anything about him without thinking of the poor girl. thank god she lived. i hope she's ok today.

I was in high school when the stabbing happened and I was frustrated with the media coverage of it because I was BIG into Slender/creepypastas at the time. I distinctly remember by mom watching some news reporter talking about how he was so shocked that his kids and all their friends knew who Slender was and how it's so scary that this could happen right under a parent's nose. And my mom just scoffed and turned to me and said "Slenderman? Of course I know who Slenderman is. That's that thing you play with your brother all the time. It's just a game." All that stupid moral panic could have been so easily avoided if people just talked to their kids about their interests. They were all so out of touch that they didn't realize Slenderman being a "big scary secret" was literally entirely their fault because if they asked about it before the incident then their kids would've lore dumped everything and they would realize it's not any more demonic than a campfire story.

It broke my whole soul seeing the girls father come forward about his mental illness and how he was taking so much blame for not realizing his daughter was having the same issue with breaks in reality 😓 definitely an interesting case, and this was super interesting to watch! I didn't realize slender man had a sexy Tumblr man phase.. 😭✋ but why am I not shocked..