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Slender Man

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File:Apariciones.jpg
One of the original photos of the Slender Man, originally posted on the Something Awful forums.

The Slender Man (also known as Slender Man or Slenderman) is a fictional character that originated as an Internet meme created by Something Awful forums user Victor Surge in 2009. It is depicted as resembling a thin, unnaturally tall man with a blank and usually featureless face, and wearing a black suit. The Slender Man is commonly said to stalk, abduct, or traumatize people, particularly children.[1]

Origin

The Slender Man was created in a contest launched on the Something Awful forums on June 8, 2009, with the goal of editing photographs to contain supernatural entities. On June 10, a forum poster with the user name "Victor Surge" contributed two black and white images of groups of children, to which he added a tall, thin spectral figure wearing a black suit.[2][3] Previous entries had consisted solely of photographs; however, Surge supplemented his submission with snatches of text, supposedly from witnesses, describing the abductions of the groups of children, and giving the character the name, "The Slender Man":

We didn’t want to go, we didn’t want to kill them, but its persistent silence and outstretched arms horrified and comforted us at the same time…

1983, photographer unknown, presumed dead.

One of two recovered photographs from the Stirling City Library blaze. Notable for being taken the day which fourteen children vanished and for what is referred to as “The Slender Man”. Deformities cited as film defects by officials. Fire at library occurred one week later. Actual photograph confiscated as evidence.

1986, photographer: Mary Thomas, missing since June 13th, 1986.[3]

These additions effectively transformed the photographs into a work of fiction. Subsequent posters expanded upon the character, adding their own visual or textual contributions.[2][3]

Development

The Slender Man soon went viral, spawning numerous works of fanart, cosplay and online fiction known as "creepypasta": scary stories told in short snatches of easily copyable text that spread from site to site.[4] The first video series involving the Slender Man evolved from a post on the Something Awful thread by user "ce gars". It tells of a fictional film school friend named Alex Kralie, who had stumbled upon something troubling while shooting his first feature-length project, Marble Hornets. The video series, published in found footage style on YouTube, forms an alternate reality game describing the filmers' fictional experiences with the Slender Man. The ARG also incorporates a Twitter feed and an alternate YouTube channel created by a user named "totheark".[1][5] Marble Hornets is now one of the most popular Slender Man creations, with over 250,000 followers around the world, and 55 million views.[6] Other Slender Man-themed YouTube serials followed, including EverymanHYBRID and Tribe Twelve.[1] In 2011, Markus "Notch" Persson, creator of the sandbox indie game Minecraft, added a new hostile mob to the game, which he named the "Enderman" when multiple users on Reddit and Google+ commented on the similarity to the Slender Man.[7] In 2012, the Slender Man was adapted into a video game titled Slender: The Eight Pages; as of August, 2012, the game has been downloaded over 2 million times.[8] Several popular variants of the game followed, including Slenderman's Shadow[9] and Slender Man for iOS, which became the second most-popular app download.[10] The sequel to Slender: The Eight Pages, Slender: The Arrival, was released in 2013.[11] Several independent films about the Slender Man have been released or are in development, including Entity[12] and The Slender Man, released free online after a $10,000 Kickstarter campaign.[13] In 2013, it was announced that Marble Hornets would become a theatrical film.[6]

Description

Due to the open-source and experimental nature of the Slenderman Mythos, the Slenderman's attributes vary from representation to representation. Typically however, he is shown to be a towering, slim, and pale man wearing a business suit. Whether the suit is a part of SLenderman's skin or whether it is an actual suit is up for debate, and both answers provide interesting theories as to the nature of the Slenderman. In earlier representations, he is said to have a face that appeared different to all who saw it, and struck fear in to their hearts. However, the vast majority of later works simply depict him as having no face whatsoever. He is always shown to be a malevolent creature, and one that has nothing but wicked intent. Why this is so, and in fact all of it's motives, remain largely unknown.

The key aspect of The Slenderman's "scariness" is the mystery surrounding him. He is designed to be a Lovecraftian entity, who's unknowable motives are the driving force behind the fear he instils into his victims. His human-esque appearance contributes to this, as one can not be sure if it is Slenderman they are seeing, or a trick of the light. Whether it has an understanding of human's languages and social behaviours, as is why humanity constitutes his prime target as opposed to animals. Victims of the Slenderman's influence act very erratically, and are commonly afflicted by what Slenderman experts refer to as 'Slendersickness'. This comprises principally of hallucinations, vomiting and often results in the victim losing conciousness.

Slenderman's appearance provokes a wide range of responses, the most common being fear. This is partly because of his height, which exploits the Humanity's natural fear of being inferior. of course, his behaviour also plays a role. However, as with the Lovecraftian creatures that inspired him, a major part of his capacity to inflict fear stems from his sheer incomprehensibility: the fact that humanity will never be able to understand his nature or motives. Whilst a physical description is possible, a true description of the entity is impossible unless one has been in contact with it: an experience which usually leaves the victim too mad to recall the experience.

Reaction

The Slender Man was called "the first great myth of the web" by the BBC.[14] The success of the Slender Man legend has been ascribed to the connective nature of the Internet. While nearly everyone involved understands that the Slender Man is not real, the Internet allows others to build on the established tropes, and thus lend an air of authenticity to the character.[3] Victor Surge has commented that many people, despite understanding that the Slender Man was created on the Something Awful forums, still entertain the possibility that it might be real.[14] Professor Tom Peddit of the University of Southern Denmark has described Slender Man as being an exemplar of the modern age's closing of the "Gutenberg Parenthesis"; the time period from the invention of the printing press to the spread of the web in which stories and information were codified in discrete media, to a return to the older, more primal forms of storytelling, exemplified by oral tradition and campfire tales, in which the same story can be retold, reinterpreted and recast by different tellers, expanding and evolving with time.[14] Shira Chess has noted that the Slender Man exemplifies the similarities between traditional folklore and the open source ethos of the Internet, and that, unlike those of traditional monsters such as vampires and werewolves, the Slender Man's mythos can be tracked and signposted, giving a powerful insight into how myth and folklore form.[2] Tye Van Horn, a writer for The Elm, has suggested that the Slender Man represents modern fear of the unknown; in an age flooded with information people have become so inured to ignorance that they now fear what they cannot understand.[15] Troy Wagner, the creator of Marble Hornets, ascribes the terror of the Slender Man to its malleability; people can shape it into whatever frightens them most.[14]

See also

References

  1. ^ a b c Gail Arlene De Vos (2012). What Happens Next?. ABC-CLIO. p. 162. ISBN 9781598846348.
  2. ^ a b c Shira Chess (2012). "Open-Sourcing Horror: The Slender Man, Marble Hornets, and genre negotiations". Information, Communication & Society. 15 (3): 374–393. doi:10.1080/1369118X.2011.642889.
  3. ^ a b c d Patrick Dane (2013). "Why Slenderman Works: The Internet Meme That Proves Our Need To Believe". whatculture.com. Retrieved 2013-02-20.
  4. ^ Aja Romano (2012). "The definitive guide to creepypasta—the Internet's urban legends". Daily Dot. Retrieved 2013-04-22.
  5. ^ Peters, Lucia (14 May 2011). "Creepy Things That Seem Real But Aren't: The Marble Hornets Project". Crushable. Retrieved 9 October 2012.
  6. ^ a b Dave McNary (2013). "'Marble Hornets' flying to bigscreen". Variety. Retrieved 2013-02-26.
  7. ^ "Notch reveals new mob, dubs them Endermen in reference to Slender Man". igx.com. 2011. Retrieved 2013-02-21.
  8. ^ Gary Marston (2012). "Slender review". explosion.com. Retrieved 2013-04-22.
  9. ^ Lana Polansky (August 20, 2012). "Slenderman's Shadow "Sanatorium" Map Released". Gameranx. Retrieved September 9, 2012.
  10. ^ Tom Senior (July 26, 2012). "Slender Man Source mod will let you scare the hell out of yourself for free, with friends". PC Gamer. Retrieved September 9, 2012.
  11. ^ Jeffrey Matulef (February 11, 2013). "Pre-orders for Slender: The Arrival are half-off, come with instant beta access". Eurogamer. Retrieved April 3, 2013.
  12. ^ "First Trailer & Poster For The Jadallah Brothers' Horror Movie ENTITY!". FilmoFilia. 2013. Retrieved 2013-02-20.
  13. ^ "Slender Man Movie Producer Steven Belcher Wants to Create True Terror with the Faceless Figure". GameTrailers. 2013. Retrieved 2013-02-20.
  14. ^ a b c d "Digital Human: Tales". bbc.co.uk. 2012. Retrieved 2013-02-20.
  15. ^ Tye Van Horn (2013). "Behind You: The Cultural Relevance of Slender Man". Retrieved 2013-02-20.
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